It’s early days, but there have been some interesting write-ups already, including in today’s Sunday Times which, amongst other things, points out that,
At least two ideas mooted by Johnson during his campaign have been squashed by his rigorous new policymen.
Dropping a couple of election promises so quickly is the sort of act which often gets lost in the initial media coverage of “new person in post”, but it is also the sort of act that can come back to haunt you. If Boris Johnson hits bad times and struggles on policy, the early dropping of two promises could become highly symbolic. He has also been attacked in today’s Observer, though on more debatable grounds:
Last Wednesday Johnson installed Westminster councillor Sir Simon Milton as his senior planning adviser, one of the most powerful positions in his new administration. Milton’s life partner is another councillor, Robert Davis, who is also Westminster council’s elected planning supremo.
When grilled by Westminster councillors last Wednesday about the potential for conflicts of interest, Davis flippantly said he looked forward to ‘pillow talk’ and having a ‘word in the ear’ with Milton about how Westminster planning matters would be dealt with by Mayor Johnson.
Senior Labour councillor Paul Dimoldenberg has written to the Greater London Authority’s chief executive and Westminster legal officers demanding reassurances that key planning decisions will be transparent and not made behind closed doors.
Meanwhile, London MP (and former London Assembly member) Lynne Featherstone has given her take on Boris as Mayor in her latest newspaper column.
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15 Comments
But surely the main London political story for L-Ds is Brian’s ill-humoured (but humourous) piece in today’s MoS. If only he’d deployed that wit during the campaign!
But shouldn’t we talk about this? Yes, we were caught in a squeeze. But when aren’t we?
Did we get ourselves so caught up in the debate over second preference voting, that we forgot to campaign against Ken in the suburbs and against Boris in central London?
Why was our media handling so amateurish, and why was our candidate so ill-prepared for those media opportunities which were available? He admits he was wooden at first. Sorry, Brian, but you were wooden throughout.
Where was the Westminster front bench? I’d have expected a gaggle of them doing back-up singing at each and every Brian event.
We were caught in a squeeze because the media insisted on being caught up in the Boris and Ken show (the media don’t usually take *such an interest* in one particular contest – you don’t get this much Lab/Con focus in a by-election even). That coupled with the Standard’s anti-Ken/pro-Boris stance.
Much of our campaigning is extremely localised (eg in my ‘super constituency’ we were active in under 10% of the wards – 3.5 out of 40) and so the effectiveness of our campaigning is severely masked by the overall result. For the other two parties, the ground war is much less important than for the Lib Dems – and we simply don’t have the resources to fight a by-election style ground war across the whole of London.
Our campaigning is still geared to helping us win in council wards and target seats – and so we concentrated on promoting Brian and our individual GLA candidates, when actually the list vote is what’s important to us. It’s in the interest of neither Labour or Tories to explain that voting one way for Mayor and another way on the list doesn’t undermine your mayoral vote – and anecdotally many people were confused by the voting system – even third time round.
We need to learn how to campaign in PR-type elections, before the others do!
As for Brian’s piece in the Mail, it’s actually not that bad. He actually doesn’t criticise the party, but the media. He is self-deprecating regarding his woodeness and our lack of resources in comparrison with the other two parties. It’s a sad fact that money buys elections. And I think that when the expenses come out we will see how much it cost the Tories to ‘buy’ Ken out! We punch above our weight for the money we have available.
quick question- what do people think about Paddick’s article in the Mail? Seems quite bitter to me. I guess he has burnt his bridges with the party.
I didn’t see it that way. If you removed the headline (written by Mail subs) and just read what he wrote, then he doesn’t criticise the party.
He criticises the media, he criticises himself and tells a few amusing anecdotes. He criticises the mis-match in terms of resources.
He has said recently that he sees a future in politics, and he was out campaigning in Crewe. So as much as our opponents would like it if he was well and truly fed up of us, he can’t be *that* fed up! (Although one should expect and understand a certain amount of cynicism given the herculean effort required to be a candidate in this type of election).
GP – I think you’re in denial. Of course he criticizes the party.
But I agree with you that it’s largely about money. I’m hearing Lib Dems in the blogosphere talking about Obama’s (potentially) winning “narrative” in the US and how we need to learn from that. What we need to learn is his fund-raising skills.
FH: please tell us where?
He says:
“I struggled through a nine-month campaign in which the third force in British politics, *for reasons beyond our control*, became daily more like the third farce”
(Emphasis added)
He makes some comments about Nick, but that’s personalities; he points out that Lib Dem supporters don’t engage in yah-boo cheering at a hustings; he mentions some of the foibles of a couple of party members; he mentions that the party treasurer said he would have to largely do his own fund-raising – oooh, hardly an Earth-shattering criticism . . . he criticises the press and their interests much more and that he seems incapable of raising his profile.
As the chair of a local party I could make much more serious criticisms of the party, and so reading what he said I don’t think he really criticises the LDs.
Admittedly, that’s not really the story the press will want to tell (eg the headline of the article). But, ironically, that’s the point of his article.
Beyond the funding issues, his main criticisms were about what he perceived to be weak professional support on PR and, to a lesser extent, research. I don’t entirely agree with his view on PR — like a lot of novices in politics, he seems to think he knows more about PR than his PR people. The underlying issue was and is lack of a compelling and distinctive story — policies — to tell and the candidate’s lack of training in telling it.
The article in the mail is very very bitter. And it Does critise the party. It’s also very funny and presumably truthful. I think the fact that it is so bitter shows the emotional enegry that he put into it – so we shouldn’t be too harsh on him…
And by the way I do think L-D PR is poor. We tend to think we’re entitled to coverage because we’re the No. 3 party and our leader has good hair. We don’t work hard enough to create headlines.
But I’m very serious about the funding issue. The one area in which Brian’s campaign was highly successful was the internet and social media. We could all learn from that. But it’s not just about winning votes. It should be about bringing in funds.
We need to use the net to reach non Lib-Dems — principally the majority of Brits who don’t actually care about parties, their leaders or anything else of a partisan nature, other than the issues they personally DO care about.
I think the fact that it is so bitter shows the emotional enegry that he put into it – so we shouldn’t be too harsh on him…
Totally agree. More, I think the piece reveals an electable Brian which should have been revealed during the campaign and surely will be in future.
I really don’t see it as terribly bitter. I agree FH that we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking we’re entitled to press coverage, but I also know that we’re often overlooked when we shouldn’t be, because it doesn’t fit with what the media want (locally for example, through FOI requests we discovered that money spent on council PR had doubled within two years – and we got no press coverage. When the taxpayers’ alliance released a very similar press release a few months later it was repeated word for word . . .)
…but I also know that we’re often overlooked when we shouldn’t be, because it doesn’t fit with what the media want…
You’re right. It happens. But churning out a release isn’t the best way to break news. We need to be far more proactive, trailing stories and placing them with sympathetic journos or commentators.
Or — get creative. Sometimes it might be better to hand the story to an interest group and let them do a release — attributing the facts to our efforts and allowing us a quote. Two birds, one stone: We get to share the headline and we get an implicit validation/endorsement from outside the party, at least on one issue. Not sure how that would fly with the taxpayers alliance, but there’s always some organisation one could turn to.
You’ll reply: Who’s got time for all that? Well, yes — it comes back to funding.
bozzawatch.blogspot.com has got 2 new polls up as of today, as well as a review of his first week in office which you may be interested in.
.. party is best “story”… and way to intrst people for somethink.