I have been out of the country for a few days (France, since you ask) and following the McBride “smear-gate” story from internet news reports and bloggers’ comments.  With the benefit of that small degree of distance, there seem to be some very simple conclusions to draw.

First, the whole idea was deeply and irredeemably wrong.  It is not acceptable to spread defamatory lies about people – whether you dislike their politics or not.  The Prime Minister and the Labour Party should make it quite clear that the pursuit of such tactics by anyone purporting to act on their behalf or ostensibly in their interests will always be unacceptable and the individuals concerned will be treated as having brought the Party into disrepute.  I trust other Parties (no names, no pack drill) will do the same.

Second, the concept would almost certainly have been utterly counter-productive.  I am not convinced that the electorate think it matters what individuals might have done in their student days nearly twenty years ago and they are unlikely to think it relevant to their current suitability for public office.  Nor are the past (or even current) sexual peccadilloes of public figures that relevant to their ability to be Government ministers.  That doesn’t mean that people won’t take a prurient interest, but I am not convinced it makes much (if any) electoral difference.  (Indeed, I remember talking to one politician who had recently had some particularly lurid stories printed about his sexual habits.  He admitted that he had been worried about how his constituents might react.  In fact, he said that, although he had had to endure some ribald comments, most of the reaction seemed tinged with – if anything – admiration.)

Third, it would appear that the execution of the proposed smear plot was incredibly inept – using an official and traceable email address, for example.

Finally, the net result of what has happened will further demean and degrade the reputation of politicians and – in turn – the democratic process.  If you believe, like I do, that democracy and politics matters, then this may turn out to be the most worrying consequence of the whole sorry business.

A report in Local Government Chronicle suggests that the much-vaunted “Charter” due to be signed between London Mayor Boris Johnson and London Councils representing the 32 Boroughs (and the Corporation of London) is running into difficulties. 

I remember when I chaired the Association of London Government (as London Councils was then called) in the five years preceding the creation of the London Mayoralty.  It was always clear that the arrival of the Greater London Authority would present challenges for the London Boroughs.  It was almost inevitable that any directly-elected Mayor would start to encroach on the Borough’s statutory and non-statutory responsibilities.  I remember speaking about this on a number of occasions – my theme was that any incoming Mayor would need to keep his or her tanks off the London Boroughs’ lawns.

During the period of Mayor Ken Livingstone, there were indeed tensions over such matters as – for example – his desire for street cleaning in London to be improved and his ambitions for education.

When Mayor Boris Johnson was elected he proclaimed that he was much more ready to work with the London Boroughs (many of which were by then Conservative controlled).  A new concordat or charter was promised, but now – nearly a year on – it looks as though the initiative may dissolve without any real substance into a bath of warm words.

If this happens, it will be unfortunate and I would urge both those in the Mayor’s team and those in London Councils who are trying to finalise the document to redouble their efforts to reach some form of meaningful statement. 

Although the London Mayor is always going to be more visible than London Borough councillors and, of course, is directly accountable to Londoners, he/she cannot run local services and it is the local councils that are accountable for them.  The Mayor of London cannot dictate to the Boroughs, even though he/she has a direct mandate from Londoners and may have a clear vision for the future of London (I am still waiting to be clear about the current Mayor’s vision, although I sense he his groping towards one). 

Working together is harder.  However, it is essential if progress to be made. 

The skill of any London Mayor will be whether or not he/she having articulated a view of how London is to develop can carry not only Londoners, but their elected representatives in the Boroughs (and indeed all the other elements of civil society), along with their vision and inspire them to work with him/her on delivering it.

The media glee about the about the so-called “blunder” by Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, the most senior police counter terrorism officer in the country, has got a little out of proportion. 

What appears to have happened is that as Bob Quick got out of his car in Downing Street for a meeting with the Prime Minister earlier today a press photographer with a powerful camera lense got a shot of a document allegedly showing visible details of the forthcoming counter terrorist raid.  This was embarrassing and shouldn’t have happened.  However, the material was hardly being put on display to all and sundry as Jeremy Paxman  thundered on “Newsnight” tonight.  Downing Street as we know is not a public thoroughfare.

Yes, the arrest operation was brought forward as a result and that undoubtedly will have caused some operational inconvenience.  However, my understanding is that the arrests would otherwise have happened in the middle of the night – tonight.  At most, they were brought forward a few hours.  The by-product is that the news media who are complaining so loudly about the “blunder” will have had much better footage of the arrests themselves and tomorrow’s newspapers will be able to cover the operation more fully.

I am told that all the individuals that the police wished to arrest as part of this operation were detained and all the premises that they wanted to secure were secured.

So let’s get this in proportion and remember no innocent bystander died as a result of this.  A major counter-terrorism operation took place a few hours earlier than otherwise would have been the case.  And as Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said - admittedly through gritted teeth (Bob Quick is not the Conservative Party’s favourite policeman) – the police and the security service are to be congratulated on the diligence of their work in averting terrorist attacks.

The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session. Mayor Boris Johnson is in the chair and loyal Uber Vice Chairman, Kit Malthouse AM, is at his side.
Len Duvall AM has stood down (to be replaced by John Biggs AM). Jennette Arnold AM asked at the beginning of the meeting whether Len would be able to continue his work on the MPA’s inquiry into the Stockwell. Mayor Johnson said this would be fine: Uber Vice Chairman Malthouse shifted in his seat and scratched his ear.

Later Cindy Butts suggested that a future full Authority should receive a report on the work being done on sexual violence (against the policy that the full Authority should only discuss the Commissioner’s monthly report and any reports required by statute). Uber Vice Chairman Malthouse folded his arms and frowned.

The House of Lords has just voted by the narrow margin of 93 to 89 to defeat an amendment moved by the Tories to the Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009. 

These Regulations bring the UK into line with the EU Data Retention Directive of 2006 and require communications providers to retain  certain data for a fixed periodof one year.  (Previously, the UK had postponed applying the regulations – as was required by the Directive – to internet access, internet telephony and email.)

The Tories’ position might have been defensible on the grounds that they do not like EU directives – a point of principle that would be consistent with the decision (announced, but not implemented) to pull their MEPs out of the European Peoples Party grouping in the European Parliament.

However, the reason they gave was the entirely spurious one that this was part of some hidden conspiracy to require service providers to keep the contents of communications.  So one of their backbenchers kept jumping up and down asking whether the Regulations required communications services providers to keep data recovered by deep packet inspection.  The answer was as explicit as it could be:  paragraph 4(5) says “No data revealing the content of a communication is to be retained in pursuance of these Regulations.”  The only purpose in mentioning it  was to sow confusion and to mislead.

I suppose that is what opposition is all about.  And they nearly won the vote. 

However, their amendment was not fatal.  It would still have allowed the Regulations to come into force.  All it did was to add a rider to the approval motion noting the proposals ”with regret”. 

So the grounds were spurious, the amendment was spurious (in that it had no effect) and perhaps the indignation was spurious.  If this is opposition, it is pretty spurious itself.

The news today is that the directly-elected Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent, Mark Meredith, has stood down following his arrest a few days ago by police investigating alleged corruption.  Mark Meredith was elected as a Labour Mayor and his arrest follows the arrest a few days earlier of the Conservative Group leader on the same Council.  I don’t know the background of this series of events and I make no comment other than to note that both men have said that they are standing down “to clear their names”.  However, this is more evidence that the history of directly-elected Mayors (outside London) has not been an easy one.

Another, directly-elected Mayor – this time in Doncaster – has just defied a vote of 46 to 6 by Doncaster council calling on him to resign.  This is at least the second occasion that that Mayor has ignored motions of no confidence passed by the Council.

And, of course, in 2003 the Mayor of North Tyneside had to resign following his arrest on child pornography charges – charges of which he was subsequently acquitted. 

Much was made of the election of a “monkey” as Mayor of Hartlepool in 2002 but, of course, the record of Stuart Drummond was sufficently good that he was re-elected in 2006 with 68% of the vote.

So what next for directly-elected Mayors?  Of the nine Mayoral areas outside London, two have had their Mayors resign following police action.  And the history elsewhere has often been turbulent.  Obviously, it is a small sample, but two out of nine does begin to look statistically significant.

In London, the experience seems to have been different.  In the three Boroughs where there are directly-elected Mayors (Hackney, Lewisham and Newham) the administrations appear to have been by and large well-run and many would argue an improvement on what had gone before.  And whatever Londoners’ views of the current incumbent of the London-wide Mayorality or of his predecessor, there is little doubt that Londoners prefer to have directly-elected Mayor presiding over the capital, compared with either the absence of city-wide authority that existed from 1985 to 2000 or the old Greater London Council that rather uneasily operated on top of the Boroughs from 1965 to 1985.

Certainly, my own experience in London makes me a supporter of the concept of directly-elected Mayors.  And both the Government and the Conservative opposition would support more directly-elected Mayors in the big cities at least.

I hesitate to suggest that the reason the model has worked in London is because of the fact that London has innately more sophisticated electors than those in the rest of the country.  While this may be true (and, if that doen’t excite hate mail from out-of-Londoners, I don’t know what will), I suspect the real reason is that so far outside London there have only been a small number of directly-elected mayors and often these have been in areas where the local political processes have not been working well or have been under great stress (as in Doncaster).  And why have two Mayors been arrested?  I don’t know.  However, it is certainly the case that directly-elected Mayors will by their very nature be more high profile than more traditional civic leaders and as such they attract strong feelings (which may mean politically-motivated attacks) and greater scrutiny. 

Greater scrutiny has to be a good thing.  Moreover, if the end-result, is that the political parties exercise greater care as to who they chose as Mayoral candidates (and that does not mean more celebrities!) and, if the local media and indeed local electorates are more discriminating as to who they back as “independents”, that will be good both for local democracy and local government itself.

Troubles come in threes for Mayor Johnson. 

Yesterday’s tally:  first, the joint meeting of the MPA and GLA Standards Committee ruled that he and his team should be sent for “re-education” (like call centre operatives who deliberately mis-sell products to the public) so that they can understand what the Codes of Conduct that they have signed to certify that they will abide by actually say; second, BBC London revealed that he has been ticked off by London First, the organisation representing all the major businesses in London, about his failure to promote London; and third, he attempted a David Blunkett impersonation by attacking the criminal justice system and the judges for being soft on crime at a Crimestoppers dinner (and look what happened to David Blunkett).

What will next week bring?

Earlier today the House of Lords voted by 135 to 48 to continue the existing system of Control Orders for a further year.  The Conservatives were urged by Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, the Tory’s security spokesperson, to abstain.  The Tory position is in essence that they accept the need for Control Orders (there will always be a small number of individuals – currently fifteen – who are thought to be a serious risk to the country but who cannot be brought to trial because the evidence against them will not be admissable and cannot be deported either because they are British or because they could only be deported to a country where they would be executed or tortured), but they don’t want to be seen to vote in favour of them.  They say that the answer is to allow intercept evidence in court so that the individuals concerned could be tried, despite being told that even with evidence from intercepts they could still not be brought to trial.  And if that isn’t sufficient, more of the individuals should be deported presumably to countries where they can be tortured or summarily executed.  It doesn’t really add up to a convincing security policy.

Apparently, the Conservative Group on the London Assembly is not a happy ship.
I am told that at yesterday’s meeting there were raised voices, stamped feet and one member even stomped out of the meeting to get evidence to contradict what a ‘colleague’ was saying.
My spy tells me that Brian Coleman was ‘purple with indignation’ and that Kit Malthouse was being ‘icily calm’.
What can it all mean? Why aren’t they all happy bunnies working together to build the Old Etonian renaissance?

The London Assembly’s Transport Committee, chaired by Val Shawcross, has published a powerful indictment of last month’s snow chaos.  It is clear that there was little proper planning for the snow (about which there had been plentiful warnings from the Met Office), virtually no coordination between the relevant bodies, and it took the best part of 24 hours before anyone took a proper grip of the situation.

I am quite clear that most of the Boroughs were woefully ill-prepared: they should all have had in place proper plans for gritting the most important routes and protocols in place for clearing access to bus garages, to London Ambulance stations and for other emergency services.  I am also amazed that there were not better arrangements for coordination and what there was was only finally triggered on the Monday after the snowfall with no direct communication with Transport for London until nearly 30 hours after the severe weather warning that a major snow-fall was hours away (ie 5pm on the Monday – some 17 hours after buses were ordered to return to their depots).

So who should have triggered the emergency coordination?  It may not be a statutory responsibility for the Mayor and the GLA, but the whole premise of the Greater London Authority Act is that the Mayor should use the authority of his elected office to bring people together and make things happen in the interests of London.  I trust the failure to do so on this occasion (until it was too late) will not be repeated again.