Steve O’Connell AM chair’s the Metropolitan Police Authority’s Finance and Resources Committee.  He is also a loyal member of Mayor Boris Johnson’s Conservative team at City Hall. 

So it is not surprising that he tried a few linguistic tricks when he found himself chairing a meeting this afternoon to discuss a paper from the Metropolitan Police snappily entitled “Quarterly Management Report – Quarter One“.

The trouble is he’s not very good at the art of spin.

He started the meeting by saying that the report’s recommendations needed amending because they referred to a “freeze on police officer recruitment” whereas, as he put it, all there was was “a temporary pause in recruitment” pending the outcome of the comprehensive spending review that George Osborne will announce on October 20th.

This clearly came as a surprise to the senior management of the Metropolitan Police present particularly as the report itself pointed out:

“Workforce planning will … be affected by the officer recruitment freeze which has been implemented because of future budget pressures.”

and then talked about revising:

“the deployment plan to reflect the impact of the recruitment freeze”.

So it does sound like a recruitment freeze then.

And that’s certainly what it feels like to the potential recruits who have spent the last year or so going through the assessment and selection process, been successful in that process and  were only waiting for a start date at the Hendon Police College.  They have now received letters saying that as a result of the freeze there applications are no longer being taken forward.  They can of course apply to be Special Constables and be trained to do the same job as an unpaid volunteer.

But to Steve O’Connell, who is so highly regarded by his colleagues that he is paid five-sixths of the Prime Minister’s salary, this is just a pause – until we see what he referred to as - in an interesting choice of words – “horrors” the spending review brings.

In the O’Connell lexicon, a “pause” is what everyone else would call a “freeze”.

So, if  SpinMeister-General O’Connell says the spending review is going to bring “horrors”, what will everyone else call it?

The Metropolitan Police Service has submitted its response to the Home Office consultation on “Policing in the 21st Century“.  Most of the twenty pages that make up the response are an extended whinge about what a nuisance it is to have to be accountable to the Metropolitan Police Authority.  There is even a handy chart showing the burdens faced by the Met with the current oversight and scrutiny arrangements (it is obviously onerous that the Police have to put up with the interventions of the Surveillance Commissioner or the inquiries of the Independent Police Complaints Commission) and by far the largest box on the chart is reserved for the activities sponsored by the Metropolitan Police Authority.

Surprise, surprise!  The statutory body with responsibility for oversight and scrutiny requires information, involvement and response from the organisation it oversees.

And there in the bottom right hand corner of the chart is what the Met clearly regard as the killer item of proof that they are over-regulated:  Joint Engagement Meetings.  These are the meetings held with each London Borough – so, yes, there are 32 of them – which review the work of local crime and disorder partnerships.  They have proved invaluable in sorting out local problems and improving joint working between local councils and the Police.  What do the Met say about them:

“Hugely labour intensive.”

And whose idea were the Joint Engagement Meetings?

Go on – have a guess.

Yes, that’s right!  They were the brainchild of Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, current Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the person to whom Mayor Boris Johnson will delegate his powers as Policing and Crime Commissioner should the Government’s proposed legislation get through intact.

Kit Malthouse doesn’t forget these things.  Possibly a career-limiting move for somebody.

“What did you say he was for?”

Mayor Boris Johnson has a reputation as being a good media performer, but his appearance this morning on LBC with Nick Ferrari was hardly sparkling.  I gather even his handlers were dismayed.

He was anything but incisive in describing what he believes his Mayoralty has or will have achieved – despite the benefit of extensive crib sheets (from which he was obviously reading). 

He managed to make his so-called big announcement a model of rambling incoherence. 

And he was less than convincing in ruling out a challenge to David Cameron as Leader of the Conservative Party – utilising a strange metaphor about being decapitated by a frisbee.

It looks to me as if he’ll have to raise his game.  Maybe his performance today is the reason he has refused to respond to most journalists’ requests for interviews about his record.

Judge for yourself:

I’ve just returned from a lively event supporting Ken Livingstone’s campaign to be nominated as the Labour candidate for London Mayor in 2012. It was organised by Kurds for Labour and was well-attended.
The man himself was in lively form, sketching out a vision for the next Mayoral term which could be a fore-runner for the national Party’s offer to the electorate at the next General Election – just as the Labour administration in the London County Council led by Hebert Morrison in the 1930s demonstrated what a Labour Government nationally could deliver in 1945.
And who was that lurking at the edge of the room? Neither a Kurd, nor Labour, but former Tory MP, Andrew Pelling – motivated to be present apparently by an abiding dislike of Old Etonians.

In the run up to the first Mayoral elections in 2000 I was anything but a Ken Livingstone supporter.  Indeed, I even wrote an article in the Evening Standard entitled “London Deserves Better” arguing that neither Ken nor the emerging Conservative candidate at the time (one Jeffrey Archer – before he went to prison) were suitable candidates to be London Mayor.

But that was before I worked with Ken during his first term as Mayor.  For those four years, I led the Labour Group on the London Assembly and chaired the Metropolitan Police Authority and I saw at close quarters Ken’s commitment to London, his political courage and determination, and his ability to make things happen.

And a lot did happen.  There was the successful introduction of the congestion charge – something that most pundits were convinced would never happen when the provision was first included in the Greater London Authority Bill.  It required vision, drive and an attention to detail.  And Ken showed that he had all three.

There was the transformation of the bus service in London – so that the capital became the only part of the country where there was a shift of traffic away from other transport modes.  And, of course, those four years saw the birth of the Oyster Card – then an innovation, now an integral part of London life.

At the same time, London’s policing was turned round: morale increased; the haemorrhaging of police numbers (which had started under Conservative Home Secretary, Michael Howard) was reversed; Police Community Support Officers were introduced and began their visible patrols all over London, leading to the creation of Safer Neighbourhood Teams in every Council ward in the city; and crime rates that had been increasing for years started to come down.

In Ken’s second term, I was less closely involved.  However, all Londoners saw the leadership that successfully won the bid to host the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012 and that brought London together following the terror attacks in July 2005.  There was also the leadership shown on climate change, which established London as one of the leading cities in combatting the effects of global warming.

All of this was a big contrast with the Boris Johnson Mayorality, where despite the frequent announcements of “new” initiatives that either turn into damp squibs, like the “Story of London Festival“, or are re-packaged initiatives started under Ken’s period as Mayor.  The major so-called success has been the new cycle hire scheme – again originally initiated by Ken – but with the details mismanaged by Boris Johnson and his team – see the analysis by Helen at Boris Watch.

So why should Ken be the candidate in 2012?

The first point to make is that he is the best-qualified candidate.  An effective London Mayor must have a coherent vision for London.  And this means much more than merely stringing together a series of half-worked-through ideas.  Ken has that vision – a vision he has been refining and articulating throughout his political life.  What is more London’s Mayor must be committed to the job.  It should not be regarded as a stepping stone to some different office (as the current incumbent clearly regards it), nor should it be a consolation prize for someone who has failed in their political career elsewhere.  Ken is committed to London and I have already mentioned his political courage and determination, coupled with his ability to make things happen.

The second point is the breadth and clarity about what he would want to achieve for London and Londoners in the next Mayoral term.  This includes:

• the visionary proposal to make London the world’s first ‘Smart City’, utilising cutting-edge technology to the full;
• introducing electric buses to cut emissions;
• managing the tube upgrades more effectively so as to minimise disruption;
• refocussing housing investment on affordable housing;
• reinvigorating London’s cultural life with a commitment to live music;
• protecting and promoting jobs in London by engaging directly with the world’s great economies and capitalising on London’s diversity and diaspora to make this a reality;
• making the Living Wage a condition of procurement; and
• rebuilding the consensus on major infrastructure projects in London to strengthen not only London’s economy but to benefit the UK as a whole.

Can he win?  ConservativeHome clearly think he can, pointing out that “London isn’t the most hospitable territory for the Tories” and that it “won’t be easy” for Boris Johnson.  And as Steve Hart’s detailed analysis has shown the 2008 election:

“took place on a very bad night for Labour  …..  one of the worst nights of local election results since before the second world war, with Labour polling 24%.  …. On this terrible night for Labour Ken Livingstone actually increased his first preference votes from 685,541 in 2004, to 893,877 in 2008. This was not simply a consequence of a higher poll. He actually increased his share of first preference votes by 1.3% from 35.7 per cent to 37 per cent (the London wide Labour member vote increased by 0.32 per cent to 27.12 per cent, which was 10 per cent behind Ken?s vote).

Any reasonable interpretation of these results would suggest that on virtually any other Thursday of the last five years, Ken would have been likely to win. Ken?s share was higher than Labour achieved on General Election night in London – when the national results had Labour 10 per cent better than in 2008. On this alone, it is clear than Ken was outperforming Labour by a wide margin and also that, to a lesser extent, London Labour outperformed the rest of the country.”

The message is that Ken has consistently out-performed Labour in the elections he has stood in and as Steve Hart concludes:

“The evidence that Ken is a substantial electoral asset across London is substantial, whereas the only evidence regarding Oona is that she has lost a safe seat; and nothing whatsoever suggests that Ken?s rival for the nomination is an asset in any other part of London.”

Now this does not mean that Ken Livingstone is without his flaws – indeed no political leader with any flair ever can be.  Nor does it mean that I agree with all the judgements he made during his terms as Mayor (I disagreed, for example, with his decision to extend the original Congestion Charge zone westwards rather than creating a separate zone).  However, I am clear that having Ken Livingstone back as London’s Mayor would be good for London and Londoners and that Ken Livingstone is the candidate best-placed to win the Mayorality for Labour and to get rid of the current ill-focused and chaotic regime.

The Sunday Times (behind its paywall) had a story on its front-page this morning, saying that Mayor Boris Johnson had threatened to resign unless London projects are protected in George Osborne’s comprehensive spending review next month.  So sensitive is the topic that Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome was scrambled to rubbish Isabel Oakeshott’s story.

However, the story itself and Tim Montgomerie’s response underline the fundamental truth: Mayor Boris Johnson is in a dither – he doesn’t really want to stand for London Mayor again; he’s frightened that he will lose; but he doesn’t yet know how to escape with dignity.

As Tim Montgomerie puts it:

“Boris winning again won’t be easy.”

and

“London isn’t the most hospitable territory for the Tories.”

He acknowledges the tensions between David Cameron and Boris Johnson saying:

“Conservatives at every level need to understand that some tension between the Mayor of London and the government isn’t just inevitable but politically healthy”

and he even concedes that:

“Boris hasn’t got a transformational record”.

So if that’s ConservativeHome riding to Mayor Johnson’s support, he really will need rather more cavalry if he is to stand any chance in 2012.

Oona King exudes niceness.  She wants a London where everything is nice.  The problem with that approach is that it is not really rooted in the real world.

Being Mayor of London is rather more complicated than sitting on the seventh floor of City Hall and saying “Wouldn’t it be nice, if …..”

According to Ross Lydall at the Evening Standard, Oona King (or her campaign team) has decided that it would be really, really nice if  people could take their bikes onto buses.

Which prompts the question, does Oona King (or her campaign team) ever use London’s buses?

Most buses are now quite full.  And they are getting fuller as routes become de-bendified (the replacements cannot carry as many passengers – even when the frequency has been increased – as the original bendie buses did – despite the  substantial extra costs being incurred to fulfil Mayor Boris Johnson’s campaign whim).

Frequently, mothers with children in buggies are not allowed to board because there are already two buggies on the bus and it is not safe to have more.

So where are all these bikes going to go?  The whole point of using a bike is that the rider does not need to use a car or a bus.  Allowing bikes on buses is likely to mean that those with young children will not be able to board and other passengers will be squeezed even more.

I repeat the question: does Oona King (or her campaign team) ever use London’s buses?

Regular readers (you both know who you are) will be aware that I have from time to time been somewhat flippant about Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (aka the Dog-Catcher-in -Chief). 

However, I am with him – and on occasions ahead of him – in the belief that more needs to be done about the growing problem of dangerous  bred/trained-for-attack dogs in London.  I therefore support the initiative that he is taking today petitioning the Government to take action to resolve the problem.

The GLA is calling for:

• an increase in the penalty for owning a banned breed, to bring it more inline with carrying an offensive weapon
• the extension of the law to include private land, particularly to protect people who have to visit other peoples homes as part of the work
• changes to the part of the law that allows well behaved banned breeds to remain with their owners, so that the process is much quicker, making it better for the dog and saving the police money.

Last time I asked there was little sign that the Coalition Government was planning to move on any of these points.  However, Kit Malthouse has (or at least he would like us to believe that he has) the ear of the Coalition Government.  No doubt, therefore, this initiative will  produce speedy action.  We’ll be waiting……

I suppose nothing should surprise me about the LibDems, but I was taken aback by their reported reaction to a mid-year cutback in local health services.

My local newspaper, the Hornsey and Crouch End Journal, reports today that there is “Fury as GP walk-in services scrapped“.

The story relates to a decision by the local PCT to abandon a service providing drop-in health services for people who cannot get an appointment to see a GP at the new Hornsey Central Neighbourhood Health Centre, opened only a year ago, having been built at a cost of £12 million.

And who is quoted as being “extremely concerned” about the decision but local LibDem MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone, alongside local LibDem councillor, David Winskill.

Apparently, neither of these local LibDem luminaries have made the connection between the mid-year cuts ordered by the Coalition Government’s emergency budget and the mid-year cuts announced by the local (soon to be abolished) PCT.

And who supports the Coalition Government locally?

Why the self-same local LibDem MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone, and, of course, local LibDem councillors like David Winskill.

They just don’t get it, do they?

Or maybe they do and they are just two-faced hypocrites.