Ann led Labour’s campaign in Brent to win back the the council after a tough night in the local elections four years ago. The previous Labour administration in Brent – also led by Ann John – was replaced by a Tory-LibDem coalition until this May. It’s good see Ann and her local Labour colleagues back in majority control.  Local victories like that point to what’s possible over the next few years in London and nationally.

All of Labour’s women council leaders in London are supporting Ken’s candidacy.

Here’s a video clip of Ann explaining why she’s backing Ken:

It reports:

Critics said last night that ministers were “turning their back” on rural communities.

More than 80 groups have come forward for help to buy out their local pub since the Community-Owned Pubs Support Programme was announced in March.

But about 50 projects across England that were in line to receive cash support and other assistance now face an uphill struggle to keep their local running.

One body which supports local co-operatives has attacked the move, saying it has left villages and other communities that want to pull together to save a vital focal point “stranded”

It’s embarrassing for the Tories who have put issues such as local pubs into their Big Society rhetoric.

The planning minister (and former leader of the Tories on the London Assembly, Bob Neill), is quoted as saying today: “Pubs don’t want state handouts – but they do want to be able to compete on a level playing field, without reams of red tape preventing them from making a living.”

But to compete on a level playing field also involves being able to buy – and then sell – the drinks that people want at a competitive price, something made impossible for many landlords by the pub companies (pubcos) that determine what drink they must purchase. That artificially forces up prices and lowers the landlords’ margins. The trade unions in the industry, such as the GMB, also argue that the pubcos see their pubs as property assets which can be sold off for other uses even if a local pub is popular. It means local pubs that are valued in their local community close even when they are commercially viable.

The fund reportedly closed by the Tories is exactly the kind of policy Labour was proposing to extend in its general election manifesto, which said [pdf]:

“The local pub and social club are also hubs of community life. Too many pubs have closed that could have been sustained by local people. We will support pubs that have a viable future with a new fund for community ownership in 2010-11. Councils must take full account of the importance of pubs to the local community when assessing proposals that change their use, and we will make it more difficult to demolish pubs. Restrictive covenants applied by pub companies to property sales will be curbed and flexibility for pubs to provide related services promoted, making it easier to have live entertainment without a licence. A non-tie option should be available for pub tenants; we will act if the industry fails to make progress on this.” Labour manifesto, 2010

Although the pubs in the Telegraph’s report are outside London, the capital is also experiencing the loss of many much-valued local pubs.

Figures in a report to be published by Ken Livingstone tomorrow, one of a series looking at quality of life issues for Londoners, show that eleven pubs closed each week in London last year, part of a national trend that has seen over 5,000 pubs shut-down across the country since March 2008.

Look out for more on this issue from Ken tomorrow.

Paul Waugh has tweeted that this means ‘Newt Labour’ is set for a national comeback. Of course the outcome will be decided on the basis of the votes cast rather than the nominations from Constituency Labour Parties but nonetheless it’s a strong showing for Ken, reflecting the same kind of breadth he’s also been able to secure in the Labour mayoral selection so far.

In the Mayoral race Ken’s support is deep as it is broad. Ken has the support of the majority of London Labour’s black and Asian MPs and MEPs, all of London Labour’s women council leaders, the chairs of Young Labour and London Young Labour, and the support of borough Labour group leaders – including council leaders – from Camden, Ealing, Brent, Southwark, Haringey, Hounslow, Islington, Barking and Dagenham, Hammersmith and Fulham, City of Westminster, Hillingdon, and Croydon. (He also currently has over 250 councillors declaring their support for him).

Six of the eight London Labour Assembly members are currently declared for Ken.

Of the nine affiliated trade unions in London, seven are recommending Ken Livingstone to their members. This is shown most clearly by looking at the size of those affiliates backing Ken: Unite has 120,000 affiliated members in London; Unison 63,000; the CWU 54,842; GMB London 47,142;  GMB Southern 21,000; UCATT 5,000; and TSSA 4,750. Oona King will be recommended to the members of USDAW and Community with 25,021 affiliated members and 1,739 respectively.

Seen from the political and geographical spread of his support Ken’s now showing he has the capacity to lead a very effective and inclusive London Labour campaign in 2012.

(If I have time I’ll publish Ken’s full list of NEC nominations here in due course).

The reaction of City Hall’s Tories to the news that Ken Livingstone is attending the Metropolitan Police Authority tomorrow to oppose police cuts and defend London’s safer neighbourhood police teams suggests they are less than delighted to have these issues raised. 

The cut to police numbers of 455 officers was first announced eighteen months after Boris Johnson was elected, in his draft budget for 2010/11.

Team Boris is spinning furiously, fearing that an issue that exposed their real approach to policing in London in January and February and into the general election has not gone away.   

Conservative Assembly Member James Cleverly has been fulminating on his website.  The angry nature of James Cleverly’s reaction shows how little the Conservatives in London want to have this debate. With Conservative bloggers such as Iain Dale a rearguard action is underway to deflect the damage to City Hall.  

There is an essential difference between the approach taken by Ken Livingtone and Labour on the London Assembly on this matter and that of the Tories. Where the former used the process of freeing up police officers from non-frontline duties to deploy them to frontline responsibilities and to raise officer numbers overall, so the latter are cutting officer numbers.

As a result London’s police numbers are being cut by 455 officers.

Boris Johnson and his team are responsible too for failing to guarantee the future of London’s safer neighbourhood police teams. Time and again he refused to give the guarantees required when he set his budget earlier this year. 

There is a simple question that Conservatives in London should answer: does London have too many police? If no, then don’t cut police. If their answer is yes, then they should be honest with Londoners and say so.

Safer neighbourhood police teams are built on the premise that they are guaranteed at a minimum number of officers to the neighbourhood they patrol. Again, Conservatives should be asked a simple question. Do you stand by this guarantee? Boris Johnson, by his answers, does not, saying it is a ‘one size fits all’ policy and describing it as ‘a pointless piece of top-downery.’

It’s good to see Ken getting an argument about police numbers and neighbourhood policing onto the agenda.

It is no surprise that the Conservatives are so worried about the potential of this issue to hurt them. It does, and should, because it exposes their real position on crime is to under-invest in the police service, weaken neighbourhood policing guarantees, and cut police numbers. That’s not what Londoners in communities all over the capital need.

Over many years Stone has conducted a relentless examination of power and politics in his own country and how the USA takes its place in the world. I recently watched Wall Street for the first time in years. The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr is right to describe it as a brilliant, prescient taste of what was to come.

As with many other artists of his generation the decisive political event in Stone’s life is the Vietnam war. The conclusions he draws from that war have shaped his response to subsequent wars and to the USA’s attitude to Latin America. What he says in the Observer about these is worth reproducing.

“My father was a Republican. And he hated Roosevelt. And that’s sort of been the battle of my life, I think. You have to understand that I grew up a Republican conservative. I hated Castro. And I put my money where my mouth was because I went to war, but I understood pretty quickly that this was another place, another culture, and we would never fit in there.

“It’s the same story in Afghanistan, Iraq and South America. It’s white people meeting people who they think they are better than. And I feel that this war is the war of my life. I’ve seen it over and over again and if I can do one thing with what’s left of my remaining years, it’s just to cry it out and say it, I hope, with enough entertainment that people will want see it.”

Stone puts his finger on the connection between racism, colonialism and wars of occupation: “It’s white people meeting people who they think they are better than.”  

Read the interview here.

Others may not have experienced this but personally I found it difficult to blog whilst working on an election campaign, which I was doing for the first half of the year. The pace of the campaign is one thing.  That’s particularly the case in the weeks of the greatest activity. But there’s another consideration: if you’re working for the party you’re responsible for what you do in the campaign itself; better not to be simultaneously judging whether what you publish independently necessarily adds anything.

Looking back at the archive it’s clear – virtually no blogging at all in March in April.

Since the end of May I’ve switched over to working to help get Ken Livingstone selected as Labour’s candidate for mayor. If anything the pressure not to blog is even greater when you’re involved in setting up a campaign from scratch. Again, no real blogging for weeks.

But taking all that into account I’m now going to try to revive updating the site on a more frequent basis. The pressures of a selection campaign are different from an election; in many respects just as intense, but over a different timeframe and with different constraints. This is such a decisive period in politics that it seems wrong to have a view and not give it. Looking at the stats it’s good to see that during the periods of inactivity there’s still been a healthy flow of visitors to the site.

So, picking up slowly where I left off, I’ll be blogging again here from today.

And, yes, for those who have commented, I will at some point get round to changing my mugshot photo. Just don’t ask me when.

Politics never stops and it’s easy to move from one thing to another without taking a pause for breath. There are too many people to say thanks to here but it was good to see many of you last week for a drink – and no doubt our paths will cross in one way or another soon.

Crowley writes: 

“On a night of mixed results, Labour got the most votes in London and performed far better than they did in the rest of the country. As a result, the Tories were denied marginal seats, and key councils turned red.

“How did Labour manage such a good result?”

Crowley’s piece hits the nail on the head by saying publicly what most Conservatives would concede privately – that Labour in London performed well on May 6th.

And he taps into a key concern of Boris Johnson’s supporters, the fact that there is too little sense among Londoners of what Boris Johnson is delivering: “…it remains the case that not enough Londoners know about Boris’s achievements, particularly in those crucial suburban areas,” he writes.

Worth a read.

During the general election campaign Labour highlighted the failure of the Tories to give a clear commitment to complete Crossrail. That issue finally broke open when Justine Greening, then the Shadow London Minister, admitted that it was possible that under the Conservatives Crossrail might be cancelled.

The Tories’ deliberately imprecise formulation of ‘support’ for Crossrail – as opposed to any clear statement of intent about the timetable, route and financing – contrasted with Labour’s transparent commitment to the scheme. The Liberal Democrats omitted all reference to it in their London manifesto.

Although most debate focused on whether the scheme would go ahead at all, Ken Livingstone also expressed concern that elements of the scheme would be chopped back, such as individual spurs.  

Yesterday Boris Johnson himself raised doubts over whether the south east London spur to Woolwich and Abbey Wood was under threat.   The Tory Telegraph recently reported that he was unable to guarantee that the south-east London spur will survive.  But even if on this occasion the threat does not turn into reality, the problems inherent in situation will translate across other areas of policy. It’s summed up in Boris Johnson’s remarks to the Assembly about what dangers the new government pose to Crossrail:

“They would try to de-scope. I would be fighting very very hard to protect the project in its entirety. It’s absolutely vital that we mount a Stalingrad-like defence of the London transport settlement.

“It’s fascinating, the degree of ignorance about Crossrail still in the minds of the public and indeed in the minds of many of our important political colleagues.

“The more we can explain why it matters to London, the better.”

The flaw for Boris Johnson in that is obvious. It’s his government. He fought for it to be elected. He campaigned on the streets of London for Labour to lose even though a Labour government was committed to completing Crossrail. In other words he fought for the ability of a party to govern that was likely to act against the interests of London. In the face of Labour criticism of the Tories’ position on Crossrail he tried to paper over the cracks. He’s culpable.

And if anyone in the government is ignorant about the benefits of Crossrail we should ask how it is that the mayor has not made a better case for it to his ‘important political colleagues.’ Perhaps it is connected to the complacency of his administration: when the Evening Standard raised questions over the Tory policy on Crossrail last year Boris Johnson’s office was quick to say that there is no reason to worry. He gave George Osborne cover.

Each time Boris Johnson seeks to present himself as the champion of London against whatever the government does he will face the same problem.

Accusing the mayor of having passed his ”Emperor’s New Clothes moment,” Bar-Hillel pulls no punches: “he can’t admit he’s wrong, but he’s a little too lazy to do his homework properly, and that often leaves him intellectually denuded.”

“Just how well-suited is Boris to power?” she asks.

Bar-Hillel characterises Johnson’s administration as “well-meaning enthusiasm, followed by listening to bad advice, several u-turns, and an unsatisfactory result.” She reckons he is “too weak, too lazy and too ill-advised at the highest level to implement his policies. He lacks attention to detail and, because of his desire to be liked and to avoid confrontation with City Hall staff and agencies, he is all too easily fobbed off.”

The catalogue of senior appointees who have departed Johnson’s administration over the last two years is for Bar-Hillel  the clearest indication of what has gone wrong.

“Worst of all, he seems to have fallen among thieves. No fewer than five top ‘aides’ have famously been forced out of office in lamentable circumstances, severely damaging the reputation of the man who first appointed them and then — in some cases — allowed them to stay in post long after it was no longer tenable. In March he had to sack Bertha Joseph, deputy chairman of the London Fire Authority, who had spent £900 of charitable donations on two ballgowns — but only after rejecting earlier demands to do so. He also waited far too long before dismissing the appalling Deputy Mayor Ian Clement, who was then convicted of misusing a City Hall credit card. It really makes you wonder who he consults before making his appointments.”

This is all the more noteworthy when you consider just how critical of Ken Livingstone’s administration Bar-Hillel was. Her coverage was more critical of Ken for much longer than anyone I can think of. She admits in her Spectator piece that she was desperate for Ken to lose.

Indeed, Bar-Hillel’s piece reveals the extent of the Boris Johnson partisanship practised by some at the Standard during the campaign. She reveals that she attended meetings to assist his campaign and advised him on planning policy, even going as far as to take credit for some of Johnson’s messages on planning.

“I was then summoned to join Boris’s election ‘planning task force’,” she writes. “The session was a bit chaotic, but I clearly recall urging Boris to end Ken’s eight-year war with the London boroughs and promise not to interfere with their democratically made planning decisions unless it was absolutely necessary. He agreed, and this message, especially to the mainly Tory outer boroughs, was acknowledged as one of the election tactics which helped win him the crucial suburban vote.”

After the election she briefed the mayor’s office on planning policy and claims she was headhunted as a potential deputy mayor.

We already knew about the closeness between Boris Johnson and some at the Standard during the mayoral election campaign. Mira Bar-Hillel adds to our understanding of that with this article.

But it’s the front page that will have the biggest impact in City Hall – the ex-editor of the Spectator caricatured on his own former magazine’s front page under the headline Has Boris Lost His Grip?

Boris Johnson could rely on a honeymoon for longer than most politicians. The prevailing line of the national media throughout Johnson’s first two years has been to get Labour. Scrutinisng a Tory mayor was not part of that narrative. Now that Labour is out of office there is greater scope for Johnson to be put under the spotlight. But even the most seasoned City Hall-watchers will be surprised to see the Spectator taking the first post-election shot at the Tory mayor of London.