Eyes down for the next two years

So we are waking up this morning to the news that Boris has triumphed over Ken with a majority of 140,000 votes on second preference.

It caps a bad end to a bad day for the Labour party and the papers and the commentators this morning are revelling in it.All the papers feature the doom laden headlines of massacre,bloodbath,meltdown.

I had to laugh at the Express whose front page says of Brown,

He is the biggest disaster ever and now even failed asylum seekers queue to leave Britain

We can be in no doubt that barring a coup de dat in the party ,of which we will no doubt here more rumours of over the weekend,Labour has two years now to convince the country that it can govern into the second decade.

And the Tories have two years to show that they have some credible policies with which to get elected and are not simply living off Labour's disasters.

Here are just some of the comments this morning.Simon Heffer in the Telegraph who says that

The only comfort Labour can take is that the turnout was so abysmal - 35 per cent, and in some of its heartlands barely in double figures. Many of its voters are sitting at home rather than transferring an allegiance: for the moment, at least.

but in the two years for him the solution may well be that

many MP's will conclude that those aims ( of the Labour Party)would be better achieved without the charisma, decisiveness and genius of Gordon Brown.

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian says that

Eleven years after it promised a new dawn, Labour's dusk has arrived

and adds

On May 2 2008 it was a wake at City Hall, witnessing a defeat that seemed to confirm what a day of results had already suggested: that after an era of dominance that has endured since the mid-1990s, Labour is about to enter the twilight.
It threatens to be a slow death, as Labour decays steadily towards defeat in 2010. That, at least, is what plenty in the party fear after a horror show of a performance in local elections across England and Wales.

The Independent's leader says

Mr Brown faces an uphill struggle as he surveys this new landscape

and

from traditional Labour heartlands, where the decline in the vote was as sharp as anywhere, the message was that something rather more substantial and immediate would be needed if Mr Brown was to revive the party's fortunes in time for the next general election.

And Steve Richards in the same paper says

More worrying for Labour is that there is no obvious way forward to rebuild an election-winning coalition of support. Listen to the banalities from ministers and you can see how they are struggling to cope with the tide that is sweeping over them. "We will listen and lead" is the most common mantra and one that leads nowhere at all.

Matthew Parris in the Times gives some advice to Labour MP's

give up,Bayonet for the wounded: there's no constructive message in the voters' rejection of Brown

The Sun offers a bit more hope

IT wasn’t so much a punch on the nose. More a complete pasting.
Britain’s verdict on Gordon Brown’s Government leaves Labour on the ropes.
But although down, they are not out.

It is time to regroup, Mr Brown

says the Mirror adding

Certainly it was a good night for the Tories, but behind their triumphant smiles is the knowledge that many core Labour voters stayed away from the polls. And the growing feeling that while Mr Brown is not communicating his vision, David Cameron does not have any vision at all.

Boris gets the usual endorsements

Not suprisingly the Evening Standard in London has endorsed Boris as its candidate today.

Here is a little snippet

This paper believes that the key issues in this contest are honesty and
competence. On both, Mr Livingstone falls down badly. His broken promises and
the irregularities surrounding some of his closest associates - exposed by our
reporting - show that he cannot be trusted to maintain the standards of
integrity that his office demands.

Meanwhile if you want the alternaitive view,have a look at the Guardian in an article by Zoe Williams which says

He is no more honest than any other philanderer before him. He has lied flagrantly, flamboyantly, to save his marriage, and given how little else he's prepared to do for it, one must conclude that he doesn't put a very great premium on telling the truth. So if he gives out these apparently harsh truths about gay people or Liverpudlians or the people of Congo, it is not because the fire of truth burns so brightly within him that he can't snuff it out. It is because he genuinely despises these people. He despises gays and he despises provincials (you are all right with Boris if you come from Liverpool but don't sound like a Liverpudlian. Once you've been to public school, then you are from postcode POSH), and he despises Africans. He despises them, and he despises those of us who would hold such judgments to be bigoted and inhuman.

Let's wait and see what happens tomorrow

Forty per cent of British women who go on a holiday to Spain have sex with a stranger within the first five hours of their arrival. Believe this? Then you are ready to follow this week's local election results

says Danny Finklestein

Never mind that though,A few predictions flying around the Blogosphere tonight on the voting tomorrow.

Guido predicts

Boris will win and nothing else will really matter tomorrow. Polly Toynbee and all the rest of the chattering classes will choke on their words. Labour will finally understand in their collective consciousness that they made a terrible choice in replacing the triple election-winning Tony with the triple election-avoiding*

Iain Dale dares nine seperate predictions.He is quite adamant that Boris will win and the Tories will start to make some council gains

Sam Coates meanwhile reminds us that

Before elections, all three political parties give their predictions of what will happen. They frequently bear little reaction to what does happens on the night. That's because these briefings are part of the expectations game. Indeed, if a party's predictions have come true, that's likely because they've done extremely badly indeed

Last chance to decide

Sky News holds the last of the Mayoral debates tonight at 7.30.

It comes following the latest poll for the London eveing standard which puts Boris ahead on both first and second preference votes,rather different to the picture that was being painted over the weekend.

However thirteen per cent of voters are still undecided.Are these the waverers who will with better the devil you know?

You Tube seems to have taken on being the place to post comments on the Mayoral election.

This one courtesey of Bob Piper on why it wouldnt be a good idea to vote for Boris

A contest too close to call

This morning's Guardian carries the first poll in a while that has shown a lead for Ken Livingstone in the mayoral race.

According to the paper with less than a week to go to polling

The survey conducted by Ipsos Mori puts Livingstone on 53% - six points ahead of Johnson on 47% - among those certain to vote in next Thursday's election, once crucial second preferences are taken into account. It is Livingstone's biggest lead since the campaign started.
However, the study for Unison, the trade union, found that some of those who said they were certain to vote had not registered. Once that was factored in, Livingstone's lead shrunk to 4%.

Meanwhile an absolute Gem as Iain Martin unearths this classic from the realms of U Tube which was also aired on Have I got news for you last night

Some of the picks from the weeklies

Spectator-Matthew D'ancona on why Boris is the man for the job

Although he admits a personal interest

I write this primarily as a Londoner: someone who has lived in the city all his life (south, north, west, east, in that order), is generally reluctant to leave the place at all, and feels a profound allegiance to what Andrew Neil described in last week’s issue as this ‘21st-century British city-state with the world as its hinterland’.

And in the same journal Kelvin MacKensie on why he is standing as a councillor

It was a strange place for the red mist to descend. A railway car park in the snooty Surrey town of Weybridge. I was putting my £3.50 into the ticket machine when I spotted a notice from Elmbridge Borough Council which told those of us who had the temerity to pay for our parking spot rather than leave our car for free in the street that there was to be an increase from 1 April

.

Dan Hancox writes in the New Statesman that

All is not well at the British National Party. As they seek to secure their first London Assembly member on 1 May, they are being tormented from every side. "Communist-Tory-Labour-Libdem Alliance Reveals its Ugly Face" ran a headline on the BNP website recently.

Not suprisingly Gordon Brown gets a battering

IT IS the sudden and unexpected event, requiring a spontaneous response, that is usually thought to confound Gordon Brown.

says the Economist

Brown must always remain on the side of the working poor says the leader in the New Statesman

The government has not been making it easy to vote Labour with enthusiasm. Never has the divide between the concerns of core Labour voters and those of the media-coached cabinet seemed wider

The Spectator senses the mood on the streets

Spend just a few minutes on the campaign trail for next week’s local elections and it suddenly becomes clear why Labour MPs got into such a mutinous mood.

Strange goings on in the race to be London mayor

Rather a strange story appearing this morning about the London mayoral elections.According to the Guardian

Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell have both been giving advice to the campaign working for London mayor Ken Livingstone's re-election, the Guardian can reveal.
The former prime minister and his media strategist had been among Livingstone's most trenchant critics in the past, and he had derided them for being the architects of the New Labour project. However, with the race against the Tory candidate Boris Johnson on a knife-edge, Livingstone's team has sought their expertise, and also the advice of Philip Gould, New Labour's pollster and focus group adviser.

Meanwhile both of the leading candidates are under sleaze pressures.

Boris faces a possible enquiry into share holdings,the Independent reports

The Labour MP Karen Buck, called on the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to investigate after it emerged that Mr Johnson did not register shares in Finland Station, for more than 18 months. Aides to the Tory candidate for London mayor said he had not declared his 33 per cent shareholding because of an "oversight" and they had now ensured the shareholding was registered

And Ken has owned up to having according to BBC news

"ensnared" ministers over the bid to host the 2012 Olympics in an effort to get money for East End redevelopment.
He said he was not interested in "three weeks of sport" but wanted to get "the billions of pounds" from government.

A sun of the Times

As Guido points out,Rupert Murdoch

told a Lords Select Committee last year that whereas he does not interfere in his broadsheets, he acts as "a traditional proprietor" with his tabloids.

So the fact that the Sun is this morning endorsing Boris as the next mayor of London means that perhaps the Murdoch empire is shifting to the Tories?

Its editorial says

Boris may not be a political heavyweight. And his public image, that of an Old Etonian buffoon, belies his great intelligence.
He is smart and bursting with good ideas. We admire this intellectual energy and his new policies to reform the city of London

Latest polls show narrowing lead for Johnson

This morning's Guardian carries the latest opinion poll on the race for London Major.Unlike previous polls this shows a much tighter race.

According to the paper the ICM poll

suggests Johnson could pull off a sensational victory on May 1 over Livingstone, who was elected by comfortable margins in 2000 and 2004. But the outcome is far from decided.

The poll gives

Johnson a two-point lead overall - 51% to 49% - once second preferences have been allocated under London's alternative voting system. That is the narrowest possible margin of victory.
Johnson is the first choice of 42% of London voters, against 41% who favour Livingstone. Other candidates, including the Liberal Democrat former policeman Brian Paddick, on 10%, stand no chance of winning.

One thing thatthis election is showing is that voters are taking an interest in local politics.As Iain Martin points out

after a long absence, elections are back. It started with Scotland, last year, and will spread through London to the next UK general election. It is 16 years since the 1992 battle, the last contest in which the identity of the ultimate winner was unknown until the votes were counted. In 1997, 2001 and 2005 (despite Tony Blair's pessimism at various points in the campaign and on election night) there was never really a doubt about who would emerge on top. In 2009 or 2010 anything could happen: from a Labour majority of 50 (looking unlikely) to a Tory majority of 10 (looking much more likely than it did a few months ago) and everything in between.

Times reports that Livingstone will be deserted by Brown

According to a report in this morning's Times,Gordon Brown is ready to desert Ken Livingstone in the face of the latest opinion polls.

Gordon Brown has all but written off Ken Livingstone’s chances of winning the London mayoral election, according to close allies.
Senior figures in Downing Street believe that if Mr Livingstone wins it will be by the narrowest of margins.
Mr Brown revealed yesterday that he plans a trip to the US as the fight for London reaches a climax next month. David Cameron has chosen to appear alongside Boris Johnson when the Conservative candidate officially begins his campaign next week.

Rather strange given that only last week,it was all smiles between the two and the PM helped launch the campaign

Mayoral election kicks off amid more scandal

The formal launch of the campaign to be London mayor and the usual themes suuround the day,corruption,racism and celebratory politics.

Red Box looks at the form which is at the centre of the controversy surrounding Ken Livingstone this morning

The Labour Party says the form solicits donations on behalf of the London Labour Party, not Ken Livingstone. Some may beg to differ.
It's an important distinction. Money raised directly for Ken is subject to much stricter rules than money raised for the party. The declaration threshold is £1,000 rather than £5,000, is published every month and - crucially - is identifiable as money meant for Livingstone.The rules say money can go to the party "unless the person giving the donation specifies that it is for the benefit of a particular candidate".
Can you see anything on this form which suggests it might be for specifically for Livingstone?
The Electoral Commission - which Labour say have pre-approved the arrangement - are looking again.

The Mail carries a similar story

The Electoral Commission said it was considering a complaint that Labour's London mayor has failed to declare a single donation since election funding laws were introduced seven years ago.
Mr Livingstone claims he has not received a penny and any money he spends is raised by Labour.

Ken Livingstone began by pleading to Londoners that this was a real political battle and not a celebrity big brother contest.

Jonathan Freedland writes in this morning's Guardian that

Livingstone needs voters to take the issues and candidates seriously in a contest that will have repercussions nationwide

adding that

Ken needs to keep speaking about traffic and policing and housing, until the penny drops that these things would genuinely change under a different mayor. That case can be especially hard to make in London, with such a large proportion of those in the top socio-economic categories, people who aren't personally affected by talk of affordable housing or free travel for pensioners.

The Telegraph reports this morning that

The mayor then devoted much of a set-piece speech to painting his opponent as a right-winger who would undermine race relations in London.
Accusing Mr Johnson of "dog-whistle politics" over race issues, Mr Livingstone highlighted the role in the Conservative campaign of Lynton Crosby, the Australian polling adviser who helped run the last Tory general election campaign.

The truth is that there is little between the candidates.Both want more police,both back a green agenda and both are focusing on transport.This morning's Guardian the Guardian is reporting

Ken Livingstone and the Green party will unveil an election pact today urging their supporters to join forces in an attempt to defeat the resurgent Tory candidate, Boris Johnson, in the race to become London's next mayor, guardian.co.uk can reveal.
The Green party leader, Siân Berry, will ask those who vote for her on May 1 to pick Livingstone as their number two choice. At the same press conference the mayor will ask his voters to put the Green party candidate second.

Should those outside the capital worry about ths battle.The answer is yes,it will give a pointer towards the mood of the nation in reaffirming Tory support,even if the Tories themselves are unsure about Boris.Brown is backing Ken in a way that Tony Blair never did,a defeat will refelct badly on the Prime Minister.So eyes down for the next 5 weeks.

Boris racing ahead of Ken

Centre Right carries news of the latest London Standard poll which puts Boris 12 points ahead of Ken in the mayoral election race.

The Standard reports that

The YouGov poll has Mr Johnson on 49 per cent, the Mayor on 37 per cent and Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick on 12
Mr Johnson was particularly popular among women voters. He also picked up 53 per cent of the 18 to 24-year-olds, compared with Mr Livingstone's 41 per cent.

Mind you Londoners This is what you might be letting yourself in for.Sam Coates tells

The Tory mayoral candidate was briefed a few weeks back at Canary Wharf by Olympic chiefs. They told him that should he win the mayoral race, we would be expected to attend the closing ceremony in Beijing on August 24, for the official handover from the Mayor of Beijing to the Major of London. A flustered Boris took out his diary, and declared he was in France that day. "Are you sure I have to go?", he is reported to have asked....

Meanwhile the Beeb is in trpouble over it Livingstone reporting,

According to Labour Home,which refers to yesterday's Adam Boulton show

"Ken repeated what he had said before – that bendy buses have been popular where they’ve been brought in, but they’re only needed on a few busy routes, so there’s no plan to extend it further.
This has now been followed up on the BBC as a u-turn story, saying he’s declared no more bendy buses. There were never going to be any more – but it’s linked under the headline “Mayor to dump bendy buses”.
Then there’s the reporting of the £100 million hole in Boris Johnson’s transport plan. It’s barely been covered on BBC news. A huge planning gaffe that independent experts have verified has gone virtually unnoticed on the beeb. That should have been a major election issue this week.

Round 1 about to start in London's mayoral race

Today sees the start of the hustings season for the contest of London Mayor.In the red corner Ken Livingstone,.present incumbent,former socialist and lover of newts.In the blue corner Boris Johnson,former old Etonian and star of Tv and gaffs galore.

They meet today along with Lib Denme candidate Brian Paddick and Green Party hopeful Sian Berry as they potline plans for London's green future.

Livingstone has had a rough passage over the last few weeks.An orchestrated campaign led by the London Evening Standard has exposed cronyism in his administartion amid allegations of the misuse of money.one of his closest associates Lee Jasper was forced to resign on an isue linked to the same investigation adnLondoners are not keen on his close links to the likes of hugo Chavez or his attacks on Sir Trevor Philips

But Boris is not going to find the going easy


A warning for Boris comes from David Aaronovitch writing in the Times today

Ken slides out of Life in Cold Blood, like some Lambeth axolotl, emerged from underneath the stone to sit in triumph on top of it. Everyone who has attempted to kill off his career has been left only with a handful of tail and a vague feeling of having been made to look silly. Boris's series, David Attenborough's Life on a Warm Sofa: The World of Pets is as yet unmade, but would feature a smiling, boisterous Johnson destroying a house by knocking everything over, eating all the food and pooing in the beds

.

By all intense and purpose the recent polls show a tight race ahead,Boris in the latest is slightly ahead

Police called in over Jasper allegations

The news that Ken Livingstone's right hand man Lee Jasper has been suspended will no vindicate much of the anti Livingstone that has eminated from the likes of Andrew Gilligan and the London evening standard.

According to the Guardian,the move has been instigated by the major himself

The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, today demanded a police investigation into misconduct allegations involving his race adviser, Lee Jasper, in the hope that the inquiry would prove his innocence.
The mayor also announced that Jasper, who has faced a series of allegations about his role in suspect spending decisions by the London Development Agency (LDA), would be suspended from office during the police investigation.
Jasper stressed that he had personally suggested to Livingstone that the allegations should be referred to the police.

Jasper has been accused by the paper of being the channel for over £3m of funding paid by the London development agency to organisations which are linked to Jasper or his associates.

Livingstone has now called in the police to investigate the claims over the money and the lack of audit trail.

It comes on the back of a Gmtv interview to be broadcast on Sunday in which according to several sources,Ken Livingstone admits that his has a fight on his hands for the elections in May

Three Line whip reports

Sounding like a rattled man, the Mayor tells interviewer Steve Richards: “This is bound to be a close fight. The Conservatives have found the most popular Conservative in Britain – maybe the only popular Conservative in Britain – and you’re clearly going to have huge resources put into this from the Telegraph, the Mail and others.
“It was always going to be a tight fight and I’ve always said this.

The link between the two-Surely a mere coincidence!!!!!!!!!!

Watch out Boris will swipe your oyster card

In his first major interview this year Tory Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson totally overwelmed the quite hapless Andrew Marr as he used the occasion as a major offensive against Ken Livingstone.


The centre piece of Boris' policy seems to be making London's buses safer and try as he might Marr could not deflect Boris away from his scheme of taking the oyster cards off unruly individuals and making them paint community centres.

Whether this will encourage the voters of London to vote on mass for the Tory candidate remains to be seen.

I would though have thought the agenda should be more about racial policies and cronnyism,a subject that Johnson did with a little help from Marr reflect on.When pressed on the subject of Lee Jasper,

Marr asking"

Does that mean that you would get rid of the Lee Jasper types and all of that part of what the mayor does or not?"

to which Boris replied

"I want to bring people together in this fantastic cosmopolitan city and you will see huge energy and effort by me, for instance, to get more black and minority ethnic people into the Metropolitan Police."