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Comment: Boris's big idea
Evening Standard17 Mar 2008
Official campaigning starts in the mayoral election tomorrow, and the polls suggest it will be an extraordinarily tough contest. The latest survey from YouGov puts the Tory contender, Boris Johnson, at 49 per cent, ahead of Ken Livingstone on 37 per cent, with the Lib Dem, Brian Paddick, on 12 per cent. A MORI poll for Labour last month gave Mr Livingstone a lead over Mr Johnson of two per cent. It's far too early to draw conclusions from this poll.
Mr Johnson's promises will be subjected to rigorous scrutiny, as they should be. Today, he releases his plans for housing. They turn out to be one of his strongest areas of policy. They depart from the Mayor's approach in two important respects. Mr Johnson would target his plans for increasing the amount of affordable housing not only on the poorest families but also on middle-income Londoners paying basic income tax - they would be allowed to purchase a share of property and build up their stake gradually. He would also do away with Mr Livingstone's requirement that 50 per cent of new housing should be affordable, on the grounds that this has proved to be unachievable: instead he proposes a yearly target agreed with boroughs. He wants them to build 50,000 affordable housing units in three years and give incentives to bring 84,000 empty properties into use and renovate 10,000 owned by councils.
These are among a series of imaginative proposals that will help bolster Mr Johnson's credibility. But there is still all to play for in a very close contest.
