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It hasn't been a good week for Boris Johnson. It took more than seven years - and considerable effort on the part of the Evening Standard - for Ken Livingstone to suffer a senior advisorial resignation. Yet after some mildly ill-advised comments about race, it's been only seven weeks before Boris's first top man, James McGrath, has taken a one-way swim to sleep with the fishes.
Then there was that car crash on the Today programme, when London's new First Citizen didn't seem to have read the memorandum on which he was being questioned - a performance symptomatic, it is alleged, of a broader carelessness about boring-but-important details, such as appointments, salaries, and costs. And a little earlier, there was the row about the downgrading of the anti-racist element of the Rise festival.
After the last seven days, with a new spring in their step, the Ken Livingstone groupies are regrouping. You see? It's happening just like we said! We told you he couldn't run a bath. We told you he was a racist. After the Olympic interview, Mr Livingstone rang Today to gloat. Upon McGrath's resignation, Ken issued another of his increasingly frequent press releases, proclaiming that "the real culture of the Johnson administration is becoming clear - one totally at odds with [diversity]".
Yet the true danger of the last week is, in fact, more to the anti-Boris forces than to the Mayor himself. Just as Johnson's mayoralty will be closely scrutinised as a preview of the Tories in government, so does the opposition to Boris provide clues as to how Labour will cope in opposition. One of the most important things we learned from Ken was how desperately an effective opposition to the Mayor is needed. We're not getting it at the moment.
Successful administrations write their own political "narrative", the story of who they are and what they are about. In unsuccessful administrations, the opposition writes it for them. Perhaps inevitably at this stage, Boris is still groping to formulate his narrative. That leaves a gap that the anti-Boris forces are energetically trying to fill.
The problem, however, with the McGrath and Rise stories is that they are lulling Boris's opponents into a familiar comfort zone - into repeating exactly the same failed "narrative" that lost them the election in the first place.
During that election, Ken and chums spent months trying to play the race card against Boris, without success. Most voters simply did not believe that Boris was a racist and extremist.
Perhaps even more importantly, the endless focus on race alienated many white working-class Londoners, who got the impression that Labour was not interested in them and was even trying to deny their place in London.
Though you'd never know it from the Ken GLA, the white working class remains the largest single group in the city - something of which it reminded us on election day, by voting almost as one for Boris. He won two-thirds of the wards in Barking and Dagenham, truly astonishing for a Tory.
Since his election, Johnson has assembled a senior team significantly more "inclusive" and "diverse" than anything Livingstone managed. At least five of his top appointees are gay. Three are from ethnic minorities. In his behaviour (not least towards those who oppose him) Boris has struck a rather attractively liberal note. Ken would have made tedious capital from those anti drink-ban demonstrators who made such a mess on the Tube. Boris sounded rather understanding about them.
And over the changes to the Rise festival, the heartbreaking news for the London Left is that beyond the usualsuspect participants, such as National Assembly Against Racism (secretary: Lee Jasper) and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (what were they doing at an anti-racist event, by the way?) no ordinary Londoner, black or white, gives a damn. Rise-type events had a purpose in the Eighties, when antiracism needed to be made fashionable. But that battle won, it is not nowadays clear how a bunch of overwhelmingly white people going to a pop concert advances any cause beyond the participants' own feeling of righteousness.
The fuss over Rise symbolises the other "narrative" failure of Boris's opponents so far: their unfortunate tendency to nitpick about absolutely everything he does and proclaim it a disaster. This follows their regular predictions, during the election campaign, of meltdown following a Boris victory.
But London hasn't collapsed since Johnson took over, and the voters, at least for now, don't seem to be judging him on the criterion of whether he can produce the usual robot-speak on Today. Competence and grip is the most promising area for Boris's opponents. But for the moment his good nature seems to beat their humourless whingeing.
Since the Standard has been offering plenty of advice to the Mayor, here is my advice to his enemies: keep your powder dry for the things that matter. They will come. The economy is turning down. Boris will almost certainly be unable to keep some of his big promises. But if you test people's patience by endlessly cavilling about trivia, the voters may be less receptive when there is something real to condemn.
Instead of fussing about details, the opposition to Boris needs to use these early stages to think strategically - about where it went wrong in May, and also about what it wants from the new Mayor. Even some of Johnson's own advisers think it would be good, for instance, to give the Assembly more power, to guard against the hubris of the later Livingstone years.
Campaigning for such powers would be a far better use of Labour's time at this stage than bleating about rock festivals.
And the first strategic decision that Labour must make is, of course, to deal with the most obvious symbol of the old message: the old Mayor. Ken's hanging around City Hall like a lost dog is sad and embarrassing and has the whole of political London sniggering behind its hands. It symbolises his own, and his party's, inability to come to terms with defeat. If it is to recover, Labour has to shut Ken out of the building and change all the locks.
Reader views (5)
Gilligan: "The fuss over Rise symbolises the other "narrative" failure of Boris's opponents so far: their unfortunate tendency to nitpick about absolutely everything he does"
Let me get this straight - raising questions after Boris Johnson appears on TV seemingly not knowing what the Rise Festival is, let alone what decision he has supposed to have just made regarding it, after a newspaper has printed it and his own office has commented on it, is "nitpicking".
I see.
- Kieran, London, UK, 30/06/2008 22:18
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Good stuff, Mr Gilligan!
As a long-term guest here from an ethnically diverse nation, I see the playing of the race card by the old Ken and Lee crowds to be an ongoing reflection of their intellectual and political bankruptcy.
I am aware that racism still exists, but I doubt that rock concerts and the like are effective tactics to win attitudinal change.
Boris appears to be making a pretty good fist of tackling many of London's problems and he does it with openness, good humour and grace, attributes one would be hard-pressed to attach to Ken with his habit of mounting gratuitously nasty verbal attacks on critics who came within his range.
- Kiwi Expat, London, UK, 27/06/2008 10:45
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Surely the problem was that Boris had not been informed that the Rise festival had been stripped of the anti-racism message (even though it had been reported in the press), and that he doubted that the Memorandum of Agreement even existed.
This lack of attention to important detail would get me fired from my job through incompetence.
He can get away with it for now, but not for much longer.
And why is he being kept in the dark about "his" decisions- who exactly is making them for him and why is he not being informed?
And what cost his "betrayal" of an aide who should have had the opportunity to apologise and explain? His lack of loyalty will have dismayed many a Tory party member.
Conviction, not spin. Competence not gloss.
- Fresh, London, 27/06/2008 07:33
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Methinks the Tories are rattled. Best get rid of a few bendy-buses quick Boris.
- Billy Blighty, Sydney Australia, 27/06/2008 02:24
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Boris is NOT Racist. And Boris CAN run a bath.
The problem is that he'd get in it with a running hairdryer to save time.
Fair point about Ken, but he is merely doing something he's done for 30-odd years; caring about London. Like him or loathe him (and let's face it- most ES/ Mail readers loathe him), he's a man who is dedicated to London. For example, I don't remember him using his status to pull-in £250,000 a year writing a weekly column. No wonder Boris doesn't need a free paper to get his views across.
I truly hope Boris isn't the Cameron glove-puppet he appears to be.
- Fresh, London, 26/06/2008 12:26
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