Tonight:
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GO FOR it, Alan Sugar. Chuck this shy apprentice stuff. You think you would make a better Mayor of London than Boris Johnson. You are sure of it - and you might even be right. If you want the job, kill for it. Start now. The Labour Party agrees, which is why a senior London figure within it has been "briefly and pleasantly" chatting to Sugar, and why the tycoon was invited to make a government training ad and feature in Labour's Canary Wharf fundraiser last Thursday.
The party is openly aghast at the former mayor, Ken Livingstone, wandering London's streets at night like the undead from the swamp of Mordor, terrifying electors by calling himself the "Labour candidate". As of today there are only two people likely to beat Johnson at the next London election in three years' time.
One is that ageing Peter Pan Richard Branson, for whom politics is one of his many ambitions and who pondered standing for mayor back in 2000 on the reasonable grounds that opinion polls showed he could win. The other candidate would be Sugar. Sugar has street credibility. He is a television personality, recognisable and has Livingstone's cockney appeal, once even doing penal servitude by owning Tottenham Hotspur FC.
His loyalty to the Labour Party extends beyond that of the ever treacherous Livingstone. He should also appeal to London's professional and managerial class, which, in 2012, might have tired of four years of a mayor playing court jester to himself and might welcome a man whose approach to any management problem is to say: "You're fired."
So far Johnson has not proved the failure that his critics predicted. After some accidents in his early appointments, he has gathered a bright team around him. He has made himself familiar and likeable, with a personal authenticity and sense of humour that has vanished from the DNA of Westminster's zombie politicians.
What he has yet to do is translate personality into excitement, let alone leadership. With the Mayor excluded from such concerns as the capital's health, education and social services, his scope for making an impact is limited to police, transport and physical planning.
The departure of London's police chief, Sir Ian Blair, was more by accident than design. Johnson has yet to show that he can compel the Metropolitan Police to address Londoners' sense of neighbourhood security. It remains an introverted municipal industry given to screaming about in cars, cosseting VIPs, toting guns and meeting each new Home Office target. (Typical of its attitude is the casual parking of police cars on the pavement opposite the Evening Standard's offices to show a beyond-the-law contempt for the public.)
Johnson has also to display any grip on the chaos that afflicts the streets of his city. Roadworks render the place more akin to Nairobi than a European capital. Johnson has concluded that extending the congestion charge zone westwards is pointless, given that roadworks are now a congestion charge in all but name. But the six per cent rise in public transport fares, coupled with last year's crazy hike in taxi tariffs, has left central London awash in transport vehicles roaming the streets empty and minicabs having a field day.
As for traffic lights, London's must be the most archaic in the world. I have seen better phasing in Damascus and Lahore. The only public projects that appear to appeal to Johnson are the same iconic towers that so captivated his predecessor.
He failed to get an early grip on the Olympics, which he knew would drain his finances just as his first term reaches a climax. His love of such giant schemes as the Olympics, Crossrail and a Thames airport has left tidying up Tube stations, cleaning graffiti or updating traffic management to others. He claims to want to return power to the boroughs, but not if it means no more skyscrapers.
In a couple of months Johnson must render an account of his first year in office to a recession-hit capital. He asserts that London will rise again as a capital of world finance, but he has yet to suggest how. He is not in the street doling out vouchers to shoppers like mayors in Germany and Taiwan.
Johnson is undeniably a political missile of some force, but it is one that lacks a guidance system. This is Labour's opportunity. The year of the next London election will be full of ritual, with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games. Already party warhorses are peeping out from their stables and sniffing the air, given the message that has gone out of anyone-but-Livingstone. They include Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, leadership hopeful Jon Cruddas, Trevor Phillips and Tony McNulty, all recently mentioned in dispatches. None of them could hold a candle to Sugar. He has name recognition and an entrepreneurial track record. This may not qualify him for one of Britain's top jobs in politics and public administration, but to have run something is better than to have run nothing.
Sugar also has a quality emerging as intrinsic to direct election, the image of a man independent of party and a style distinct from the politesse of Westminster. It was this that enabled Livingstone to fight from every corner of the ring in the first mayoral election of 2000.
A similar idiosyncrasy enabled Johnson to appear very much his own man in 2008. Throughout that campaign I never saw mention of the fact that he was the Conservative candidate. It was as if the name itself were toxic. The next London election could well take place two years into the first Cameron administration, a government likely to be mired in the backwash of recession.
Even in the best of times, London tends to vote against the party that won the previous general election. Johnson may well be about to experience the worst of times. The year 2012 will also be the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic. If Johnson's mayoralty fails to find some solid base, if it cannot underpin a world city in the grip of recession, if it falls victim to a freelance police force, undisciplined rail unions and developer-led planning, Sugar's time could come. He is certainly worth a punt.
Reader views (11)
I'm all for getting a mayor from the private sector but Sugar is no Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg is a micro-manager with an eye for detail and a core focus on the nitty gritty.
- Jimbob, Hackney, 04/03/2009 21:09
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I thought the Sugar for Mayor headline was a joke! He ran one company that did well and then got run over by technological progress. Being on TV does add gravitas it takes it away and replaces it with cheap celebrity. Do we want a man who put everything into property 2yrs ago deciding the future of London?
- Mark, London, 04/03/2009 16:33
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Sugar may mean business, but what kind of business? Presumably a bullying one with a management culture of fear and an emphasis on short-term results.
Mind you, any kind of results - short or long term - might be good compared with what Boris has achieved so far. If Sir Alan could tell the PFI bosses on the tube and the private rail companies "You're fired!", he might possibly win my vote.
- Robert C, London UK, 04/03/2009 13:55
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This has to be a joke, right? Sugar’s a good guy and a proper Englishman who pays his taxes and lives here, but he’s well past his sell-by date when it comes to innovation and freshness. He also has no experience of politics. But, having said all of that, if he runs and is successful, I’ll support him, much as I would like Red Ken’s supporters to get behind Boris and help move the city forward.
As for this comment
His [Boris] love of such giant schemes as the Olympics, Crossrail and a Thames airport has left tidying up Tube stations, cleaning graffiti or updating traffic management to others.” Aren’t those “others” paid to do their jobs, or is it all voluntary at TFL?
- St, LondON, 04/03/2009 13:16
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I have never understood the British devotion to the cult of celebrity. Just because this man has been on television a few times is no reason to vote him in as mayor.
- Mark Wright, Milan, Italy, 03/03/2009 22:51
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If Sugar is the best Labour can offer Londoners, God help us.
I am amazed at Boris's critics who think he should be doing everything himself - he's the man at the wheel, not the mechanic!
- Kiwi Expat, London, UK, 03/03/2009 18:03
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the way things are going the tories should ask sugar to stand for them in 2012 as boris is turning out to be a disaster, even his own supporters feel he's going back to his old ways
- John P Reed, upminster essex, 03/03/2009 16:57
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Sugar would be a complete waste of space, even he would not have the nerve to suck up to labour, though to be honest he is not doing a bad job of kissing its rear at the moment.
- Terry, london, 03/03/2009 15:33
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I'll be the first to admit that Boris is no champ, but would Sugar really be better? What has he achieved in recent years? His highly successful, controversy-free chairmanship of Spurs? The wondrous Amstrad em@iler device that is the must-have accessory for every modern home?
Most of his fortune is now derived from property investment - in recent decades he's not exactly renowned for innovative ideas (well, successful ones at any rate). Not exactly the calibre of person we need running the greatest capital in the world.
- Mark Lee, Vauxhall, 03/03/2009 12:28
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loving your work mr jenkins, loving your work.
- Jc, se1, 03/03/2009 10:50
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Alan Sugar saw a main chance in the 70's and tapped into the tastelessness (and low spending power) of the British by flooding the market with cheap plastic veneered stereo systems, thereby helping create the Abigail's Party generation. Since then everything he has touched has gone south. "Cheap and Nasty" is the box he inhabits (and made a lot of dosh out of), but that is all he would bring to London. All he would do is rant and rave around and blame everyone else's incompetence when nothing gets done.
- Steve, London, 03/03/2009 10:45
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