Author: Phil

I nicked this chart off the Political Betting website. They had a posting yesterday showing how the gambling market (read more at https://www.toponlinecasino.my/) had moved against Livingstone over the course of the last week as the consequences of the budget and last week’s poor Labour polling have sunk in.

It seems to me as I take stock over the Easter weekend that Boris has won the air war and now it is about the land campaign. To take my military analogy further the campaign will be decided by boots on the ground. According to the Sunday Times Caroline Spelman, the Tory chairman, has written to all 194 MPs and prospective candidates telling them to spend five days campaigning for Johnson.

I am out leafleting this afternoon. Go Boris!

Today was a another bad day for the Mayor.

Andrew Gimson in the Telegraph this morning is another voice pointing out that the Mayor is talking about Boris too much:

Ken Livingstone has shown signs, during the launch of his bid for re-election as London mayor, of becoming obsessed by Mr Johnson.

Rightly, Gimson also points out that Doreen Lawrence does no credit to the memory of her murdered son by turning him into a pawn in Livingstone’s game. Gimson says:

Mr Livingstone advanced under cover of a heart-felt endorsement from Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, who said: “Ken has given tremendous support to the Stephen Lawrence Centre which is in memory of my son. I do not believe the Tory candidate would have had such commitment to the centre.”

These were harsh words. Mrs Lawrence claimed that racist attacks have fallen by more than 50 per cent since Mr Livingstone became mayor, and said this “culture of openness, tolerance and mutual respect” will be endangered if he loses.

But since the culture of openness, tolerance and mutual respect already excludes Mr Johnson, one could say it is already endangered by the methods adopted by Mr Livingstone, and especially by the tactic of getting a bereaved mother to run down his rival.

Tonight Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard added to the gaiety of the nation yet again with his piece describing e-mails exhanged between public servant, and seriously over-paid champange socialist clearly, Peter Hendy, Transport Commissioner, effectively Chief Exec of Transport for London and Livingstone’s weasly little chief of staff, Simon Fletcher (salary £124K in 2005/6) who recently stood down to fight the election campaign. Hendy’s £320K salary comes as a surprise to Iain Martin in the Telegraph although Londoner’s will not be surprised to hear of yet another example of TfL paying too much.

Sain Berry, hard left entryist into the Green Party and their Mayoral candidate, has effectively come out for Ken. No suprise there then. It really doesn’t help.

Almost a month ago I said that the Mayor should shut up about Boris, see previous posting. Tonight Ian Dale agrees with me, see here.

Iain says:

Ken Livingstone’s campaign launch today proved one thing – that the mayor continues to be obsessed by his opponent. Whatever question he is asked by journalists, he always brings the subject back to Boris. This is an odd strategy for a hackneyed old campaigner like Ken to adopt. Normally in his position you’d expect a candidate to rise above the fray and either ignore his opponent or to swat him away like you would an irritating gnat.

The BBC’s coverage of today’s launch of the Mayoral campaign had interviews with both Boris and Livingstone. Whilst Boris’s is positive and engaging Livingstone wastes too much time making cracks about Boris. Livingstone says:

Boris looks to the past.

and

… he is very much a classic Thatcherite believing in small government, not intervening.

The first is just rubbish and the second uses the label Thatcherite as an insult. Fine. The Mayor also repeats his self-incriminating Crossrail scare line:

If a mayor gets that wrong you can bankrupt the city.

Who cut a deal with Gordon Brown that could bankrupt the city? Ken Livingstone – no kind of negotiator, no kind of competent executive mayor thank you.

If you are already bored of the mayoral campaign then tough luck. The actual campaign started at midnight last night so you can expect to hear a lot more about it from now. For myself I am very happy to see Boris doing so well and will be doing all I can to get Boris elected.

Dave Hill reports what Livingstone is up to here.

Meanwhile Boris issued this call to arms overnight:

I nicked this graphic from ConservativeHome. It relates to a YouGov poll in the Evening Standard today showing that Boris is leading Livingstone by 12%. Great news.

I went to his housing and planning manifesto launch event this morning and wrote it up for ConservativeHome here.