Is it easier to ask: Who’s not standing for Labour in the Mayoral elections?
THE guessing game over who will stand for Labour in the Mayoral elections of 2012 goes on and on… and today’s potential candidate to add to all the others is – drum roll, cymbal crash – Diane Abbott, the Hackney MP. Andrew Gilligan is stirring the pot, saying mischevious things about how great it is for her that she’s on This Week (that wilting programme after Question Time in which random celebrities like Miquita Oliver and Paloma Faith sit on the sofa nodding nervously at Andrew Neil).
Abbott was gossiping with Ken Livingstone on the former Mayor’s LBC radio show on Saturday morning, all old muckers sharing stories about how they never took liberties with their expenses tabs and second home allowances. Pats on the back all round. It was only a couple of days later that she said in The Independent that she wouldn’t mind being Mayor, the job that Ken clearly loved and would surely jump at taking back.
Who knows if she was seriously hinting at having a pop in 2012? But her name now features on the long list, right alongside Glenda Jackson and Emily Thornberry, who have been touted in the past as outside bets for a mayoral punt should they be voted out of Parliament this year. The neverending list of suggestions that have done the rounds in recent weeks – and months – include Tessa Jowell, Oona King, David Lammy and even Lord Peter M himself. It will run on and on until Ken gets a definitive answer over whether he can go again.
BACK to the betting on the General Election and the grand central for Conservative blogging, ConservativeHome, has twigged that Ladbrokes is listing the Lib Dems as favourites for the Hampstead and Kilburn seat. We’ve been here before – but if you look at the comments from the Tories who have already checked out ConservativeHome’s round-up, a few would rather this hadn’t been broadcast so loudly.
“The idea that the Lib Dems can win Hampstead and Kilburn is ridiculous. Hasn’t whomever prepared this list seen the polling results for the 2008 mayoral elections? Tories won on the party list vote and Chris Philp is fighting strong. The Lib-Dems will end up third,” writes one unnamed Conservative. Jonny Ball, who has experience of the Conservatives’ office in Hampstead, adds: “Go Hampstead and Kilburn! A really great team of hard-working campaigners who have an energetic and local candidate in Chris Philp. Look forward to a celebraTORY pint on the Garden Gate!”
Now, nobody wants to promote gambling, but surely these confident Conservatives should head straight to their nearest bookies, throw down a few quid and if they’re right they will have more money to spend on that round of milk stouts.
(NB: I don’t know what a milk stout is either, but I heard someone order one in the Rovers Return the other day and they sound mighty tasty)
IT’S blog-a-go-go on the puzzling attempts to re-brand that bit of London between King’s Cross and Holborn as a brand new place called: ‘Midtown’. You know where I’m talking about. Bloomsbury. Right there.
The idea comes from InHolborn, a business interest group looking to draw in more investment to a so-called ‘no man’s land’ between High Holborn and New Oxford Street. Boris Johnson is apparently backing the rebrand and hotels in the area are already marketing Midtown to American tourists.
Bloggers like The Guardian’s Dave Hill and Jane’s London have already raised the eyebrows on this. For me, it reminds me of two ultimately ill-fated attempts in Camden to conjure up a new name for existing neighbourhoods of London. Recently, there was NoHo – a northern Soho, if you will. That was based around the NoHo Square development on the site of the former Middlesex Hospital building, which was later abandoned as the credit crunch gripped. Estate agents had been the only people who were really using the label anyway. The one reminder of this short-lived name for the area is the plan to use the scorched land for allotments: a great idea which some residents suggested could be called ‘Grow-Ho‘.
Then there was the Camden Broadway project a few years back, dreamed up by earnest Labour councillors who wanted to brighten up the bit around Camden Road overground station. Rather hopefully, a kebab shop even opened called ‘..On The Broadway’. Sadly, as well-meaning as this attempt at re-branding a shabby crossroads was, all involved found that convincing people to start using a new name for area they’ve always known as just another bit of Camden Town is a tall order.
The kebab shop closed down after only a few months and whenever the name Camden Broadway is mentioned now, it’s in planning paperwork rather than in the talk in the cafes by the railway bridge.
There’s a bit more muscle down in Bloomsbury Midtown, but you still wonder if the new moniker will stick..
MY annual trip across to west London ended in predictable disappointment as Chelsea flattened Arsenal yesterday. Not only were Arsenal beaten but the away fans at Stamford Bridge, for all their noise, struggled to come up with anything remotely original with their chants directed at the headline-hogging John Terry. The celebrated art of terrace poetry was missing in the chant: ‘You’re not captain anymore’.
But then the Chelsea fans were not bursting with imagination themselves. They bellowed back with a few choruses of: ‘You’re not English any more’, the standard attack on Arsenal for the crime-of-crimes of fielding only one English player in their starting eleven.
Then, after this shouty to and fro, everybody sat down again and watched as a striker from the Ivory Coast scored for the team managed by an Italian and bankrolled by a Russian.
THE last thing the Liberal Democrats want anywhere in London is the General Election and the local elections to be held on the same day. A bit like their irritation over the way the Ken vs Boris showdown took over the London elections last year, the party understandably hates it when the vote is built up into a straight face-off between Labour and the Conservatives. Like the way some people will tell you the next election is becoming a question of: Yes or No – Gordon Brown, is he a keeper?
There was a bit of talk over the weekend that Brown may actually surprise us all and go to the public vote in April but hardly anybody now would bet against May 6 for the General Election, the same day as the Camden Council elections. No Lib Dem will say ‘oh drat’ publicly but an email doing the rounds sent by eco-champion Lib Dem councillor Alexis Rowell to members of the Sustainability Taskforce at the Town Hall suggest fear is creeping in. As he discusses what shape the Taskforce might take in the future, he admits Labour – currently occupying the opposition benches – might end up with more seats than anybody else on May 6. That would be an amazing reversal in fortunes for both Labour and the Lib Dems in Camden.
In the email sent around last night, Cllr Rowell wrote: “The Camden Labour group, which may well have the most councillors after May 6th if the general and local elections are held on the same day, has, apart from Penny, shown near zero interest in the Task Force. Roger Robinson has been to 30 minutes of one Task Force meeting and Sue Vincent has been to half of another. Penny is standing down so there’s no reason to expect that the Labour Group will have any interest in prolonging the life of the Task Force.”
Labour members will be annoyed at Cllr Rowell for stabbing away at their apparently poor attendance at the cross-party Taskforce’s meetings, but seeing a Lib Dem predicting Labour to bounce back on May 6 will surely make them smile. I wonder if they have the same confidence over their chances at the boroughwide ballot as their opposition.
PLANS to mess about with the Whittington Hospital have got thousands enraged, across borough boundaries. I’m proud to say journalist Tom Foot’s health reports in the Camden New Journal and Islington Tribune was first to expose plans to merge the Whit with the Royal Free, and the Trib was the first to begin campaigning against the potential closure of Accident and Emergency at the start of December. The likes of Lord Melvin Bragg and author Nick Hornby joined in last week to stand up against the baffling proposals.
Politicians from all sides are also on the case, local councillors, would-be councillors and MPs. It’s interesting to see how the Labour MPs in north London react. After all, it could be well argued that the cuts ultimately stem from their government and the argument is with themselves. Frank Dobson and Jeremy Corbyn have a get-out, they have campaigned within their own party against cuts to public services and have not simply accepted Labour’s policies as read.
But what of David Lammy? His face appears on leaflets doing the rounds in Haringey as if he was a lead figure in the battle to save the A&E. The Tottenham MP is also namechecked in a piece in The Guardian. Surely, as a man closer to the top table – he’s a minister, not in the health department, but a minister nonetheless – could have raised concerns with colleagues at an earlier stage? Maybe he did. Maybe he was shouting to the rafters every time it was mentioned.
It’s shame those cries haven’t been heard. In the meantime, no wonder the Conservatives have feel like they’ve been gifted a free shot at Lammy over this one.
MORE bad news for Luciana Berger tonight as trade unionist turned actor Ricky Tomlinson, outraged of Wavertree, revealed plans to stand against her in Liverpool at the General Election. At what point does she think: I wish I was still knocking on doors at Levita House? (Remember, a couple of weeks ago she was still the Labour candidate in Somers Town and St Pancras and thinking about four years on the green benches of Camden Town Hall, even though she had upped sticks to Merseyside).
Southern carpet-bagger. That’s what some of the Jim Royle locals have been saying. In Ricky’s words: “People say … you could be letting the Tories in. But there is no difference between the Conservatives and new Labour.”
Whether you think this is all getting a bit hard on Luciana or not – she was bashed for not knowing who Bill Shankly was – who could deny it wouldn’t be quite fun to see Tomlinson taking a seat in the Commons? And if you’ve heard him speak at public meetings away from TV and the stage, you’ll know he doesn’t need to just resort to bellowing ‘My Arse’ to turn heads. Luciana would find him a formidable opponent.
…goes to Frank Dobson for his letter in The Guardian yesterday.
AFTER all the talking, Camden kept onto it’s Labour MPs in May 2005, while other areas of London and the rest of the country were dumping theirs. Frank Dobson and Glenda Jackson apparently fended off the opposition because they had publicly stood up to Tony Blair over the Iraq War and other unpopular policies.
Both MPs saw significant cuts to their majority however, and the Lib Dems claimed the gains they had made that night put them in line to takeover the Town Hall in 2006. They weren’t far wrong on that score, but the aim of winning parliamentary seats in Hampstead and Highgate (now Kilburn) and Holborn and St Pancras still remains unresolved on the things-to-do the list.
From five years ago, Ed Fordham is still in place for the Lib Dems but Piers Wauchope, the Conservative candidate back then has moved on. He lost his seat at Camden Council in 2006. In the south of the borough, Conservative contender Margot James looks headed to the House of Commons this time around in a new constituency: Stourbridge. You see her popping up on Question Time every now and then, and is regarded as an important performer for the Tories.
The Lib Dem candidate, Jill Fraser, who probably did the most to scare Frank Dobson since he was first took up this Parliamentarian lark, is not on the paper this year. The Lib Dems will tell you it was all very friendly when they picked the candidates and chose Jo Shaw instead…that’s the story and they’re sticking to it.
Here’s some pics from Camden Centre on the night Frank and Glenda checked in for another five years. 1. ‘I’ll get you next time’? Ed Fordham shakes on it with Glenda Jackson 2. Harriet Garland, who died two weeks ago, does the honours; as Mayor of Camden she read out the results 3. Frank Dobson and Margot James looking at something 4. Jill Fraser got 10,000 votes and described it as her ‘Oscar moment’ 5. Piers Wauchope and wife put on a brave face while Russell Eagling, now a councillor, tries to duck the camera 6. Spotting typos, waiting for the results in the bar.
LAWYER Philippe Sands QC came up with a ‘Forum’ piece about Tony Blair’s performance at Chilcott for the Camden New Journal this week. He said a few provocative but sensible things he’s said before about what should happen next.
But amid the discussion of international invasions who couldn’t be drawn to a passage in which he explained how the general election had split his family over whether to put posters up for Labour MP Glenda Jackson – or her Lib Dem opponent Ed Fordham?
It read like this:
“I think in my Hampstead and Kilburn constituency the inquiry will spell trouble for Glenda Jackson. Our own family is deeply divided. Our 12-year-old daughter has decided to go out and stuff envelopes for Ed Fordham. That prompted her 14-year-old brother to ring up to offer help to Glenda Jackson’s office. Our house is split down the middle, the battle-lines are being drawn about who gets which window for the posters.”
