London waste being transported to landfill

I’m aware that waste management is not the sexiest topic around (that’s what I call a Cillit Bang opening sentence – BANG! And half your readership’s gone). I doubt anyone but the local party hacks even read my mild criticisms of Greenwich moving to a weekly bin collection. But like it or not, with decreasing levels of landfill available, and tougher central government recycling targets, this is going to remain a political hot potato for some time to come. And as there seems to be a bit of a market out there for blog posts with graphs, here’s a blog post with graphs. About rubbish. In London.

Last week, DEFRA released waste statistics for England for 2008/09, which can be accessed here. The overall story is at least moderately positive. Total quantities of household waste being produced in England have fallen below 25m tonnes for the first time this century. Indeed, the drop of just under 1m tonnes compared to 2007/08 is remarkable, and may indicate an unintended impact of the recession. The key question is whether this decline can be sustained as a recovery kicks in. The figures for 2008/09 represent a drop of 3.8% from the previous 12 months, and 3.0% down from 2000/01. The up-front figure for tonnage being recycled has continued to grow, although more slowly this year than in most previous years. 37.6% of England’s household waste is now being recycled, compared to 11.2% in 2000/01. The government has a target of 40% recycling by 2010 (I’m unclear if that’s 2009/10 or 2010/11), so isn’t a million miles from achieving that.

London, on recycling at least, is letting the side down somewhat. For 2008/09, just 29.2% of its household waste was being recycled, and whilst that compares favorably with the 9.0% it was achieving in 2000/01, the rate of progress has been notably slower than in England overall. There are, of course, a number of factors behind this, which hopefully the graphs below will help us to explore. Note: Please click on the graphs to be actually able to read them.

Our first graph demonstrates the huge disparity in terms of waste production between the various London boroughs. Overall, London is ahead of the national trend in terms of reducing waste production, being down 8.4% from a peak in 2001/02. However, it remains a relatively high region for production, and the figures above demonstrate the polarisation of responsibility for this. Between the lowest producer/capita (Camden) and the highest (Barking & Dagenham), there is a 65% difference. On the graph above, inner London boroughs are marked with white columns, making it clear the dominance of the outer London boroughs in creating waste. Only two of the twelve inner London boroughs breach the city-wide average: Greenwich, which has in parts many of the characteristics of an outer London borough, and Lewisham, which doesn’t really have that excuse. It is also notable that the bottom four outer boroughs (Haringey, Ealing, Brent and Croydon) are those with relatively high population densities. Broadly speaking, the more space you have, the more waste you seem likely to produce – maybe we, like nature, abhor a vacuum. Interestingly, there isn’t any real correlation between wealth and waste production – the top producers include a mixture of wealthy boroughs (Bromley, Hillingdon) and more deprived boroughs (Barking & Dagenham, Newham).

To a limited degree, the production of waste can be offset by an intelligent disposal strategy on the part of the local authority. Both from the point of view of the conservation of natural resources, and the simple fact that we are running out of acceptable sites, landfill cannot form a major part of any intelligent strategy. Reliance on landfill renders London non-self sufficient in terms of waste disposal, with most waste having to be transported significant distances for disposal. Nevertheless, a little over 50% of London’s waste still ends up in landfill.

The graph above again demonstrates the disparity that the London-wide mean disguises, with the percentage of waste being sent to landfill varying from 3% (Greenwich) to 83% (City of London). Unlike waste production, there is no clear inner/outer divide here, but it is a little harder to draw firm conclusions on this, given that 21 boroughs use waste authorities to provide their disposals, with data being aggregated by disposal authority. Not, of course that the impression should be given that everything that doesn’t end up in landfill is recycled. Some of those with the lowest landfill figures, Greenwich included, have relatively high dependence on incineration. That’s a whole new set of politics and pros and cons that I don’t intend to get into here.

The final chart is probably the most interesting (if you’ve got this far), showing both borough’s comparative recycling rates and the historical movement over the past ten years.

Again, that disparity, with 2008/09 recycling rates ranging from 16.4% in Lewisham to 50.7% in Bexley. In general although not exclusively, the worst performers are inner London boroughs, accounting for 7 of the bottom 10. To some degree this is understandable – higher density housing makes it much more difficult to introduce a comprehensive sorting system – multiple wheelie bins are very much a no-no. A more transient population makes resident education that much harder. Not that this excuses some of the poor performances: truly inner London Lambeth achieves a recycling rate in excess of 30%, whilst semi-inner Greenwich and outer-but-with-many-inner-London-characteristics Newham are amongst the four boroughs that have already exceeded the 40% target (alongside Bexley and Harrow).

What is clear from this graph is that the first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a forward march on recycling rates in every London borough, with most achieving most of their expansion during the second half of the decade. The exceptions to this rule are Hounslow and Kingston upon Thames, both of which had a high rate of recycling (for the time) at the turn of the century, but have since stalled badly on any expansion. Hillingdon achieved a major leap forward in the first half of the decade, but achieved little in the second half.

Generally, the key to major leaps forward has been the provision of recycling infrastructure. The opening of the Materials Recycling Facility in Greenwich, for example, is behind its leap from also-ran performance in 2003/04 to one of the top performing boroughs by 2008/09. A number of the poorly performing inner London boroughs have similar facilities in the pipeline, such as one proposed for Southwark on the Old Kent Road. 

However, the hard fact remains that a large number of boroughs will not meet the 40% by 2010 target. Whilst the actual target applies only to the country as a whole, it ought to be a guide for local authorities to. In a city like London, which continues to grow rapidly, this isn’t an issue on which any borough can rest on their laurels, even those which actually have laurels. A lot of work remains to be done on waste reduction, disposal self-sufficiency and building up recycling. I’ve held off making any partisan points throughout this post (and boy, it’s been hard), but I’m sure readers will allow me the indulgence of quoting the former Mayor of London, speaking about his successor to Oxford student rag Cherwell this week:

“He spends more time on a photo shoot with Kelly Brook than chairing the Waste and Recycling Board.”

I just hope that’s not true.

You can read plenty about Boris Johnson’s rather impressive hikes in TfL’s fares today elsewhere. With many of the increases coming in at more than 18 times the current rate of CPI, describing them as ‘inflation-busting’ would be like calling Richard Littlejohn ‘moderately right-wing’. And, worryingly for our jovial Mayor, for all his attempts to pass the blame for the increases off as being the fault of Ken Livingstone, the quite correct notion that Johnson inherited healthy TfL reserves and has bought this for the most part on himself is gaining traction. As Dave Cole notes, the extra revenue to be raised by the incredible 20% increase in Oyster Pay-as-You-Go fares on buses fits very neatly into the £50-£70m hole left by the removal of the Western Extension of the Congestion Charge.

Combine that with the decision not to proceed with the Gas-guzzler Charge, the end of the Venezuela oil deal, the scrapping of bendy buses and the advent of the neo-Routemaster – all at a time of falling fare-box income thanks to economic circumstances pertaining – and you begin to see where the hole comes from. And that’s why Boris is coming after you with his hat.

And when I say ‘you’, I mean ‘you’ (possibly), not ‘me’. One thing you won’t see much of in the coverage of the new fare regime is a complaint that you aren’t paying enough. Well, here’s one. The 2010 TfL fare settlement is too lenient on me – and on people like me. And it makes me sick. The graph at the top of this post may give you an idea why.

In his wisdom, Boris Johnson has decided that the one set of fares that need to be frozen at this time are (almost all) weekly, monthly and annual Travelcards. To briefly defend the Mayor, part of the cost of the Travelcards is set via DfT-controlled National Rail fares, which will fall by 0.4% this year. Thus it could be argued that TfL is in fact raising its Travelcard fares this year – but only be a infinitesimal amount.

I commute daily from zone 3 into zone 1, using the mainline train, with a bus-Underground combination in standby. Because I am lucky enough to be in a reasonably well paid job, I can afford to pay the £1,208 for an Annual Travelcard. Were I a little less well off, but still having a reasonable amount of cash in my pocket, I could instead buy monthly or weekly Travelcards. Overall, these would cost me more than the Annual card, but I’d save on paying for individual journeys.

Well, the Mayor has decided to reward people like me. Inflation is low, but it is not non-existant – CPI is currently running at 1.1% (and indeed, was at 1.6% when this fare package was being put together). For my fares to stand still in real terms, my ticket price should be going up to around £1221. Instead, it is standing still: so, in real terms a cut of a little over £13. If I purchased monthly or weekly travelcards, that cut would be in the region of £14 and £15 respectively over the course of the year. TfL, therefore, is almost certainly going to make less money from me in 2010 than it did in 2009: a rather strange decision from a supposedly cash-strapped organisation, you might think.

So, where is the cash coming from instead? Well, with a Tory at the helm of TfL, you probably don’t need to think too long to answer that. Yep, the low-paid. With the Underground and mainline rail being relatively costly forms of transport, those on a limited income are likely to take the bus – and if you’ve ever taken the 188 or the 53 out towards South East London you’ll know there are plenty of people who use these services for very long commutes. And it’s for them that this fare package is really going to hit home. If you use your Oyster Card on Pay-as-you-Go to make two journeys per working day (c.235 per annum), your yearly travel bill will rise in real terms by £88.83. If you are able to afford a weekly bus and tram pass, you’ll be paying a whopping £124.47 extra (again, in real terms). So that is where the money is coming from to pay for my reduced fares.

Sure, Johnson is keeping the raft of mainly Livingstone-era concessionary fares mainly in place. That is to his credit. But in this recession, it is often those falling just above income support level who are suffering most. If they use public transport, they are most likely to be bus users: and it is to them that Johnson – who claims to be trying to help Londoners through the recession – has just delivered a massive smack in the face.

I’m not trying to claim that every Travelcard holder is rolling in cash. Any significant rise would be painful for many. But I doubt that Johnson doesn’t have the data to hand to show where the socio-economic split falls in terms of travel modes. If pain is to be had, it needs to be shared a round a bit, not just aimed at those least able to take it. The Mayor needs to think again. Simply raising my Travelcard by the rate of inflation would help a bit. But if it is necessary for most passengers who can’t afford to pay months in advance to suffer an increase well above 10%, then raise it a bit more. Otherwise this just looks like a bribe taken from the poor and thrown in the direction of the more Boris-amenable suburbs. I’ve nothing against using transport policy as an agency of redistribution – Livingstone showed that in a limited way it can be done. I do object to it being used to redistribute wealth back to the wealthy.

Yesterday ought to have been one of the defining moments of Boris Johnson’s mayoralty. Three draft strategies published, covering housing, planning, economic development and transport (or, in other words, barring policing pretty much everything the Mayor has any meaningful influence over). Somehow, it didn’t quite feel that way, for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, there is Johnson’s sudden ability to hide from public view when matters of substance and detail rear their ugly heads. The contrast with his normal persona is remarkable. After all, the Mayor is normally happy to engage in publicity  stunts for the TV cameras, write expensive rubbish for the Telegraph or inundate us with 13 oh-so-fascinating photos of himself at Conservative Party Conference via his Twitter account. But just as Blair didn’t do God, Johnson doesn’t do detail. So with three hefty documents being published in his name, Macavity wasn’t there. As Ken Livingstone’s former Chief of Staff Simon Fletcher writes on his blog:

Although these strategies are now up for public consultation, the mayor chose to launch them not with a press conference for the media who communicate with millions but with a meeting of City Hall staff.

All we, the great London unwashed,  got from the Mayor is a solitary tweet.

Sure, the Strategies got some media coverage – but not what the Mayor would have wanted. Instead of running big on Johnson’s vision for London, The Evening Standard instead picked up almost solely on the most controversial aspect of the strategies – and amongst the least likely to happen – a bit of gentle boat floating of road pricing in order to cut TfL’s deficit. To my own cynical mind, this is a classic case of straw-man building: introduce road pricing as a possibility into the public consciousness, then attempt to reap the benefit of a 2012 manifesto pledge not to introduce it during a second term. But if he’d been prepared to be the public face of his strategies, Johnson might have managed media coverage that was a bit wider both in terms of reach and subject matter.

Perhaps the main reason for the lack of a ‘big occassion’ feel to yesterday was, on first skim reading at least, the lack of anything of any real interest in the document themselves. Most of the contents are either long pre-trailed Johnson policies, non-commitments (lots of use of the words ‘work with’, ‘consult on’, ’study’ and ‘consider’), and restating of the Mayor’s predecessor’s policies. These are huge documents (300+ pages), so I may have missed stuff of vital importance and many better qualified people will no doubt be poring through them as I type; London Reconnections will no doubt have worthwhile stuff on the Transport document.

The Transport Strategy in particular appears to exemplify the half-baked, non-evidence based and generally contradictory approach to policy making that Johnson has adopted. Given it is the bastard son of the awful Way to Go! document, that should be no surprise. On major public transport schemes, we know that the Mayor abandoned projects such as the Cross-River Tram and Greenwich Waterfront Transit on the basis that:

What we cannot do is spend tens of millions keeping projects alive, for political reasons, when there is simply no government funding to deliver them.

Short-sighted, I argued at the time, but a policy position none-the-less. But those were his predecessor’s unfunded schemes. In the Transport Strategy we instead get some new unfunded schemes: a major extension of the Bakerloo line, and some new DLR extensions. Welcome, if they ever happened, but far more expensive than most of the schemes already scrapped and similarly lacking in either government or TfL funding. And what’s this we see? Our old friend, the Dagenham extension of the DLR – so cruelly cut down twelve months ago – has been reinstated in the strategy, but having lost a year’s worth of project development and funding lobbying opportunities.

Then we have the contradictions. Read paragraphs 711-13 on the Western Extension of the Congestion Charge (p.249) and you’ll be convinced that road user charging is a sure-fire way to kill off small businesses and enterprises. Move on three pages and road charging suddenly becomes an acceptable way to fill the (Johnson-inflicted) black hole in TfL’s finances.

Given that TfL fares are going to be a big issue this week, I thought it might be worth briefly focussing on what the Transport Strategy has to say on this issue, and to compare it with the previous Transport Strategy, published by Ken Livingstone in 2001. Boris’ strategy is on p.244 here, Ken’s here. 

Firstly, we can note that the 2001 fare section is 7 pages long; the 2009 version 2 pages, lacking in the evidence base provided in 2001. It is also evident that the earlier strategy set out specific proposals on fares, e.g.

The approach to public transport fares over the next three years will include a bus fare freeze and capping of Underground fares in real terms.

That’s a quantifiable, ambitious pledge on which an elected representative can be judged. Similar specifics included the introduction of a 70p flat bus fare before the introduction of the Congestion Charge and the simplification of Tramlink fares. Turning to 2009, there is no such specific pledges. Instead, we get generalised phraseology about ’striking balances’ and ‘maintaining affordability’. Nothing to be held to, no specific target to aim at.

And if you want to be really worried about what Thursday’s fare announcement could bring, all you need to do is compare the headline policies on fares proposed by both documents.

Fares policy will aim to make public transport more attractive and affordable, with more consistency between modes, greater simplicity and convenience for passengers, shorter queues and quicker journeys. [Policy 4B.2, 2001]

The Mayor will ensure that fares provide an appropriate and necessary level of financial contribution towards the cost of providing public transport services to ensure that public transport continues to play a central role in London’s transport system and overall economic development. [Proposal 119, 2009]

Lost in those intervening eight years is a commitment to affordability, gone is any real recognition as to what can be achieved socially through a low fares policy. Now, the key thing is to find ‘an appropriate and necessary level of financial contribution’, a phrase which could cover a multitude of sins. Even more worrying is Proposal 120:

The Mayor will keep the range of concessions for which he is responsible under review to ensure that they are focused on where they will be most effective at helping those in most need of them.

I think the writers of Yes, Minister blew the gaffe on what ‘under review’ means in politician speech some while ago. For something that hasn’t yet happened, it means it won’t happen, for something that already exists, it’s doomed. We know already that the half price fares for the unemployed are having a very low take-up rate thanks to minimal publicity; we also know that the travel concession for those on income support is costing TfL a lot more now its funded from their own pockets, rather than by cheap Venezuelan oil. Something tells me both may be early victims of the ‘review’.

I have little doubt that a comparison of any section of these two documents would turn up similar differences. From a quick read, the Transport Strategy is an odd mixture of meaningless platitudes, half-way completed schemes dating back to the Livingstone era, pie-in-the-sky thinking, missed deadlines (PAYG Oyster on National Rail now pushed back to December 2010) and phraseology that will allow for the worst sorts of slash-and-burn policy. An even quicker read of the other two documents suggests something similar. They may have been launched with minimal fanfare, but yesterday was still an important day. Eighteen months in, we have confirmation that Boris has truly made his mark on City Hall: it is churning out policy documents that like him are lazy, inconsistent, muddle-headed and of limited use to London.

Greece has been governed by the centre-right Néa Dēmokratía(New Democracy – ND) and Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis since 2004, following an eleven year period under Panellinio Sosialistikó Kínima (Panhellenic Socialist Movement – PASOK). Since the early 1980s, PASOK has very much been the default party of government – helped by its birth in the struggle against the dictatorship of the Generals - with brief intervening periods of ND rule. Yesterday’s results suggest that this may not be about to change.

The five year government of Karamanlis has been a relatively unhappy period for Greece, beginning with a failure to capitalise on the legacy of the 2004 Athens Olympics, a poor government responseto the series of devastating summer fires, through to the violent rioting of last December. Despite being elected on a promise to clean up Greek politics, entrenched issues of corruption, graft and cronyism seem, if anything, to have got worse during the lifetime of Karamanlis’ government. On top of this have come the inevitable effects of the global recession: 2009 is expected to be the first year of negative economic growth for decades and government debt is touching 100% of GDP.

Karamanlis managed to narrowly win re-election in 2007 with a majority of just one. Whilst ND’s vote fell, PASOK was also hit by defections to smaller parties, with the Communist Party and the Coalition of the Radical Left in particular benefiting. With its hair’s breadth majority, Karamanlis found it increasingly hard to govern, particularly given the difficult financial circumstances and the fall-out from the 2008 civil unrest. As a result, Karamanlis dissolved parliament and called elections two years early – ostensibly, this was to provide greater legitimacy and a more workable majority, but given that opinion polls were consistently showing PASOK a good 5 points clear, it seemed more like a request for a mercy killing.

The key question, coming into the election, was not whether PASOK would come out ahead, but whether it would do so well enough to achieve a working majority. A failure to do so would almost certainly have led to another set of elections before the end of the year. PASOK fought the election for the third time under George Papandreou Jnr, whose father was twice Prime Minister (1944-5 and 1963-5), with the campaign majoring on the issues of the economy and corruption. Most notably, PASOK proposed a €3bn stimulus package for the Greek economy, with Papandreou making a pledge that will sound very familiar to British audiences, that the country’s defecit can be tackled without austerity or attacks on front-line services.

Although reports suggest that there was little enthusiasm for the election or any of the parties (turnout is estimated to have been 70.9%, despite theoretically mandatory voting), PASOK scored a decisive 43.9% of the vote, which will be enough for a majority of 10 in the new parliament – this is likely to be enough for Papandreou to see out a full four year term. ND’s score of 33.5% is their worst performance since the restoration of democracy in Greece. It is notable that the smaller parties of the left either fell back or stagnated as much of the anti-government vote coalesced around PASOK.

A summary of the results is below:

One weekend, two elections. And two rather differing stories for the European centre left.

Germany: After what was, by all accounts, a dull campaign, Germany went to the polls for elections to the Bundestag on Sunday. This could perhaps be described as a two headline election. The first was already written well before this week: the centre-right CDU’s Angela Merkel would win a second term in office as Chancellor. The second part was more interesting: who would she be governing with? Merkel and the CDU made no secret throughout the campaign (and well before) that it wanted to end the grand coalition with the centre-left SPD it was reluctantly forced into following the tight 2005 election. The CDU’s choice of partner was quite clear – the economically liberal FDP (who for some reason always get described in the British media as ‘pro-business’, as if the CDU and SPD weren’t), the longstanding king-makers of post-war German politics.

The SPD, going into the election trailing heavily in the polls under the grand coalition Foreign Secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier was less clear about its preferred outcome, guessing perhaps that beggars weren’t in the best of positions to be choosers. Having, foolishly to my mind, ruled out a coalition government with Oskar Lafontaine’s Die Linke party – which the opinion polls briefly suggested could take power as part of an SPD-Green-Linke coalition, they appeared to go through the campaign seeing a forced continuation of the grand coalition as their only hope of retaining power. At no point did it look like the SPD and their Schröder-era coaliton partners in the Greens would by themselves be able to command a majority.

Fan or not of his heavily reformist brand of social democrat politics, it has become increasingly clear that the SPD is still suffering from being deprived of two term chancellor Gerhard Schröder. On two occasions he bought the SPD back from seeming certain defeat: to a narrow victory in 2002 and to a defeat so narrow in 2005 that it gave some of his colleagues four more years in ministerial Mercedes. Equally, it is clear that Merkel (or someone else in CDU high command) drove a great bargain in demanding that Schröder should play no part in the CDU-SPD government.

But on the other hand, the policies pursued by Schröder must also be considered to play a not inconsiderable part in the SPD’s current woes. As  well as losing the support of the strain of left-leaning SPDers around Lafontaine, Schröder’s right-ward trajectory also provided the opportunity for the surprising partial rehabilitation of the former East German Communist Party through its merging into Die Linke. Particularly in the former East, this alternative force has led to a near-total collapse in SPD support in many industrial and ex-industrial areas where it should be at its strongest.

Nor have SPD members of the outgoing administration covered themselves in any great glory, although Steinmeier has a relatively high personal popularity. Whilst undoubtedly acting as a brake on Merkel to some degree (rail privatisation was effectively delayed until after the election by a lack of SPD support, for example), many SPD ministers have failed to pursue even Schröder-style Social Democracy. Indeed, many on the British right will mourn the passing from office of Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, whose very un-left wing legal insistence on balanced budgets and public criticism of Gordon Brown’s decidedly unbalanced books they loved to use to rebut the PM’s claims of global support for fiscal stimuli. Nevertheless, despite the almost complete kowtowing of SPD ministers to the CDU’s agenda, the forces of free-market global capitalism demanded that even this block be removed: The Economist front cover featured a caged Merkel, with the instruction to ‘Set Angela Free’. Fairly or not, the SPD had managed to get themselves painted as free-market cheerleaders by the left and as socialist blocks to economic reform by the right.

Despite Steinmeier’s best efforts, there was precious little enthusiasm for the SPD in the campaign. And this was fulsomely borne out by the results from last night. Bundestag seats are divided between those elected on a constituency basis and those elected through party lists. In the constituencies, the SPD scored 27.9%, whilst in the lists it took just 23%, in both cases drops of around 11% from 2005. These are the worst post-war results for the SPD, translating into a net loss of 76 seats. It will come as no great comfort to the SPD that the lacklustre campaign also translated into small vote share losses for the CDU (although the vagaries of the electoral system translated these into a small increase in seats). The three smaller parties in the Bundestag – the FDP, Greens and Die Linke – were big winners, taking between them 71 extra seats, accounting for most of the SPD’s losses. The combined strength in seats of the Greens and Die Linke is only two short of the SPD’s own score, suggesting that the time is fast approaching where the walls put up by both the SPD and Die Linke to co-operation at a national level (there are already some regional alliances, most notably the joint administration of Berlin’s SPD Mayor) will have to come tumbling down if the left is ever to govern in Germany again. Overall, there was no decisive rejection of the left: the three main left-leaning parties scored 45.6% to the right’s 48.4%. The question is not whether the German left can win again, but rather under what alignment. For now though, a period of centre-right government beckons, with a majority of 42 for a CDU+CSU (the CDU’s Bavarian sister party)+FPD. Merkel herself is a pretty old-style social capitalist: left to her own devices, there would probably be little change in direction from the past four years. The worry, from a centre left perspective, is the free-market FDP, who are emboldened by their strong electoral showing and are already pushing for the finance ministry. This could well mean real cuts to Germany’s Bismarckian welfare system and sweeping privatisation to come – almost certainly not the policies that Germany needs at this economic juncture. Another toe-hold for the European left disappears, and a major one this time.

Summary of the results below:

Portugal: If the SPD’s woes make for unhappy reading from Labour’s perspective – insofar as the national circumstances of any European nation are instantly transferable to any other – the Portuguese election results could provide a little more comfort. Here an incumbent centre-left government went to the polls in the midst of economic crisis, having engaged in a significant debt-financed fiscal stimulus, and whilst registering a significant loss of support comfortably retained largest party status.

The centre-left Partido Socialista (PS), led by José Sócrates, was elected comfortably in 2005 – these followed a leadership crisis in the Partido Social Democrato (PSD) led centre-right coalition resulting from José Manuel Barroso’s elevation to President of the European Commission. A collapse in the PSD vote gave the PS an overall majority of 12. Sócrates has managed to lead a relatively popular government, despite unemployment that now stands at 9.1%; the PS has led in almost every opinion poll since taking office. The administration has concentrated heavily on infrastructural investment and educational reform, including increased financial support for students. It has also made a number of important steps forward in terms of social legislation – courageous in an overwhelmingly Catholic nation -  including the legalisation of same-sex marriages and the legalisation of abortion – this latter followed a referendum which approved legalisation but fell short of the 50% turnout required for the outcome to be binding.

Despite the economic woes and a number of government scandals (including questions over the validity of Sócrates’ own degree), the PSD as main opposition party has struggled to make any significant break through under the leadership of Manuella Ferreira Leite. Votes that splintered away from the PS have instead gone largely to smaller parties. In Sunday’s elections to Assembleia da República, this splintering was enough to deny Sócrates a second majority administration, with the PS losing 25 seats. However, with 96 seats, it remains the largest party but 17 short of a majority. Whilst it is clear that the PS will form the next government, it is unclear whether Sócrates will seek to do this as a minority government or in coalition. Perhaps the most likely partner would be the Bloco de Esquerda (BE – Left Block), a relatively new political grouping founded in 1999 which doubled its representation from 8 to 16 at the weekend. There has been a limited amount of co-operation between PS and BE in the previous parliament, notably over the introduction of domestic violence legislation. Whilst a PS-BE coalition would still be narrowly short of a majority, it could hope to survive through agreements with the Green-Communist alliance Coligação Democrática Unitária, whose 15 seats could make them an alternative or supplementary coalition partner. Overall, the left in all its forms makes up 127 seats in the 226 seat Assembleia (and 54.3% of the vote), hopefully securing the possibility of a full second term for Sócrates, only the PS’ second since the end of Portugal’s dictatorship. The PS’ success makes Iberia something of a strong-hold for the centre left in Europe, with the Spanish PSOE Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero (who had the difficult job of following Lord Mandelson in Brighton earlier today) now in his second term.

Summary of the Portuguese election results below:

Summer's over, Mr Mayor

Last autumn I wrote a couple of posts examining the effectiveness of the London Assembly’s questioning of the Mayor – and in particular the interesting (that’s to say hands off) approach adopted by the Conservative Group.

So, with a year passed and the summer recess over, I thought it might be apposite to see if anything much had changed. After all, the Mayoralty has certainly moved on in those twelve months (in many cases in ways the Mayor would probably rather forget), so shouldn’t the Assembly have moved with the times too?

With the usual caveat of  quantity not being everything, let’s take a quick look at just how many questions the political groups are now tabling, using the forthcoming Mayor’s Question Time on 9th September (questions publ;ished here) and comparing it with that held on 10th September 2008.

So, firstly we observe that the total number of questions being asked of Mr Johnson has increased significantly in the past 12 months, by more than 24% in fact. This is quite right and proper – as the mayoralty develops there are more policies, more decisions, more errors and possibly even a few successes on which the Mayor can be grilled. But whilst everyone is asking more questions (bar Mr Barnbrook, and the less we hear from him the better), the extra scrutiny hasn’t exactly been evenly spread. Despite a very small increase in the number of questions being asked by the Conservative group, the gap between themselves and the three opposition groups has increased markedly. Per assembly member, the Labour group is asking nearly four times more questions than the Tories, the Lib Dems almost eight times more and the Greens nearly ten times more.

Now, to be fair to the Tories, there does seem to be a bias towards Assembly Members elected via the London-wide list asking more questions – fellow Southwark councillors Jenny Jones from the Greens and Caroline Pidgeon of the Lib Demsare clear cases in point. This is hardly surprising, given they have the ability to raise cases from anywhere in the capital and feasibly have more time to delve into strategic issues, unburdened as they are by a constituency. Withthe entire Lib Dem and Green groups being composed of London-wide members, compared to 3 of the Tories’ 11 seats, a certain degree of question imbalance is to be expected. But with the Labour group having a similar proportion of constituency members to the Tories (2 list members out of 8), the imbalance between the two largest groups in terms of questioning is a bit more concerning.

Something that was brought into the spotlight this week by the report of the Senior Salaries Review Body is just how many of the Conservative Assembly Members are also councillors. The Review Body recommends that this practice be outlawed, too my mind an overly-draconian solution to a not too great a problem. What is clearly be inappropriate is for an Assembly Member to also hold an Executive position within a council - step forward Messrs Gareth Bacon (Bexley), Steve O’Connell (Croydon) and until recently Brian Coleman (Barnet). Not only does the question of commitment in terms of time given to either of the well-remunerated positions of Assembly Member and Executive Member occur, but so also do questions of conflicts of interest between the need to serve the best interests of a particular borough and the overall interests of London as a whole.

But these individuals aside, it is quite surprising to find that no fewer than eight of the 11 Tory Assembly Members are also serving councillors – compare this with the Labour group which has just one serving councillor amongst its eight members. An active link with local government is certainly helpful for any political group, but the concern must be that too strong a link leads to a certain amount of group-think. To me, there seems to be some evidence that the local government way of thinking slips across into how many of the Tory AMs go about questioning the Mayor – it tends towards being infrequent and parochial.

So if quantity of questions still isn’t looking good for the Tories, what of the quality. I’m going to be charitable here, and suggest there is something of an upturn on this front in the past 12 months. There are a few more questions on strategic issues, and a bit less fighting of the last election. There are some worthwhile Tory questions, particularly with James Cleverly quite rightly pressing for action in the light of the recent impressively bad Bexley power failure. Nevertheless, as soon as Boris hits a bit of trouble with an election pledge, there’s always someone ready to wave the ‘Blame Livingstone’ flag. The afore-mentioned Mr O’Connell, for example, asks:

How frequently was the issue of Rape Crisis Centres raised at the MPA during the period 2000 to 2008?

And there’s still a fair share of silly questions. Andrew Boff asks:

What services are provided to payers of the Congestion Charge?

Er…roads? What more do you want? The ever ludicrous figure of the Mayor of Barnet is still winning the prizes on this front however, fighting valiantly against the greatest threat to the continuation of life in London: cyclists.

If all road users are equal in London will you now be instructing Transport for London to organise car convoys into Central London to help nervous car drivers?

This, of course, is in response to a remarkably sensible Boris policy, the Cycle Friday initiative. Although, to be fair to Coleman, he does succeed in pointing out admirably the ridiculous nature of the Kulveer Ranger-promoted abolition of road user hierachies. Then there is Coleman’s interesting take on Olympic sports:

Does the Mayor not think that the inclusion of women’s boxing at the Olympics is somewhat distasteful?

Now if I was Mayor, my response would be something like “I’ll tell you what I do find distasteful Brian, me old chum, it’s things like refusing to publish your expenses, not declaring gifts and spending more on taxis than everyone else in this room combined.” Why am I not Mayor?

I think my favourite Tory question, however, has got to be Richard Tracey’s comparison of apples and bananas:

What lessons do you think London can learn from the speed and efficiency with which Paris is upgrading its Metro?

Well, Richard, it’s 110 years too late to realise that deep level bored tubes are harder to upgrade than cut-and-cover undergrounds, about forty years too late to learn that investment needs to be continuous, not stop-start, ten years too late to learn that PPP is a ridiculously stupid idea, and dare I say it, over a year too late to realise that socialist mayors handle this sort of thing so much better. So, one or two lessons there for us all.

There’s a lot of good questions this time round from the opposition parties, but time forbids me from enumerating them here. I am, however, particularly grateful for Len Duvall’s question revealing (it was probably already revealed, but I missed it) that the LDA board refused funding for Boris’ Mayoral Academies scheme. Following the refusal, the Mayor has, apparently, forced the funding past the board by issuing a Mayoral Direction.

All perfectly legal, of course, but it would be very sad if the LDA became seen as the Mayor’s ‘personal cheque book’. That’s a rather ugly phrase and I can’t think where I picked it up. Was it perhaps the Evening Standard, circa late 2007? It must have been in those happy, halcyon days before ex-Mayoral Advisers were charged with fraud. And when “hands on the tiller” didn’t also seem to mean hands in the till.

Some things are predictable about the Edinburgh Fringe: it’ll rain, the ticket prices will have crept up again, by the end of your stay there you’ll have seen enough good stuff to not mind the hole in your bank balance and that someone will have a whinge about just how ‘lefty’ the whole thing is.

This year, the honour of providing that final ingredient falls to Mr Peter Whittle, writing in the Daily Telegraph under the oh-so-arch headline ‘Edinburgh Festival to feature smug Lefty Tory-bashing. Again. Yawn.’ This is the first time Mr Whittle’s work had crossed my radar, so I took the opportunity to have a skim through his Telegraph back catalogue. It’s something I’d strongly recommend doing yourself.

Mr Whittle, we are told, is the founder/director of The New Culture Forum. The good news is, that if Peter Whittle’s output is anything to go by, the New Culture will be poorly-written, ill-researched and predictable. Oh yes, he’s that good. When an online article straight-facedly carries the tags ‘Smug lefty comedians’ and ‘Smug lefty Radio 4′, genius is at work.

We could leave aside the school-boy factual howlers, well documented by the commenters on the original article, but given they serve to demonstrate just how heavily rooted in genuine research Mr Whittle’s work is, they are worth running through:

1) Starting an article with the words “The Edinburgh Festival looms…”, when it is published a mere twelve days after the start of The Fringe (which I assume he means).

2) “Richard Smith, Nick Doody and Stephen Carlin (who they?)”. Well, in one case, who they indeed. No-one seems to be able to trace a Richard Smith performing at Edinburgh. Does he mean Arthur Smith (who, thanks to researching this article, I know now went to school up the road from my house)? He’s not performing at Edinburgh, but he does have a brother called Richard – although he’s a doctor, not an anti-Cameron comedian. Oops. Oh, and we were lucky enough to catch Nick Doody’s show as our last before leaving Edinburgh and he certainly deserves no ‘who he?’ tag. Whilst Whittle has made me laugh almost as much as Doody, it has been for quite different reasons.

3) Introducing comedians by the names of ‘Marcus Brigstock’ and ‘Mark Steele’. Swap an ‘e’ and you’ll be there, Peter.

But enough of this easy point scoring. The central premise of Whittle’s article is that comedy (or, as he spells it ‘comedy’) is dominated by lazy, leftist, populist performers, who are interested only in attacking the Tories, or attacking Labour from the left. In his words: ‘For ‘cutting edge’, read smug, predictable, Leftish.’ This raises two questions: is it true, and should he/we care?

In response to the first question, I think Whittle is, whilst not wholly wrong about a slight leftwards bias, wrong about its nature and its dominance. In my experience of the Fringe this year, certainly the majority of the comedians I saw could be described as left-leaning, but that is at least partially through my own inclination to seek out politically aware comics whose general point of departure I’m likely to share. Now that’s almost certainly laziness on my part, but it’s my holiday, so I’ll do what I want. But even so, whilst I can’t claim to have seen any right-leaning comedy, there was plenty of non or barely political material to be found, and very enjoyable much of it was too: Stephen K Amos, Lucy Porter (quick dig at Jim Davidson and other Dubai tax evaders aside), Helen Keen, Ginger & Black, Paul Merton, The Boom Jennies. You don’t have to go and see shows called Is the Daily Mail Dead Yet (although you should). If there are no good centre-right comedians emerging, then that’s the centre-right’s problem. Perhaps if they didn’t have to put up with people like Whittle savaging their entire profession, more would lean that way. Or maybe its that people who make their living from observing the absurdities of the world tend to work out that those absurdities arise from the preservation of existing power relationships and prejudices. Or something.

But leaving such excuses aside, the truth of the matter is that Whittle is deliberately picking an easy target in the Edinburgh Fringe. Whilst there are big names there, the bulk of comedy at the Fringe is from lesser-known performers who aren’t in the mainstream and who certainly aren’t dominating comedy in the UK. When Mark Steel, Mark Thomas, Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, Jeremy Hardy and Marcus Brigstocke are playing nationwide arena tours including sell-outs at venues such as the O2, maybe Whittle will have a point. But this circuit, and almost the entire TV comedy output being dominated by broadly non-political comedians such as Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr, Ed Byrne and Al Murray (OK, I know Murray is sort of political, but as Richard Herring points out, a lot of his audience doesn’t seem to ‘get’ the irony). The Fringe is, by comparison, a real minority pursuit – as is Radio 4 comedy, Whittle’s other target. But even in Radio 4 land, most of the comedy output is of a pretty non-political nature.  It would take true McCarthyite zeal to find leftist bias in ISIHAC or Just a Minute, although in Peter Whittle we may have the man for the job.

Whittle claims that the current crop of comedians fails to tackle what he considers to be the major issues of the day, thanks to their political prejudices. To be more accurate, he thinks they fail to tackle them because some of them don’t come to the same conclusion as he does. Why don’t they tackle Islamic fundamentalism, he whinges? Well, if he bothered to go along to see Marcus Brigstocke’s [sic] show God Collar, Whittle would find that a substantial part of the show is taken up with Brigstocke berating Muslims for (direct quote) “putting their women in bags”. This has, unfairly to my mind, earned him a two-star review in The Guardian. And he certainly wasn’t the only ‘lefty’ comedian to raise the issue. But I suspect that when Whittle talks about Islamic fundamentalism he means bombing those uppity Arabs, rather than female emancipation. And why don’t they satirise the environmental movement? Well, many do, particularly of its more ridiculous fringes. But perhaps the reason why ‘leftist’ concepts like environmentalism and multiculturalism aren’t that funny is because they are based on boring things like science and reason. It’s concepts such as bigotry, blissful ignorance and the whole world view of The Daily Mail that are funny, simply because they are grounded on such hilariously basic miscomprehensions.

So, Whittle’s complaints are based on a highly selective choice of what counts as dominant comedy. But even if he was right, should we care? Nope. The Fringe receives practically no subsidy (and what it does it will re-coup many times over in increased tourist revenues), so why should Whittle have any say as to what goes on there? In many ways, the Fringe is the free market at work – except it isn’t, because allegedly no-one makes any money, so it really ought to shut up shop. On Radio 4, as a license-fee funded organisation, Whittle has a right to an opinion (or a reckon, as David Mitchell would call it). But given the vast majority of BBC broadcast comedy is non-political, it would seem a little unfair if it did not transmit at least a little left-leaning comedy, especially as there is (according to Whittle) an awful lot of it.

Of course, Whittle represents a little cog in the wheels of what he and his ilk self-style as the ‘culture wars’. Feeling that it has won the economic battle, sections of the right are mightily peeved that they have ‘lost’ the battle of culture. Culture, in this instance, means a lot more than just comedy – or indeed painting, sculpture, theatre, film or opera. It is a Trojan horse for how society functions – and so long as anyone other than Jim Davidson and Mike Reid are pulling in crowds to comedy shows, there are those who believe that we are only one step away from a sandal-wearing, compulsory-abortion caliphate. It ought to be a laughable point of view, but the sad truth is that two key members of Boris Johnson’s administration subscribe firmly to this world view: Munira Mirza and Anthony Browne. This latter sits on the New Culture Forum’s Advisory Panel, along with the man who will probably be the next Education Secretary, Michael Gove MP. Be, at least a little bit, afraid.

However, if all the proponents of this world view are as ill prepared to put across their arguments as Peter Whittle, civilisation as we know it may yet survive. According to Mr Whittle

Much of the laughter these people generate is of the hollow kind one hears when an audience is determined to laugh simply to make a point, to show that it is onside.

I’d love to see his evidence for that assertion, as it certainly wasn’t backed up at any of the ‘lefty’ gigs I went to in Edinburgh. My advice to Peter Whittle is to buy himself a train ticket and attend a few Fringe shows. As for myself, the next time I’m watching Brigstocke, or Boyle (who isn’t really left wing anyway), or Doody, or anyone else of their ilk, my laughter will be that much harder: I’ll be thinking of Mr Whittle’s disapproving, why-oh-why face.

In many ways I admire ConservativeHome. It’s an attractive, reasonably open and user-friendly site that does genuinely appear to seek to engage with the Party’s grass-roots activists and supporters.

It has a problem though – serving as it does as a bit of a shop window for the Tories, it does with some regularity highlight to the outside world the more, ahem, interesting points of view and personalities within the Party. You know, the sort any party would want to keep a little under wraps – it’s not a partisan thing, every party has them. However, ConservativeHome sometimes seems to go out of its way to highlight them. Take, for example, the innocuous sounding statement ‘Cllr Harry Phibbs edits ConservativeHome’s Local Government page‘. I don’t know a huge amount about said Cllr Phibbs, but I’m learning – largely through his own teachings. And the more I learn, the more I feel that an equivalent statement would be ‘Margaret Moran MP edits LabourHome’s Probity in Public Life page’.

Cllr Phibbs represents the Ravenscourt Park ward in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, flagship council of the Tory right since they took control in 2006 – tax-cutting, service-slashing, employee-bullying, homeless-bashing. The council’s most recent brush with the media spotlight has surrounded the intriguing views of Leader Stephen Greenhalgh about exactly for whom and where social housing should be provided. Some have intimated that his policies are almost Porter-esque. The Animal is saying nothing for fear of the libel courts.

I would hope, however, that even in Hammersmith & Fulham terms Cllr Phibbs would be considered to be 27 stops up the District Line from his ward (Barking, if you can’t be bothered to count). Certainly, he hasn’t been given a position on the council’s Executive. He does rejoice in the title of Chairman of the Value for Money Scrutiny Committee, but in a council where the governing party has a healthy majority, scrutiny positions are a great place to pension off the majority party’s drunken aunts (or equivalent) to. So its no surprise that this is the berth that Cllr Phibbs has been found. Adam Bienkov described him best in a tweet yesterday:

Harry Phibbs is a man out of his time really. Joseph McCarthy would have loved him.

If the evidence of his articles on ConservativeHome are anything to go by, Cllr Phibbs really does see a red under every bed. One of his latest missives, entitled ’Livingstone’s pernicious “equality” agenda is still in place at City Hall’ is an excellent example of the genre. In it, he manages to accuse some of the most right-leaning members of Boris Johnson’s administration of being little better than Trojan Horses for neo-communism. It really is worth a read, just to try to understand the mindset of some of our future overlords.

Having professed his undying love for Boris Johnson at every level, including the ‘aesthetic’, Phibbs decries the continuation in City Hall of what he describes as

Ken Livingstone’s ideology of quotas, interest groups, thought crime and racial separatism.

As evidence of this, he points to a draft of Deputy Mayor Richard Barnes’ Equalities Strategy, due for final publication tomorrow.

The draft has promised a commitment to ”eliminating institutional discrimination”, which includes “unwitting prejudice.” It states that Mayoral appointees will “reflect the diversity of London.”  It promises “responsible procurement”.

OK, so that’s a bit buzz-wordy and many would doubt Johnson’s genuine commitment to any of the above (‘Mayoral appointees reflecting the diversity of London’ – just as long as it isn’t gender diversity), but is any of it objectionable to any one who has had any contact with the modern world? Well, yes, if you are Harry Phibbs. He asks

What is the “right level of representation” for ethnic groups in the workforce?

going on later to note that the LDA’s Race Equality Plan 2005-08 which

sets targets for ‘BAME’ employment within the LDA and GLA, usually at around 25%. This hasn’t been updated yet under the new administration, and as far as I know, there has been no public discussion about the direction it will go in.

Now, considering that according to the 2001 census, the ‘non-white British’ classification represents 38.8% of London’s population, 25% BAMErepresentation seems a pretty realistic target. An organisation with a London-wide catchment that is recruiting at much below that level is going to be one where most Londoners are going to walk through the doors and notice that the workforce looks a bit odd. I assume that Cllr Phibbs and I would agree that merit and ability is pretty much evenly spread across racial groups, so if a large organisation isn’t recruiting at something approaching the 25% level, there is almost certainly some kind of internal reason. I couldn’t speculate myself as to what those might be, but perhaps Cllr Phibbs, as a member of a council with just two elected members (out of 46) from a visible ethnic minority – both Labour councillors, incidentally – representing a borough with over a BME population of over 20%, might care to enlighten us. Could it be ‘unwitting prejudice’? No, for this exists not in Phibbs-world.

Then we move forward to slur by association.

The Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse, leads on policing and helped set up the Met’s Race and Faith Inquiry, which will be published in September. It is chaired by Cindy Butts, the independent member of the MPA. An old mate of Lee Jasper’s (they are friends on Facebook still). Previously she was a researcher for two Labour MPs, Clive Soley and Melanie Johnson. The panel itself seems rather one-sided.

Friends on Facebook, indeed! Now apart from the slight issue of freedom of association, particularly with individuals such as Mr Jasper who have been cleared of any serious wrong-doing by God knows how many investigations, my understanding of the status of ‘friends’ on Facebook was that such relationships were not of the same status as real life friends (excuse me if I’ve got this wrong – the Animal doesn’t really do this MyFaceBo thingy). I know councillors who have councillors from other parties as ‘Friends’. Does that mean they’re about to defect? I dread to imagine what recruitment processes will look like when Cllr Phibs rules the world – presumably full background checks on everyone you’ve ever followed on Twitter will be in order.

And then the ‘rather one-sided’ panel. Its hard to work out what Cllr Phibbs means by this, unless perhaps, he is referring to the shocking fact that three of the four members of a panel examining racism in the Met are…black! And the other member is a lawyer who defended Deborah Lipstadt against David Irving. Perhaps Phibbs has a point – this panel is very open to the serious charge of being potentially biased in favour of anti-racism.

It’s when Cllr Phibbs goes on to try to present ex-Policy Exchange Director Anthony Browne as some kind of stalking horse for multiculturalism and ‘political correctness’ that we realise he has sunk to the level of self-parody. To round it all off, Phibbs get on one of his favourite hobby horses: the GLA’s diversity officers. Johnson has, in his eyes, committed an unpardonable sin in not sacking them all tout suite- the possibility that on being elected Boris Johnson may have found that these officers are in fact valuable and useful being unthinkable. Given that the eleven officers are identifiable individuals, Phibbs appears to sail mighty close to libel when he writes that

they are ideologues, not professional functionaries.

Of course, the great thing about people like Phibbs is that we can rely on other elements of the rightist commenteriat, both professional and amateur, will go out of their way to prove themselves even more unpleasant than the original writer. Below Phibbs’ piece (and I do hope, for the good of the country, that these writers are not Conservative Party members), we get some very choice views. Lindsay Jenkins, who apparently has written books under the understated titles The Last Days of Britain; The Final Betrayal and Britain Held Hostage (with dramatic new foreword by Frederick Forsyth!) asks us:

How much do the 11 diversity officers and their dancing attendants [a dancing attendant? I never got one of them at the GLA, goddammit] cost us?

And whatever that sum is, let us double it and then some because we the taxpayers are not getting the best person for the job we are getting skin pigmentation first and foremost.

Nice. Meanwhile, the delightful ‘john in cheshire’ (poor Cheshire) engages in reasoned debate with a commenter named Marjorie Bayliss who gently suggested that the lot of women had improved since the 1950s.

You silly bitch

he opines. There’s plenty more where that came from, leading up to some impressive conclusions.

Men are inherently better than women and white men are at the apex.

Given he’s such a reasoned chap, I wonder if anything makes ‘john in cheshire’ unhappy? Ah, good, he’s going to tell us.

You and your womankind, and the socialists and the muslims of this world make me sick.

If that’s physically sick, Cheshire County Council is going to need to invest in some brooms to clear up the vomit that ensues when ‘john’ meets somewhat more than half the nation’s population. An interesting experiment might be to place this individualal in a closed room with a female Muslim socialist and to record the outcome. Thankfully there are a few more reasoned commentators. Patrick Ratnaraja writes:

The Deputy Mayor Richard Barnes is doing a fantastic job with all communities. One must accept that Lodon is a diverse City. Reading comments on this website really makes me think why I am still a Conservative. I would rather be a member of the BNP as I cannot see any difference.

Hmm. No further comment.

And there’s just as much ‘fun’ to be had in the professional commenteriat as well. Ed West ‘writes’ in the Telegraph under the considered headline ‘Why has Boris failed to reject Ken’s legacy of ‘diversity officers’ and race politics?‘. I say ‘writes’ because of the 623 words in the article, 392 are a direct copy and paste from Phibbs – I do wish I was paid to press Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v. West seems to share Phibbs’ Facebook hang up:

Why? Why? WHY? No “old mate of Lee Jasper’s” should still be in City Hall. None of Jasper’s Facebook friends, none of his tennis partners, no women he’s flirted with or comrades he’s gone on fact-finding junkets with should still be there.

A point of factual accuracy first – Cindy Butts isn’t ‘in City Hall’, but is an independent member of the MPA. More importantly, the key word there is ‘independent’ – attempting to remove an independent member of the MPA, appointed through a public recruitment process for a four year term, would be a gross breach of office by the Mayor, whatever the reason. If the justification was simply that she happens to know Lee Jasper, Boris’ feet wouldn’t touch the ground before they reached an employment tribunal.

Then West moves on to attempt to postulate that the 2008 London election results demonstrate that London is becoming an

American-style racially divided city, thanks to runaway immigration and white flight, and in those sorts of societies people vote for their tribal party.

For a columnist who goes on to decry ‘identity politics’ to talk about ‘tribal parties’ is an irony of the highest order, leaving aside the lack of evidence for ‘white flight’ in London (As this GLA publication shows, a growth in ethnic diversity rather than ghettoisation is prevalent across all of London, including the outer boroughs). As Phibbs et al keep telling us, socio-economics are a better guage that race. In this case they are right – demographic movements towards outer London relate far more to people who attain some level of wealth chosing to move outwards, regardless of ethnicity. The defiantly outer London Borough of Harrow is a prime example of this, with a majority BME population. The claim that London is dividing along racial lines is a favourite of sections of the right (normally using it to claim that these divisions are fostered by the anti-racist left), despite the lack of any genuine evidence to back it up.

Which brings us to West’s peroration.

For the Conservatives to cooperate with black racial identity politics is suicide, because the sort of black voters who believe their problems are down to racism and lack of taxpayer’s money, and not fatherlessness and a culture of violence and ignorance, are not going to vote Conservative.

No, Ed. The reason the majority of black people in this country (and a large number of white people as well) are not going to vote Conservative is because the Party is supported by people who engage in sweeping statements about cultures ‘of violence and ignorance’ in relation to entire ethnic groups and who refuse to accept that racism has played even the teeniest little part in the position of ethnic minorities in Britain today.

West is depressing and unpleasant. But hey, look on the bright side, Phibbs is just funny (unless you live in Hammersmith, of course). And if I can say one good thing about the current administration in City Hall, it’s that Cllr Harry Phibbs has very little influence over it. Which means we can look forward to more unintentionally hilarious headbanging from the honourable member for Ravenscourt Park for some while yet.

Bulgarian Parliament, Sofia

What Harold Macmillan would describe as ‘events, dear boy, events’ have prevented me from catching up on two European parliamentary elections held in the past couple of weeks. One was disastrous for the European centre left, the other mildly encouraging.

Bulgaria went to the polls on 5th July to elect its 240-seat National Assembly, with 87% of the seats being awarded nationally through a new proportional system. The remaining seats are elected through plurality rule.

Until the elections, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) headed a coalition government with the centrist Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) under Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. In common with many avowedly centre-left governments in the former Soviet bloc, the actual programme of the coalition took a decidedly rightwards slant, including the introduction of a 10% flat tax rate. Throughout its four-year term of office, Stanishev’s government was mired in allegations of corruption and entered the election very much on the back foot, trailing the centre-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria(GERB) grouping – itself founded as recently as 2006 and led by Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov.

In the event, the result was about as disastrous for the BSP as it could possibly be, losing more than half its seats, taking it to just 40, and not winning a single one of the majoritarian seats. The seat tally leaves the BSP narrowly behind it’s former junior coalition partner, the DPS. From a base of zero, GERB ended up with an overall majority, obtaining 142 seats. Beyond the disastrous result for the Socialists, the 2009 elections seem to have confirmed the continuing instability of the party system in Bulgaria’s relatively young democracy, with a number of previously powerful parties suffering badly. These included the National Movement for Stability and Progress which had the unique distinction of being led by former Tsar Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was subsequently Prime Minister between 2001 and 2005. From such heady heights, the National Movement lost all its remaining seats in 2009, leading to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s resignation as leader. Other centre-right parties have also been heavily squeezed by GERB’s new-found dominance.

Bulgaria’s results are sumarised below:

*: Comparisons are with the United Democratic Forces coalition, which fought the 2005 election with a similar membership.

Albania held elections on 28th June, also under a newly introduced proportional system. The 140 seats in the Kuvendi are now divided between 12 regional constituencies, with between 32 and 4 seats in each.

Since 2005, Albania has been governed by the Bashkimi për Fitoren (Union for Victory), a grouping of centre-right parties overwhelmingly dominated by the Partia Demokratike e Shqipërisë (Democratic Party of Albania) – this followed eight years of socialist rule from 1997.

In the run-up to the 2009 elections, the centre-right coalition, led by Prime Minsiter Sali Berisha rebranded itself as Aleance e Ndryshimit (Alliance of Changes), composed of no fewer than 21 parties. The primary opposition coalition is led by Socialist International member Partia Socialiste e Shqipërisë, heading a slightly less unwieldy coalition of five parties (Bashkimi për Ndryshim – Unification for Changes), including Albania’s other SI member, the Partia Socialdemokrate e Shqipërisë. Two other smaller coalitions also contested the election, including the ostensibly more left leaning Aleanca Socialiste për Integrim, led by Lëvizja Socialiste për Integrim (Socialist Movement for Integration).

With previous elections being mired in controversy and apparent corruption, the conduct of the 2009 election was being widely viewed as a litmus test for Albania’s application for EU membership, which is supported by both major parties. Indications are that the elections process has, for the first time, been given a clean bill of health by international observers.

Opinion polls in the run-up to the election predicted a very close result, with the centre-left coalition polling very similar numbers to the governing coalition. The final result was indeed tight, with the government edging ahead by less than 1.5% of the vote and 3 seats. In terms of individual vote shares, the Socialists were the largest party, taking 40.84% of the vote, compared with the Democratic Party’s 40.00%. However, the sheer weight of the other twenty parties in the centre-right coalition pushed this grouping ahead over all, despite the fact that just four of them achieved over 0.5% of the vote.

Whilst the centre-left advanced, it wasn’t quite far enough. With 70 seats (out of 140) for the centre-right, the parliament was perfectly tied, the other 70 seats being divided 66/4 between the two left-leaning lists. The Democratic Party could have attempted to govern alone with its coalition in a minority scenario. However, it instead took the interesting step of successfully concluding coalition talks with the Socialist Movement for Integration. Indeed, so successful were they that the leader of the Movement, Ilir Meta, has now leftthe party and joined the Democratic Party, in order to ‘avert a political crisis’. After such a controversial move, and with such a slim majority in parliament, it remains to be seen just how strong or long-lived Sali Berisha’s second government proves to be.

Full results are below – due to the shift from a partly to fully proportional electoral system, it is not feasible to compare vote shares between 2005 and 2009. Only those parties which hold seats in the new parliament are included.

Henin-Beaumont – I don’t normally cover local elections here, let alone local by-elections, but the recent results in the northern French town of Henin-Beaumontare worth noting, particularly in the light of BNP advances in Britain, if only to prove that no matter how dark things look, the anti-fascist majority is there to be mobilised.

Henin-Beaumont is a highly depressed, former coal-mining centre in the Pas de Calais, registering high levels of unemployment and economic inactivity. Following the imprisonment of the Parti Socialiste mayor Gerard Dalongeville for the embezzlement of around 4 million euros, the town faced a difficult series of municipal by-elections, which could have passed control to the far-right Front National, the first time they would have won a municipality since 1995. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen has been courting France’s ex-industrial north for several years, believing – probably with some justification – that any new breakthrough for the struggling party would come here, rather than in its traditional south-eastern strongholds. Henin-Beaumont provided the perfect storm for her – economic despair combined with massive corruption in the ‘establishment’ parties. Marine Le Pen was placed second on the FN’s list for the elections.

It was no great surprise that in the first round of voting on 28th June, the FN topped the poll. The shock, rather, was by how much, with the party taking almost 40% of the vote, only very slightly less than twice the 20% share of independent left-wing candidate Daniel Duquenne. In a former stronghold, the Parti Socialiste scored just 17%. In a two-round electoral system, a candidate taking 40% of the vote in the first round would seem almost certain of victory in the second. Indeed, the FN leadership made no secret of the fact that it considered Henin-Beumont in the bag, particularly as talks faltered between the other parties over how many, and which, candidates should go forward to challenge the FN list.

Thankfully, despite the early difficulties, a ‘Front républicain’ was formed behind Duquenne, with the PS, the far left and Sarkozy’s UMP all calling for a vote for him against the extreme right. Astonishingly, given the first round figures, it worked, and on 5th July Duquenne was elected Mayor with 52.3% of the vote. Too tight to take much comfort, granted, but an important lesson in the need for unity in extremis. With any luck, this narrow defeat will prevent a domino effect in northern France for the FN and their message of division and hate.

Printed in Southwark: not all that interested in reporting on it

I am Political Animal, and I am a secret purchaser of the Evening Standard.

Well, just once in fact, so perhaps I don’t need to head for Standardholics Anonymous just yet. But yesterday, the sun was shining, there was 50p burning a hole in my pocket and my train home was 5 minutes late. So I gave in to temptation. But, honestly folks, I had a motive. I wanted to check a hunch I had. Bear with me.

I’ve written before about the running fiasco that is the Elephant & Castle regeneration project. This is probably the biggest such project in Europe and affects the homes and businesses of thousands of people in one of the most deprived areas of inner London. It includes thousands of new homes, businesses and transport facilities. Well, on Wednesday the newswires(alright, Google News Alerts, but that makes me sound so much less important) alerted me to the latest depressing development – or rather, non-development – in the saga. With the project already around seven years behind the original timescale, the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition at Southwark Council have failed to meet their self-imposed deadline of 1st July to reach a deal to progress the project. This follows two years of exclusive negotiations with struggling Australian property giant Lend Lease (also responsible for the Olympic Village) – the exclusivity deal expired on Wednesday. Where this leaves the project is anyone’s guess – in these difficult financial times it is entirely possible that Lend Lease will refuse the meet Southwark’s demands on affordable homes, small business premises and green space protection and simply walk away, leading to years more of delays. The thousand households in the soon-to-be-demolished Heygate Estate are effectively in limbo: no-one knows when their replacement homes will be built and the council is years behind targets in building the temporary ’decant’ homes.

This very brief account barely scratches the surface – and there is blame to be levelled in all directions: a Tory-Lib Dem local authority, a Labour government, a Conservative Mayor and multinational corporations have all played parts, of variable importance, in delaying the scheme. It’s a great London story, you’d think, for a bit of investigative journalism – human drama, political incompetence, corporate greed – and all on the boundary of Zone 1, as well.

Time, then,  to check the coverage in London’s very own paper – you, know, the one that was sorry for being complacent, predictable, etc.

Wednesday – nothing, but then they wouldn’t have known for certain that the deadline was going to be missed before the paper went to bed.

Thursday – Hmm. Still nothing. The print edition finds room for a double page spread on Carla Bruni’s friend, a page on some road reconfiguration in the West End and the City Spy column reprints the previous day’s Mandelson-Osborne spat as if it was hot off the press gossip.

Friday – Two days on, still nothing. I thought a column in the property section entitled “Mammoth project that may turn into a white elephant” would surely be about the pachyderm-related Elephant & Castle regeneration. Nope – it’s some new development in EC3.

I don’t think you could want for a better demonstration that whilst the faces at the Standard have changed, its news values – which were what really dragged it down hill – haven’t changed. It’s still to all intents and purposes a rag for and about west London socialites. Poorer, more ethnically diverse neighbourhoods south of the river need not apply for coverage. Further delays to the Elephant are big news for many thousands of people in Southwark and beyond – but the newspaper either deliberately ignores, or simply overlooks – no doubt through a lack of basic newsgathering skills for areas outside of the Notting Hill triangle – what may be the biggest story of the year for the borough in which their paper is printed.

In the comments on the greenwich.co.uk site, excellent Charlton blogger 853 (prompted by the paper’s apparent support for Richard Branson’s plans to remove the Marathon route from ‘unglamarous’ Greenwich) takes departing Standard scribe Andrew Gilligan to task over the newspaper’s utter disinterest in south London, particularly the eastern quadrant. As he rightly says:

I don’t think there’s a well-worn dartboard in the editor’s office with Lewisham as the bullseye, but it’s the whole error by omission thing, isn’t it? South-east London is rarely covered, and when has been recently it’s been dismissed – the Olympics piece above, Jenkins’ old crap about Crossrail, and and its dismissal of transport improvements around here as “vanity projects”. 

The complete failure to cover the Elephant is another example of error by omission. Memo to Messrs Grieg and Lebvedev: if you want to expand your circulation, you have to expand your market base. Why should a resident of the Heygate Estate shell out 50p for a paper that doesn’t see fit to cover what is (or rather is not) happening to them? Campaigning for a ’seat for every commuter’ taps you into one market, no matter how unachievable the campaign aim. But what about campaigning for ‘a decent home for every Londoner’? It won’t sell many more editions amongst the Tunbridge Wells-bound passengers of the 17:38 from Cannon Street, but it might sell a few on the number 12 bendy bus down the Walworth Road. Just a thought.