London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
The most frustrating thing about the mayoral election result wasn’t the result. It wasn’t the waiting, either. It was the coverage.
There can’t be many places in the world where an election in which the winner gets one million personal votes, and gets to play with a multi-billion pound budget, has to jostle with news of far away provincial polls. It certainly wouldn’t happen in New York, where TV channel NY1 tracks mayor Michael Bloomberg’s every move.
But that was what happened in London. With no dedicated TV channel of our own, we were forced to rely on Sky and the BBC for updates from City Hall, who interspersed it with reheated soundbites from elections elsewhere, sports updates, newspaper reviews and a whole Ten O’Clock News.
Worse still, the BBC dimmed its own local TV stars – political editor Tim Donovan and presenter Riz Lateef – and shoehorned national big gun Jon Sopel in front of the camera. Sopel’s a great journalist where it comes to Westminster politics – but a tourist at City Hall, and it showed.
If you wanted to know your own local results, you were out of luck.
The decline of local media’s been well documented elsewhere, but it’s been felt hard in London, where some boroughs don’t even have a paid-for weekly newspaper. It affected an election where policies and sensible debate hardly got a look-in for all the personality clashes and mudslinging.
It hasn’t always been this way. Once, the Thames TV skyline and LWT’s river-inspired ribbons left you in no doubt you were watching ITV in London, with both stations producing hours of local journalism, discussion and entertainment. Meanwhile Capital Radio was just that – radio for the capital.
But now both of those have been swallowed up into bland nationwide brands, with local news an afterthought. The BBC picked up some of the slack by creating BBC London News a decade ago, but it’s woefully underfunded compared to its counterparts in Wales and Scotland, who cover far fewer people with far bigger budgets and much more airtime. In addition, local TV news in London has always rated lower as fewer people are at home by 6pm to tune in.
Worse still, the BBC’s snobbery about “local news” meant when BBC London had a genuine scoop – about Boris Johnson’s links with News International, and the resulting on-camera outburst – the national bulletins stayed well clear of it, denying the story the audience it deserved.
So London never really saw its election through its own eyes – instead, it got a narrow Westminster village vision of the toff versus the tax-avoider, a black and white view of an election of varying hues.
Would Ken’s energy co-op have been a goer? Can Boris be as good as his word on creating apprenticeships? Would Brian Paddick have been a great police reformer? All questions that should have been asked, but weren’t.
There may be much more media around us than 20 or 30 years ago, but opportunities to hear or read serious discussion about our city have declined. We don’t even have a serious daily newspaper covering London issues any more, after the Evening Standard spent a second election slavishly backing Boris.
In a sharply-divided city, such uncritical support for either candidate means kissing goodbye to your credibility – but backing the winner probably gets owner Evgeny Lebedev into a few more parties.
Worse still for the Standard, it largely ignored the growing story of cyclists’ safety, presumably because it was a weak issue for Boris.
Instead, it was championed by The Times after a journalist at the national title was seriously hurt riding to work. This was a story the Standard should have owned – instead, it was The Times who organised a hustings on the issue and pushed forward the debate, leaving the tired old Standard looking irrelevant once again.
Can the web ever fill the gap? Londonist’s fact-checking stories scored hits, while Mayorwatch, Snipe and newcomer The Big Smoke also ran election stories. But we’re all small fish in a pond dominated by some big names.
The Guardian is best placed to fill the gap, but seems reluctant to create a “London” section to give a home to its excellent London writer Dave Hill and the various comment and analysis pieces. Instead its capital coverage spills out across the site, annoying northerners and diluting its impact. The Telegraph could do the same, while the BBC’s London web coverage badly needs the love and investment its counterparts in Wales and Scotland get.
With Ken digging up the garden and Boris presumably off to hunt a bigger prize, the next mayoral election will bring a new, lesser-known cast of characters to the London stage. The era of the celebrity mayor may well be over – making it much more vital that London develops its own media to cover it. Are we up to the challenge?
We don't have Brian Coleman to kick around any longer. And that's okay.
“If I lose, get the fucking shredders running immediately” Tory London Assembly Member Brian Coleman reportedly told his helpers before a previous London Assembly election.
In the end the shredders weren’t required that time, and Coleman was re-elected for yet another term of front page controversy, public slanging matches, and taxpayer-funded taxi fares.
A regular feature not just in the local press but also in the tabloids, Coleman has good claim to being called the most famous local politician in Britain. In any case, he is certainly the most famous London Assembly Member ever, gathering more press coverage than all of the others put together.
Coleman first hit the headlines after claiming for £10,000 worth of taxi fares in just one year on the Assembly. This was long before the expenses scandal, and the current era of austerity, but the intervening years have not lessened Brian’s spending power.
In his second role as chairman of London’s Fire authority, Brian has spent thousands of pounds on official lunches, wine and flowers for his friends and colleagues. When not dining at our expense, Coleman accepted countless gifts and meals from the rich and powerful, including a £350 luxury hamper from the boss of a company later awarded a multimillion pound contract by the brigade.
Not happy to merely live the good life, Brian has made it his mission to offend as many people as he possibly can. Britain’s Olympic atheletes were told that they had “the blood of Tibetans” on their hands whilst a woman beaten by the police was told that she had got what she deserved. A woman struggling to pay her rent was told to “live in the real world” and London’s firefighters were accused of being thick thugs.
He called a nurse at a public meeting a “twat” and made a canteen worker at his offices cry. And in the first case of it’s kind, Coleman was censured for sending an abusive message to a blogger, and not the other way around.
In the process he has made many enemies but also a few friends. Speaking to his opponents on the London Assembly, I have often been surprised at the warm words they express for a man who in public seems so difficult to like. Perhaps there’s another softer side to him that we haven’t seen. A kind heart that only a mother can see. And indeed Coleman’s mother has seen that side, being his regular chaperone at public functions. Her taxi bill has of course, often been charged to us.
But as the years went by, the number of Coleman’s friends dwindled and his number of enemies grew. “He’s just pissed off too many people” admitted one of Brian’s most loyal defenders to me recently.
Amongst those most pissed off were Brian’s constituents. His decision to hike parking charges in Barnet was deeply unpopular with people who might otherwise be his core supporters. A growing coalition of bloggers, politicians and even Tory-supporting activists launched a highly successful campaign against him. Posters urging people to “vote Boris, sack Brian” were designed, petitions were launched and even a film was premiered.
Rather than change his policy or try to win over his critics, Brian typically went on the attack. As one opinion poll showed that he was likely to lose his Assembly seat, Brian went on the rampage in Barnet, haranguing shopkeepers who had put up posters criticising him for the “murder of Barnet’s high streets.”
“He was going mad and shouting. He was right in my face and wouldn’t leave when I asked him. He was intimidating” said the owner of one hair salon. “It was really quite distressing” said the owner of another shop. He later released images from a CCTV camera showing Coleman entering the sweetshop and shouting at the owner. Another image just showed Coleman standing by the till with his head in his hands.
If England is a nation of shopkeepers then Brian was intent on losing their votes one by one. And when the final tally came in from the Assembly elections last week Coleman had lost his 20,000 majority and was 20,000 behind his Labour opponent Andrew Dismore.
With his high-spending, high-offending ways, Coleman represented the very worst of local politics. The perfect archetypal Tory boor, his loss will in some ways be felt more by his political opponents than by his own party.
Without him, the London Assembly will probably be a far duller body to watch. It will also undoubtedly be a better one.
Boris Johnson's fire chief spends £1000 on lunch for Tory chums
The man Boris Johnson charged with making huge cuts to London’s Fire Brigade has been slammed for spending thousands of pounds of taxpayers money on lunches for his chums.
The Tory Chairman of the London Fire Authority Brian Coleman, splashed almost £1000 this March on a three course meal, wine and flowers for a group of his fellow London Tories.
Guests included the Tory head of the Local Government Association Sir Merrick Cockell, Tory London Assembly Member Richard Tracey, Brian Coleman himself and another Mayoral appointee.
Waiters served the politicians crab and avocado salad with lemon mayonnaise, chicken served with date and apple stuffing, lemon tart with raspberry coulis and bottles of Neblina Sauvignon Blanc.
The lavish lunch for his fellow Tories was held in the same building as London’s Fire Brigade museum which Coleman has threatened with closure.
Last year Coleman, who is one of the highest paid councillors in the country, spent a further £2000 of taxpayers cash on a retirement meal for one of his colleagues.
Two years ago he was heavily criticised after it emerged that he had accepted a number of lunches and a £350 hamper from the boss of a company later awarded a multi million pound contract by the fire brigade.
A spokesperson for the London Fire Brigade Union said: “It is hugely dispiriting when firefighters see their bosses frittering away large sums of money on slap-up lunches for their political chums. We’ll remember incidents like this the next time they come demanding more cutbacks.”
Labour’s Murad Qureshi said: “Boris Johnson must now justify such expenditure in these austere times when councils and fire authorities have had to make tens of millions of cuts to their services. We are clearly not all in it together.”
When asked at a recent meeting how much the meal had cost, Brian Coleman claimed that he had “not seen the bill.” He added that “I was a little disappointed that Labour Members were not able to attend the lunch, where we fully briefed [Sir Merrick] on a number of very relevant issues.”
A shorter version of this story appears in today’s Daily Mirror
The Evening Standard: even more pro-Boris than in 2008?
On Sunday, the Mayor of London was caught lying in order to avoid an interview with BBC London’s Tom Donovan.
The next day he was booed at a cyclists hustings and told a reporter to “stuff Donovan and his fucking bollocks.”
None of this made the Evening Standard.
They did however find room for a double page spread titled “Johnson: my vision for future of the ‘greatest city on Earth’”
The next day they also found room for several comment pieces backing Boris’s re-election including one from his biographer and good friend Andrew Gimson.
Titled “Boris Johnson’s expletives are livening up the London Mayoral race” it read:
“Boris Johnson has once again shown his ability to talk like a member of the working classes… Here’s a posh boy with the common touch. It’s the sort of thing a market trader or a cabbie might say… Boris’s explosions may betray the fact that he is under enormous pressure, but they have also livened up what could have been a deadly dull campaign.”
The paper also featured endorsements from senior business figures, one of whom said he was backing Boris because Ken “once opened a library” near him.
The paper’s editor (and close family friend of the Johnsons) Sarah Sands wrote in her own editorial that “Boris is a debunker of established power in general and tyranny in particularly” and described him as “a populist who is nevertheless well insulated against megalomania.”
Today’s front page is simply a quote from the Prime Minister saying “I want a Boris in every City – You don’t have to be a Tory to vote Boris”
Now there’s nothing wrong with a newspaper being biased. The Daily Telegraph and the Mail are both biased in favour of the Conservatives.
But the difference with those papers is that they don’t suppress every major story about their favoured party or friends.
If David Cameron were to launch into a sweary rant about Nick Robinson on TV, or get booed at a cyclist hustings after insulting the audience, then they would cover it.
Similarly if the government was involved in a pension scandal, or if one of Cameron’s flagship schemes collapsed then they wouldn’t suppress it.
Sadly the same can no longer be said about the Evening Standard.
And it’s not for a lack of good journalists. People like the paper’s City Hall editor Pippa Crerar and Ross Lydall have done a good job of holding the mayor to account over the years.
But an editorial decision was made at the start of this election campaign to forget their previous apologies and promises and give Boris Johnson as easy a ride as possible.
And in some ways the paper’s coverage of this election has been even worse than in 2008.
Back then the anti-Ken headlines and billboards were over the top but at least Wadley didn’t ignore or downplay every story that was potentially embarrassing for Boris.
And while they vigorously attacked Ken Livingstone, at least then they could claim that they were simply holding the current Mayor to account.
What is their excuse now?
Boris Johnson's sweary tirade at BBC London reporter
Boris Johnson today told a BBC London reporter to “stuff [Tim] Donovan and his fucking bollocks” after he was asked a question about his links to News International.
Boris’s extraordinary on-camera outburst follows a report by BBC London’s political editor into the Mayor’s commercial and political links to the Murdochs.
It also follows a remarkable finger-jabbing interview between Boris’s deputy Kit Malthouse and Donovan on the Sunday Politics yesterday.
Boris had been repeatedly invited to appear on the show following similar interviews with other mayoral candidates, but refused citing a long-standing “private engagement.”
Tweets from supporters later revealed that he was in fact campaigning on the streets of Wimbledon as the show went on air.
The relationship between BBC London and the Mayor has long been a difficult one.
I understand that Boris’s campaign have refused to send out press releases to BBC London detailing where he will be during the campaign.
Even more extraordinarily their reporters have been asked to pre-submit questions by Boris’s campaign before they arrive at campaign events.
Predictably Boris’s supporters are now trying to smear Donovan as a biased “leftist.”
In reality Donovan was one of the biggest thorns in Ken Livingstone’s side during his mayoralty, and was one of the leading figures to investigate Lee Jasper.
Boris’s comments today, and Malthouse’s performance yesterday show an aggressive bully-boy side to his administration that has never before been seen publicly.
With the key factor in Boris’s re-election being his “likeability” over Ken, it is pretty risky for him to show it in public now.
UPDATE Mathew sent us a copy of Political Scrapbook’s version of the video.
BRIAN PADDICK LIBERAL DEMOCRATS LONDON ELECTION
Paddick's pamphlet porkies part 2: North London's rogues' gallery
Following on from this morning’s story about Brian Paddick using Lib Dem activists to pose as “Londoners” in his election leaflet, we’ve just been sent the North London version of Paddick’s pamphlet.
It’s very nice of Brian to print different leaflets for different parts of London, so what’s the thinking on the ex-copper north of the river?
Let’s take that chap on the right. “The Lib Dems have got plans to crack down on rogue landlords and get a fair deal for tenants.” Hold on, isn’t that what the fella in south London – Liberal Youth activist “Bobby Dean of New Cross” is saying? Oh yes it is. In fact, all the quotes are the same as the south London leaflet.
So who’s this keen convert to the Paddick cause? Ah, only Brian Haley, a former Haringey councillor who had a pop at the Lib Dem mayoral nomination himself.
The others probably didn’t need much convincing to back Paddick either. From the left is Crouch End-based activist Salim Mamdani (who does a nice
sideline in palm reading), former Lib Dem candidate in Bounds Green Cara Jenkinson and Craig Brown, campaign chair of the Haringey Lib Dems.
They make those Lib Dems work hard in Haringey, you know.
So that’s four out of four fake “Londoners” in Paddick’s North London leaflet – with not even an endorsement from a curry house like on the South London leaflet.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not just the Lib Dems up to this trickery- thanks to Helen for reminding us that many of the bloggers on the Back Boris website are Tory activists. And there’s been some familiar faces around Ken Livingstone as he’s posed for photos while ticking each borough off his itinerary.
Maybe it’s just too much for the mayoral candidates to find any genuine endorsements? If you spot any other pamphlet porkies from any candidate, let us know.
UPDATE Adam just ferreted out this 13 April tweet from @LibDemLife:
Real choice, indeed.
Earlier today: Can Brian Paddick find any ordinary Londoners to back him?
With research and photo by Fiona Garden.
BOBBY DEAN BRIAN PADDICK DUWYANE BROOKE ELECTION 2012 ELIANE PATTON LIB DEMS
Can Brian Paddick find any ordinary Londoners to back him?
Finally, we’re getting towards the end of what’s arguably been the most negative, bitter, and dirty election campaign in British history.
Whether all the anger and attacks will lure Londoners out to vote for one man to chuck the other one out remains to be seen.
But beyond the battle between Boris and Ken, you’d hope the other parties would have the freedom to be a bit more honest in their election material?
Not so for Brian Paddick’s campaign, where he seems to have struggled to find ordinary voters to endorse him for the mayoralty.
Leaflets being shoved through doors across the capital show a panel of punters headlined: “What Londoners say about Brian Paddick’s Lib Dem team.”
The one in the centre knows more about the Lib Dems than most – because he’s the Liberal Democrat councillor for Downham ward on Lewisham Council. Step forward, “Duwayne Brooks of Lewisham”, who is in line to be Paddick’s deputy mayor for policing if he wins.
On the left is “Eliane Patton of Merton” – she knows a bit about elections herself, having stood for the Lib Dems in elections to Merton Council, most recently in the Lavender Fields ward in Mitcham in 2010.
And what about young “Bobby Dean of New Cross” on the right? Surely no relation to the Bobby Dean who’s the communications officer of Liberal Youth, is it? Ah, the very one.
Which leaves us with the Jhootis of Peckham and the lads from the Tower Tandoori. Those aside, couldn’t Paddick’s team have found anyone else in a city of seven million people who aren’t active Lib Dems to back him?
The Lib Dems are notorious among their political rivals for made-up “winning here!” graphs on leaflets, although they’re not the only party to have used that tactic – or to have stuck members or councillors in the place of real people, saying words that no real person would say in the real world.
The Labour party in Greenwich were particularly shameless in the 2010 council elections, with former leader Quentin Marsh posing as an ordinary voter to claim Labour had made “a huge difference” to his local Charlton ward. I’m sure you could find examples in your own local area if you spent five minutes on Google.
But these are council elections, where the candidates often struggle to be household names in their own homes. Using party figures in an election where the votes run into millions doesn’t bode well for the Paddick campaign.
Or maybe they just think we’re a bit stupid. “Look for the bird,” the leaflet advises on what to do on polling day. By the end of the week, we’ll know whether Paddick will fly high – or whether Londoners have given him the bird instead.
Labour lashes out at "biased" Evening Standard coverage
The Chairman of the London Labour Party has accused the Evening Standard of “suppressing” negative stories about Boris Johnson.
Labour Assembly Member Len Duvall who is a key ally of Ken Livingstone said during an interview with me for Greenwich.co.uk: that the paper had “pulled it’s punches” on the Mayor.
“There was the pension scandal at Visit London. There was the failure of the young black mentoring project. Where was the Standard there? They were crusading on that issue four years ago and then nothing. I think these have been news stories that would have been of interest to their readership and there was an editorial decision to suppress them.”
Duvall accuses the paper of breaking it’s promise to end “the biased coverage they had in the past” and suggests that personal friendships between the Mayor and key figures at the paper may have skewed their coverage.
He also accuses Livingstone’s critics within the Labour party of giving “ammunition to our opponents.”
You can read his full comments over here.
Duvall’s attack follows the recent admission by Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev at the Leveson inquiry that he is a personal friend of the Mayor.
The new editor of the Standard Sarah Sands is also a close family friend of the Johnsons. Boris was reportedly consulted by the Lebedevs before she was appointed.
Earlier this week Sands claimed that the paper had been “determined to be more generous with the coverage [of Ken] this time around.”
Duvall’s comments follow a series of damaging front page headlines for Labour’s mayoral candidate in the paper and express a wider frustration felt by senior Labour figures.
His comments also follow a series of opinion polls, which although varying in degree, all show Ken set to lose the Mayoral election.
Of course if Livingstone was doing better in the polls, then we probably wouldn’t be hearing these kinds of attacks on his critics both inside and outside the party.
Brian Paddick on racist police and his "flaky" rival Siobhan Benita
Brian Paddick today accused the police of stereotyping black people as criminals and suggested that a Mayoral rival was using “rich friends” to manipulate the betting markets.
Speaking to The Scoop during a campaign visit to Greenwich, the former senior police officer and Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor said:
“I asked groups of officers, okay imagine you’re sitting in your patrol car at three in the morning and two cars go past and the first has got four young white men in it and the second one has got four young black men in it, which one are you going to stop? And they all said the second one. Unfortunately a lot of police officers racially stereotype black people as criminals. And that’s why nationally you’re seven times more likely to be stopped by police officers if you’re black than if you’re white. “
Paddick said that he had drawn up a report in 2004 proposing reforms to stop and search, but claimed that “my boss just put it in the bin.”
Under his proposals police would be encouraged to make more detailed descriptions of targets rather than “circulating a description that the suspect is a young black man wearing a hooded top, which could probably apply to about 20,000 people on the streets as we speak.”
Brian Paddick also hit out at his independent rival Siobhan Benita who has overtaken him on the betting markets despite only polling between 0.5% and 2% in the polls.
Paddick told The Scoop:
“it is possible to alter betting odds. What you do is you get lots of rich friends who have got enough money to throw away to go and place bets on you winning the election. And as soon as the bookies see a lot of money being put on a candidate then they shorten the odds to cover themselves. But you can’t pay people who are being polled by legitimate polling organisations to change their view. You could understand it if the odds shortened considerably and the opinion polls also showed a leap. But on the latest opinion poll, [Siobhan] Benita is on 2% and I’m on 7%.
Asked whether anyone had ever tried to boost his betting odds, he replied “no, the Liberal Democrats have never wasted any money on me.”
On Benita’s claims that she has suffered a “media blackout” he replied:
“No I don’t think she’s suffered from a media blackout at all. I think she’s got far more coverage than she could ever have hoped or dreamed of, because it’s a novelty isn’t it?”
He said that he would welcome Benita taking a place in the hustings because he believed she would be exposed as “flaky”:
“I think it would be really useful for her to be on the hustings because when you actually drill down into what lies behind her policies she gets very flaky. So on the surface, things look pretty good, but actually there’s no substance to what she’s saying. And certainly in the south west of London, being the only mayoral candidate to support a third runway at Heathrow is not boosting her electoral chances.”
Brian Paddick also said that he would not rule out plans by the current Mayor to build a tunnel under the Thames at Silvertown, but said that it would need to be “cyclist friendly” before he would consider it.
UKIP set for return to the London Assembly
A rise in support for the United Kingdom Independence Party could see them re-taking seats on the London Assembly, a new poll out today suggests.
The poll by YouGov for the Evening Standard puts the party on 5% which would see them gain one seat on the Assembly.
UKIP held two seats on the Assembly between 2004-2008.
The results also suggest that The Green Party and the BNP will lose all of their seats on the Assembly, polling at just 3% and 1% respectively.
This would represent a big collapse in Green Party support after taking 8% in 2008.
The BNP’s support also appears to have all but disappeared from their high point of 5% in 2008.
The Lib Dem Assembly candidates meanwhile are polling ahead of their Mayoral candidate on 9%, to Brian Paddick’s 7%.
This would be a relatively good result for the Lib Dems, representing just a 2% drop from their 2008 result.
Today’s poll also puts UKIP’s mayoral candidate Lawrence Webb in fourth place to be London Mayor, at 3%.
The Green Party’s candidate Jenny Jones is now down to joint fifth place with independent candidate Siobhan Benita. Both are polling just 2%.
Benita’s campaign today claimed that opinion polls are “not a fair measure of her support.” Another poll last week put her on <0.5%.
However the biggest turnaround in today’s poll comes for Labour who are set to take 46% of the votes to the Conservative’s 35% on the London Assembly top up list.
In 2008 Labour received just 28% of the vote to the Conservative’s 35%.
However, despite this surge, Labour’s Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone is still trailing Boris Johnson, albeit by a smaller margin than last month.
If today’s poll is replicated at the ballot box next month, then Labour are set to lose the Mayoralty, despite making significant gains on the Assembly.
Tip your Scoop editors at scoop@snipe.at
Adam Bienkov
Adam is the publisher of the Kidbrooke Kite and comments on London politics at AdamBienkov.com. You can email him here
Follow Adam on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AdamBienkov
Darryl Chamberlain
Darryl is the publisher of the Charlton Champion and comments on London news here. You can email him here
Follow Darryl on Twitter at www.twitter.com/darryl1974
Peter Watts
Peter is the publisher of The Great Wen. You can email him here
Follow Peter on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peter_watts
