Skip to main content

My friends, the London Mayoral candidates...

The race for London Mayor is hotting up. It is closely-contested by Labour’s Ken Livingstone and the Conservative’s Boris Johnson. However, and thank goodness: the election system used for Mayor of London means that voters can pick whoever they want as their first preference and then transfer their vote ‘tactically’ using their second preference vote. The Lib Dems are polling poorly, and are likely to drop below their score of 2004. Green Party candidate, Sian Berry, is charismatic and dynamic, and it may well be that it is the Green Party that profits this time from this ‘alternative vote’ system. In short: Sian Berry is increasingly likely to get the highest-votes ever received by Mayoral candidates for the Green Party in a mayoral race.

I'm in the probably-unusual situation of being friends with both Boris and Sian. Boris and I went to College together at Oxford and studied Philosophy together. Back then, in fact, we were political allies! Although we have totally diverged politically since then, we have stayed in touch. We saw each other last last summer, at Henley Regatta, on the Thames.

I have known the Green Party candidate for London Mayor, Sian Berry, for several years now; she has visited my home and helped me and others to get elected to the Council in Norwich, and I have often visited with her in Camden and worked with her on her campaigns in favour of Green energy and against urban 4x4s.

Sian would make a brilliant Mayor [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/siacircn-berry-green-party-candidate-for-london-mayor-you-ask-the-questions-793615.html ], and it would be fantastic to see Green policies transforming our capital city. In terms of who would get my second preference vote; I’m not sure- but I’m afraid it definitely wouldn’t be Boris. He is an affable guy, and smarter than he looks; but the Mayor of London has to be someone who can actually run the country’s capital city. I don’t think that that would be Boris’s forte. Hosting “Have I got news for you” and running London are not really comparable enterprises….

It's interesting to see that Sian and Ken are now cross-endorsing each other:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7304280.stm

I think that that probably makes sense. I bet there will be lots of 'Sian 1 Ken 2' votes, this time. Loads of people should vote Green, this time, and at the very least make sure that we get our big fat deposit back. But IF it comes down to Ken vs. Boris on second preferences, then surely Ken has done enough good as London Mayor to deserve a third term.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reasonable manners, in the blogosphere

Dear readers of Rupert's Read; One thing I am pleased about about this blog is that when we have had debates or disagreements here, they have virtually always been good-tempered. Because the norm out there in the blogosphere is often not like that. Take 'Comment is Free', for example, on the Guardian Unlimited site: the level of debate on CIF is pretty awful, frankly, in terms of civility. It is a very unpleasant place to take part in any debate, generally, unless perhaps (as most commenters do) one hides behind the veil of anonymity (which 'ain't allowed' here). And the truth is, in case any fellow commenters reading this don't realise it, that there are many many people who get put off even reading (let alone posting to) CIF because of the volume of plain nasty comments that they risk getting, when they do. I am slightly singling out CIF here, because I believe that this is actually one of the worst places on the blogosphere in terms of this kind of ...
15 comments
Read more

Medialens under the lens, over Syria and Libya: Becoming the new Dave Sparts?

I have long been an active supporter of Medialens ( http://www.medialens.org/ ). Like many others, I have supported them with money, time, tips, and I have been proud to have done so. For they have done very important groundbreaking work over the years challenging the inanities and distortions of the 'mainstream' media. They have for example written important critiques of mainstream media coverage of dangerous climate change, of Iraq Body Count, of the corporate nature of most of our media, and much more besides. They have held the corporate media to account time and again. They ought to be saluted for all of that. It is therefore with a sense of deep regret (as well as of some foreboding) that I have finally to write to address the ways in which, lately, some of the wheels seem to be coming off their wagon. An early warning sign perhaps was their long-running spat with George Monbiot, over the Rwandan genocide and the terrible atr...
16 comments
Read more