It’s not fashionable on the world of London blogging to agree with Andrew Gilligan but his latest Evening Standard column has a lot which supporters of democratic accountability should agree with.
The central weakness of the current Greater London Authority set up is a weak London Assembly which lacks any control over the Mayor. It’s an issue MayorWatch has reported on many times before and the 2007 GLA bill was a wasted opportunity with Ministers failing to beef up the scrutiny powers of Assembly.
Gilligan’s description of Assembly scrutiny committees is, I’m afraid, pretty accurate. Public money is spent on often shallow investigations which result in reports almost no-one reads. There has to be a better way to hold to account the UK’s most senior directly elected figure.
On the subject of London-watching blogs, Andrew writes:
“Alas, most read more like Private Eye parodies, daily finding new evidence of sinister neo-con evil in Johnson’s choice of breakfast cereal.”
This is probably a bit of an exaggeration but like all parody has some basis in truth and some of the sites I suspect he’s thinking of could almost be described as anti-Gilligan. They probably expect such comments as the price for their own, if not they should do.
When I read that:
“Even the more measured ones simply copy stories from other media outlets (they all have a particular, and flattering, obsession with the Standard).”
I was less certain which sites were being referred to. I knew it wasn’t this one as we don’t copy stories from the Standard or anywhere else, like all outlets I sometimes mention what’s being reported elsewhere but the overwhelming majority of content on MayorWatch is original.
People are free to agree or disagree with what’s written on this site but none of it is produced by ripping off other people’s work. That certainly sounds a lot easier than trudging out to City Hall to watch Mayor’s Questions, joining the Mayor when he launched his consultation on the Western Extension of the Congestion Charge or sitting through a press conference at London Underground but it also sounds less fulfilling and a lot less worthwhile.
Besides, you probably have to be at City Hall and hear the Mayor claim a 50% affordable housing legacy would create “a ghetto feeling” to consider it worth reporting on and it certainly helps to have a working knowledge of how the GLA operates to spot when the Mayor’s press office tries passing off a legally required People’s Question Time as evidence that he’s somehow “fulfilled a manifesto pledge to make London Government accountable and transparent”.
But where I agree with the Mayor, such as his stance on the Met Commissioner, I’ve said so and because I don’t write from a position of dogma I’m happy to acknowledge when I see Boris improving his performance.
Whilst Andrew’s right that new media outlets have their limitations, the same is often true of the so-called ‘mainstream media’. Few reporters for ‘proper’ newspapers showed any understanding that Ray Lewis was not Deputy Mayor of London and so much of the reportage failed to make the distinction between a GLA employee with a bauble of a title and the constitutional Deputy Mayor.
Equally, long before anyone reported on Brian Cooke’s sacking by the Assembly, it was this site which first questioned his planned appearance at Boris’s transport manifesto launch.
The truth is that both new and old media probably still have much to learn.
The old media also copy from each other, of course. A story in the Guardian will usually be followed up by the BBC. A piece in the Standard will be dumbed down and repeated in the following day’s Metro.
Even my own blog efforts have been lifted by journalists and diary columns. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
“a weak London Assembly which lacks any control over the Mayor. …. the 2007 GLA bill was a wasted opportunity with Ministers failing to beef up the scrutiny powers of Assembly”.
How true. If the Assembly had a simple majority vote on the Mayor’s consolidated Budget instead of one third of Members as at present, a line by line vote on the Budget instead of just the total bottom line figure as at present, and was able to have a simple majority vote on the Mayor’s strategies, then things would be very different indeed.
The Assembly put forward these suggestions to the Government in 2007 but was ignored. At the time there was no contender to Livingstone in sight, the Conservatives were having difficulty finding a suitable candidate, and the Government seemed very happy to give the Mayor more powers. We did point out that this was short sighted, that Livingstone couldn’t go on for ever, but were once again ignored.
Just how short sighted it turned out to be noone had an inkling at the time. The Mayor, any elected Mayor, does need to be effectively scrutinised and the 2007 Amendments to the GLA Act completely failed in this respect.
It’s rather poignant that Giligan is writing about the lack of an opposition to Boris seeing as it was his paper, and mainly his stories regarding the Lee Jasper affair which mostly swayed Londoners before the election and therefore created the opportunity for Boris to move in and subsequently remove all the opposition to the mayoral role – something which you have pointed out Ken did not do. As none of these accusations have resulted in any sort of prosecution, then are we to assume they were baseless and unfounded?
Gilligan is clearly a ‘panderer’ and will play any tune that he feels is popular – or that will sell papers.
However, to be fair to the journalists I have seen how an editor will completely change a story to make it more exciting, and less truthful. The lack of reporting around Brian Cooke probably had more to do with the Associated newspapers being long term Tory sympathisers and they did not want to damage the Boris campaign – along with others.
I think the days of the mainstream media are coming to an end – they have all proven too many times they cannot be trusted, and despite their best PR efforts, no-one believes they actually have public interest at heart anymore. I would much rather hear the honest opinion of bloggers on mayorwatch (even if I don’t agree) than any newspaper article – which is likely to be altered to promote whatever agenda the editor is on.
Hi TawkinSenz – many thanks, I wasn’t really singling out Associated newspapers, not least because I think Pippa and Paul produced some excellent election coverage for the Standard.
I recall one national paper refused to be convinced by me that their leader article was wrong in claiming that the winner of May’s election would preside over the Olympic opening when, in fact, there’s another election in 2012 before the games.
Of course everyone makes mistakes and one should be wary of making too much of them but at the same time it’s always a bit off to see/hear the established media refer to ‘citizen journalists’ when they often can’t get the very basics right.
EDIT: Also Damian wrote on these pages just days after Boris won about how little accountability he’d face:
http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londoners-have-voted-for-less-scrutiny-of-mayor-boris/20088
so it’s not like this issue has been left unexplored.
In running this site for 9 years I’ve learnt it’s pretty common to be accused of bias.
When I agreed with Roger over Oyster cards or some such issue I was accused (I think to Roger’s eternal amusement) of being a Tory stooge. Writing something even broadly critical about Boris is the quickest way to be accused of a pro-Ken/anti-Boris bias.
And when I condemned the LibDems for their nasty ‘three jobs Bob’ campaign a very senior LibDem MP accused me of being a Tory blogger with an obvious agenda. In truth I just found it dishonest given two of their then AMs also sat in the Lords and one as a Councillor.
Martin,
I’m afraid your story of being ‘falsely accused’ highlights what is wrong with politics – not just in London, but everywhere.
It’s all become about ‘which team you support’ and not ‘which policies you support’.
Whilst I think I agree with Ken on most of his principles – I certainly did not agree with everything he did when he was Mayor – likewise with Boris.
What I like about Mayorwatch is it truly is comment from a position of honesty. Several of your contributors have criticised the mayor in one article and yet supported him in another.
One report that stuck in my mind was the ‘impressive Mr Malthouse’ where I felt the commentator – whilst traditionally disagreeing with the political ideology of the mayors office – actually singled out Mr Malthouse as being a competent man.
If politics was truly fair and democratic then we would be able to keep the “good ‘uns” and ditch the “bad ‘uns” at election time – rather than throwing then all out regardless of their ability.
That’s what I understood the Assembly represented – a cross party body who can provide the ‘check and balance’ the mayors office needs.
If all the people in the assembly simply play the tune of the mayor and his political party – it becomes a farce and ultimately bad policy is drawn up through the lack of challenge and debate around issues.
Finally, I wasn’t trying to single out Assoc. newspapers – but if you go far enough up the chain you will see that most mainstream media is controlled by a tiny set of people with their own personal agenda’s – not what I would call a fair and unbiased press.
A bit like Frankie Goes to hollywood in ’2 tribes’
Hi TawkinSenz – The Kit Malthouse story was written by me so thanks for the comments.
I don’t belong to any political party (I used to but no longer) so nothing I write is ever tainted by a political affiliation.
If anything I’m a bit of a London-nationalist. I often joke that the film Passport to Pimlico has the right idea but that we should extend it across the whole of London and declare independence
Many times I’ve argued for things no party has supported, a couple of years ago I tried to enlist Ken Livingstone and the Tories in an effort to ensure the next election didn’t take place 12 or so weeks ahead of the Olympic Games.
Sadly no-one wanted to know so as the capital prepares to celebrate international unity our political classes will be trading insults for a poorly timed campaign.
Brilliant!
Were it up to me the Mayor would control London’s OFSTED inspectors and appoint an NHS board for London. With an affective scrutiny body in place there’s probably few powers I wouldn’t give the Mayor.
I don’t have any time for the ‘which team you support’ style of politics. I’ve known enough politicians to know that the majority are decent people who genuinely want to act for the public good.
In daily life we all know people we agree with some times and disagree with others, in any sane assessment of politics the same is true.
A lot of Boris’s woes have been caused by failing to pay attention to the finer details. When they axed the oil deal the Mayor’s press office were briefing that there would be no reduced fares after the announced 6 month period.
They got bad press for that (and the cowardly slipping out of the press release over a bank holiday weekend) only to then to announce a fares package which included half-prices fares.
Maybe had they not rushed to cancel the deal they could have announced its end 6 weeks later and used the interval to find the funding they must have eventually identified.
Boris is a nice guy, in total I’ve maybe spent no more than an hour talking to him one on one (at press events etc) but he’s always been courteous to me and the City Hall press team are very generous in ensuring that even as a new media outlet MayorWatch gets included on events.
They don’t have to make it easy for me to make their life harder and it says a lot about both Boris and Ken that their administrations have done.
Indeed Andrew is correct in much of what he says but one of the problems with the London Assembly is the actual physical barrier on the obtaining of the information with which Members can hold to account on the key issues. When we had all that aggro about Bob Kiley being paid several thousand a day and there being no info about what he was doing for his cash, my group asked the simple questions and were told that all the information was barred to us. And that if we managed to get hold of it, we could not refer to it in public and at the meetings, or base our scrutiny on it. So of course when the Standard printed it, we were then allowed to comment, but only upon what the Standard had written. Some scrutiny eh? My colleague PHC mentions above the important point that we tried to alter all this in the review of powers…only to find that what the Government did (and wanted to do) was strip the tiny powers the Assembly DID have and replace them with “the right to ask the Mayor to comment” or “the right to hold a confirmation meeting”…hmmm, some rights, some powers. Commentators do not understand that the intention specifically is to have a powerless Assembly, and to have ‘government’ as the only meaningful oversight. There is no room for the Assembly in the plans of government, other than as a sideshow and figleaf (if a sideshow can be a figleaf, or indeed vice versa).
A journalist on the Standard accusing others of lifting copy from elsewhere? Londoner’s Diary, anyone?
No, Martin, when I talked about the cut-and-paste blogs I didn’t mean you; I was thinking of the Dave Hill one. I regard MayorWatch as more of a news site in its own right than a personal blog.
Hi Andrew
Apologies, I never did acknowledge your post, sincere apologies for the oversight.