London Politics
Livingstone launches Progressive London coalition
Former London Mayor and veteran London politician Ken Livingstone has announced the formation of a new, cross party coalition, Progressive London, to promote progressive policies in the capital.
Mr Livingstone said the coalition would “bring together all Londoners who want their city to lead the world in the 21st century and protect their quality of life at a time when every penny counts.”
Progressive London’s launch follows Livingstone’s publication of an eight point plan to help London’s economy traverse the financial downturn and a number of high profile public interventions since May’s GLA elections.
The coalition is expected to campaign against Mayor Johnson’s recently announced above-inflation fare increase.
Mr Livingstone said the current financial crisis “means that to sustain London as the best city in the world and protect living standards we need more public investment in areas like transport, good housing and improving the environment while, for example, holding down fares and promoting the city’s international openness and multicultural dynamism.”
Livingstone accused his successor, Boris Johnson, of “undermining London’s prosperity and pursuing policies like cutting transport investment and pushing up fares for ordinary Londoners while letting Chelsea tractors clog the roads and poison the city’s air.”
Weblink: www.progressivelondon.org.uk
Progressive London conference
A spokesman for Progressive London has confirmed the group will hold a conference in the capital on January 24th.
Speakers are expected to include trade unionists, academics and MPs as well as a number of London Assembly Members including former Deputy Mayor of London Nicky Gavron, Green Assembly members Jenny Jones AM and Darren Johnson AM; Labour Leader on the Assembly Len Duvall AM and Leader of the London Assembly Liberal Democrats Mike Tuffrey AM.
Adam Bienkov of the ToryTroll blog, Tom Barry from Boriswatch.co.uk and MayorWatch editor Martin Hoscik will discuss new media’s role in scrutinising London government.
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5 comments for “Livingstone launches Progressive London coalition”
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I think that the website isn’t very good at “bringing Londoners together”.
http://bacatu.blogspot.com/2008/11/progressive-london-web-asessment.html
Kens new web site is very basic. Looks like it has been put together in a hurry by a couple of pre teens.
One of the best political web sites I ever read was the One London Party web site and blog sadly no more. Perhaps Ken should try to employ the services of their webmaster.
The latest thing on the Progressive London site is a Guest Blog by the CEO of the London Cycling Campaign.
Is this website an early beginning to the Mayoral campaign for 2012, one might ask?
From Ken’s point of view, if he can keep his name in people’s minds and promote his ideas and policies on an ongoing basis, along with unrelenting Boris Bashing, then it gives a flying start to his campaign. Even if he is not selected as the Labour candidate in 2012, I wouldn’t mind betting he will stand again as an Independent. He has succeeded once by doing that and maybe he can do it again!?
One thing we shouldn’t forget as a result of last May’s election - Boris has 11 Conservative Assembly Members he can rely on to vote for his Budget and he only needs 9 votes to get his Budget approved. So he is home and dry on the one thing that really matters, the Budget, for the next four years.
It is quite strange, really, that Londoners should have voted for a new and completely untried and untested Mayor and given him total control over the Budget as well. Even Livingstone didn’t have that luxury, he had to have an alliance with the Greens to be sure of sufficient votes.
Thank you, Jason, for your comment about the One London website and Blog above, which is much appreciated. It was a ‘home grown’ affair from our office using freely available software. Credit should go to Michael Harvey and Daniel Moss for the website and Helen Szamuely who wrote the Blog.
Hi peter,
I am amazed, not that it matters, the quality of the blog spoke for itself, but I always believed it to be written by a yourself or Damian. Well done Helen, we used many lines from her hand on our blog but always attributed the words to the One London Blogger.