In both polls, Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick trailed a distant third.
When I suggested that his predicted 7% share of the Mayoral vote may not be a disaster for the party’s Assembly candidates, Paddick posted the following comment:
“The fact is, London Liberal Democrats have not really started our media campaign yet.
We have not made any formal policy launches and we have some radical and innovative policy ideas that we honestly believe will capture London voters’ imaginations.
We also have a significant campaign machine, the likes of which the Liberal Democrats have never seen before, a great team of talented candidates that truly reflect London in terms of gender and ethnicity and better financial backing than ever before.
We also have other ideas that we believe will grab the headlines. Meanwhile local parties are fully engaged and delivering the message on the ground in far greater numbers than even we predicted.
Of course we need to translate activity into votes but I stand by my ‘best ever result for the Liberal Democrats in a Greater London Authority election’ prediction.”
Fair enough. But electoral math still makes it unlikely Paddick will be occupying the Mayor’s office a few weeks from now.
He has yet to capture the public’s attention and the brutal fact is that his two ‘main’ rivals hardly ever mention him.
When Ken or Boris make an announcement (or gaffe), Team Paddick are quick to offer a comment. I can’t recall either Johnson or Livingstone responding in kind, and for good reason – they simply don’t see him as a threat.
We’ll have to wait and see whether that changes now he’s officially launched his campaign, but for now he’s a distant third in the minds of Londoners and the next likely Mayor.
But while Ken and Boris are busily ignoring Brian, he does have the attention of two other Mayoral runners.
Both Jenny Jones (Green) and Lawrence Webb (UKIP) have their sights set on overtaking Paddick and coming third.
Both believe the Liberal Democrat role in the Westminster coalition provides them with plenty of material to lure away disaffected voters unwilling to back Labour or the Conservatives.
Of course, coming third won’t get you the Mayoralty, it just means you lost less badly than everyone else.
But for their parties coming third would mean something. Media rules for elections are dictated, at least in part, on how you did last time.
The Greens are London’s fourth party. They’ve held seats on the London Assembly since 2000 but at elections they get the minimum amount of coverage any broadcaster can get away with giving them.
The same is true of UKIP which, though it currently doesn’t sit on the Assembly, did win seats in 2004.
Both Webb and Jones know that beating Paddick and the LibDems would mean their party would be entitled to greater coverage come 2016 when there’s unlikely to be another Johnson or Livingstone candidacy to dominate the airwaves.
Absent the ‘rematch’ narrative which dominates this year’s contest, could a UKIP or Green candidate with more equal media time look like a more credible candidate?
At the very least, might their extra airtime bring greater numbers of Assembly seats?
In her office at City Hall, Jones has two toy dinosaurs she’s affectionally named Ken and Boris.
These two Godzillas grapple on a shelf, each focussed only on the other. The big beasts of London’s political jungle have no time for Paddick.
The smaller dwellers want him for their lunch.
