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Rejected (twice) for president, sacked by voters and thrown out the jungle, so why would Londoners want Lembit?

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Two weeks from now nominations will close in the ‘contest’ to become the Liberal Democrat 2012 Mayor of London candidate.

Except there isn’t much of a contest.

Former MP Lembit Opik is the highest profile name to put himself forward so far, a fact anyone who cares about London should find highly depressing.

His recent Evening Standard interview suggests he doesn’t have a detailed understanding of how the capital works.

He’s the latest in a long line of wannabe Mayors who thinks you can magically operate the Tube 24/7 – when is the maintenance to be carried out if we’re going to run near-empty trains at 4am?

Ok, so Opik wouldn’t be the first Mayor to win office and then discover many of things he promised are impossible but against the two experienced post-holders on offer he’ll soon start to look pretty vacuous and under briefed.

Then there’s the issue of electoral credibility.

Opik has never sufficiently explained why Londoners would want a man rejected not only by his own party members both times he put himself forward as party President and the constituents who sacked him last May, but also by the hardly discerning viewers of ITV”s I’m a Celebrity reality-fest.

If sofa-based phone voters don’t even think you’re up to the job of eating grub worms live on camera how can you expect Londoners to see you as a viable Mayor?

It’s a question he’ll be asked repeatedly during the 2012 campaign yet I’ve never heard an even vaguely sensible answer.

There’s a more serious issue to consider too.

The Greens have a three-term London Assembly Member as their candidate with huge amounts of experience in tackling both Ken and Boris.

Yet past elections suggest much of the media coverage – especially the mass audience TV coverage – will focus on the ‘three main parties’ even though a LibDem candidate has no more chance of winning that a Green or UKIP runner.

If Londoners have to accept the media’s three party bias, they should be entitled to expect the smaller of the three to offer a knowledgable, informed and credible candidate.

There are already moves underfoot to ‘draft’ outgoing Assembly Member Mike Tuffrey and the expectation is he’ll put himself forward.

There are good reasons for a Tuffrey candidacy, Mark Pack sets out some here and Jenny Jones offers more thoughts in my recent interview with her.

Liberal Democrats have a chance to boost the campaign scrutiny of the next Mayor of London but do to so they need a candidate voters – and his opponents – can take seriously.

When measured against that criteria Opik isn’t the right choice for London.

Comments

  1. Berlin manages 24hr tube at weekends, I’m sure with a bit of thought, we could..? After all, it costs more to pay people to work at night which is why the majority of tube work happens at weekends…

  2. We need to have a little more vision not saying why things can’t be done but how they can be done. Our focus is on the weekends and on those lines that are not having work done on them. Our campaign has been in contact with TFL to look at what can be done. They were very helpful on this. If you work with people it’s surprising what can be done.. Maintenance work will probably not be the key issue, but cleaning needs to be dealt with and the unions need to be treated with respect in order for this to work,
    Lembit is working positively to get a solution for the benefit of all Londoners. This is a big deal for the voters and we should not assume that nothing can be done.
    Ed Joyce
    Lembit4London

  3. Hi Ed

    Perhaps you’ll care to publish the studies you’ve presumably carried out into the cost versus benefits return on the extra investment needed?

    Why do you think a 24/7 tube service is more attractive than the comprehensive night bus service?

    Which lines do you think don’t have work being carried out for periods long enough to enable a regular, scheduled service which people can rely on?

    How do you envisage the trains running while signal and track work are being carried out? In case you’ve not seen it first hand, here’s what tube maintenance work actually looks and sounds like:

    http://youtu.be/Qdqtecem5aI

    how close do you think passengers can/will want to get to that? Even with mufflers I found the noise unbearable, even when we were some distance from the actual work.

    I’m sure many Londoners would also be interested in hearing why they should want a man actively rejected by his own party members AND the voters who saw his work up close.

    If Lembit wants to run as a serious candidate he may want to work these issues out and then come back to Londoners with credible, costed solutions they can believe in.

    If on the other hand he’s just interested in getting his name in the papers, the BGT auditions are taking place elsewhere.

    Martin

  4. Hi Martin,
    I do think that a night tube service is a useful addition to a night bus service. One of the problems faced by night bus users is waiting in the cold. Additionally the bus service in Central London does not seem to be able to run according to a timetable due to traffic which is surprisingly heavy at night. We will be pushing ahead with plans for the tube. We don’t oppose running the best bus service possible but I think that the voters will appreciate us at least being positive and trying to get the tubes running as well as possible. Ultimately the Lib Dem members should decide whether they prefer night buses or tubes.
    I understand that Lembit’s issues in Montgomery were linked to a problem between the Welsh Assembly Member and a paramedic. Lembit did a lot better in the General than the party did in the recent election.
    Ed Joyce
    Lembit 4 London

  5. 12 years of elected mayors, decades of local government over London and over a century of tube service – and never ever have they been able to run a 24hour service.

    Even with the Olympics coming up, we still wont get a 24 hour service.

    Assuming that such a service is even financially viable – remember that the vast majority of users wont pay extra for it as they have travel cards, so you will increase costs with a negligible impact on revenues….

    …what magic pixie dust has the Lembit campaign managed to conjure up that a century of managers, politicians, unions and workers were never able to sprinkle over the tube network?

  6. The tube has run at night on New Years Eve. It is not impossible and not true to say ‘never ever’. The key is to have the political will to make this a reality, in particular to work out what can be achieved and do it. I don’t see that it is feasible to run this as a free service using travel cards. Charging for it at the rate oyster card users pay would not be unaffordable.The key is to get a realistic plan for a limited pilot service. If the Lib Dems can come up with a realistic plan to deliver a limited 24 hour service then it will be a good start.

    Further detail will be released during the primary campaign after we have had more input from key stakeholders.

    Ed Joyce

  7. Hi Ed

    >> I don’t see that it is feasible to run this as a free service using travel cards.

    Travelcards aren’t a free service, people pay a lot of money for them and you’ve just created an instant barrier to the service not taking off – people won’t pay twice.

    >> Charging for it at the rate oyster card users pay would not be unaffordable.

    So to be clear, you’re expecting people to keep a PAYG credit on their Oyster along with their expensive monthly or annual season ticket so they can pay extra to use the tube when a night bus will get them home for no extra cost?

    Good luck with that!

    How about passengers using Oyster PAYG, will their night journeys count towards their daily cap?

  8. If you are going to cite the peculiarity of New Years Eve as an example of how you can run the network 24/7 throughout the rest of the year, please allow me to cite the shut-down on Christmas Day as an example of how the city doesn’t really need a tube network at all.

  9. I sometimes wonder if there are a few people at TfL who, for a bit of a laugh, allow aspiring mayoral candidates to believe that 24-hour tubes are in some way feasible just to see the knots they’ll tie themselves into. Without digging up most of the network and starting again, it’s simply a non-starter for anything other than a very, very occasional one-off. It’s not practically possible, and the finances don’t add up.

    Even Livingstone’s on-the-surface sensible idea of moving the last train one hour later on Fridays and Saturdays in exchange for a one hour later start on Saturdays and Sundays fell apart when it was realised, on putting it out to consultation, the impact that would have on shift workers and others who need to travel very early. Broadly speaking, we are stuck with the current operating windows. A sensible candidate would be thinking about means to improve other modes of overnight travel.

    Am intrigued by some of the comments from Ed Joyce about Öpik and Montgomeryshire.

    “I understand that Lembit’s issues in Montgomery were linked to a problem between the Welsh Assembly Member and a paramedic.”

    I have family connections there and can assure him that the Öpik’s problems were far more deep-set than Mick Bates’ (the Assembly Member) unfortunate drunken fracas with a paramedic in Cardiff, which took place in January 2010. Rumblings about Öpik’s lifestyle and tabloid antics had been going on for years, and it was clear that Montgomeryshire Lib Dems were in trouble when they managed to come third in the 2009 European elections in the constituency. I couldn’t care less about Öpik’s private life, but when the Liberal tradition of your constituency is very much in the Methodist, chapel mold, it doesn’t play well. To be fair, London’s a different world, but he brought a lot of the problems in Montgomeryshire on himself.

    “Lembit did a lot better in the General than the party did in the recent election.”
    Yeah, well done on that. Quite an achievement to do better when your party is polling in the mid 20s nationally than a year later when it’s sitting somewhere around 10%.

  10. To determine the reason for Lembit’s loss and whether it is personal you need to compare the results in Brecon and Radnor (the only other seat we held) with those in Montgomeryshire. There is a pattern running across the AM and parliamentary votes showing that the Lib Dems were suffering in all elections in the constituency of Montgomeryshire and doing well in all votes in Brecon and Radnor. There is only heresay evidence that it was a personal vote against Lembit and I don’t find it convincing. It affected all candidates. I don’t blame Mick Bates entirely but it does not seem helpful that he got into an ‘unfortunate drunken fracas with a paramedic in Cardiff’.

    We need to recognise that it is possible to run the tubes on a ‘one off basis’ overnight on a limited basis and then to see what the best that can be done is. I strongly believe that with political will more can be done. We may need to be honest and say that a charge to all users will be necessary. It will be Lembit’s job to explain to the electorate why that is necessary. Why not start with a couple of lines on a Friday night and work from there. The underground workers need to be paid and paid well for working at nights. We can’t have it both ways. If the service needs to be funded then it makes sense to open those lines that can operate effectively on a paid for basis. Just because Boris and Ken have not been able to sort this does not mean that the Lib Dems will not be able to.

    Ed Joyce
    Lembit4London

  11. Ed

    I hate to be the one who tells you this, but the people explaining to you why the Tube plan won’t work haven’t just discovered Mayoral and London politics because they lost their seats in Parliament.

    The have been following governance of the capital for years and could be an invaluable source of help and advice for any candidate willing to dial down their own hubris and take the time to listen.

    Over that time we’ve all seen under-briefed candidates waltz in with a list of airy fairy ideas with only the most passing association with reality. We’ve also seen uber-loyal campaign staffers big up their candidate as ‘the one who can do it’.

    None of them have. The last example wasted everyone’s time with nonsense over school buses and Mayoral mortgages.

    It’s ultimately up to Lembit if he wants to persist with a policy suggestion everyone outside his campaign knows has been explored and found to be impossible but if you and he were wise, you’d do what the 2007 Boris Johnson and the 2010 Oona King failed to do and listen to the knowledgeable, experienced London voices trying to steer you onto more fruitful ground.

    I appreciate all this may sound harsh but London’s voters are a little more sophisticated than the readers of celeb magazines and the viewers of reality TV and can spot a duff idea when they see one.

    Martin

  12. I too have family connections in Montgomeryshire who are considerably to the left of me and can confirm that a) the Lib Dems’ problems there predate Mick Bates hitting the paramedic (people were predicting Öpik’s defeat as early as 2007), b) Öpik’s very public private life outraged not just the Methodist chapel voters but also many others including those with a more “metropolitan” outlook on these things – there was especial outrage at the way he treated his fiancée.

    Additionally I get the impression many Lib Dem activists were not keen to travel to Montgomeryshire to help Öpik – and some were so open about it than when questioned they didn’t hide behind “it’s a safe seat”, “there are marginals next door”, “the train journey is too long”. If he becomes their candidate for Mayor it will be interesting to see how many of their Assembly candidates’ leaflets make absolutely no mention of him.

  13. What Martin and Tim said.

    It doesn’t matter how strong your ‘political will’ is, that doesn’t remove the need for overnight engineering and inspections on pretty much every Underground line. Yes, London manages a one-off late night running on New Year’s Eve. We could probably manage two or three other random Friday nights in the year if we really wanted. But there is no equivelent to New Year’s Eve – a night when there is that critical mass of potential travellers such that the night bus network wouldn’t cope, and when there is the potential to screw some cash out of an alcohol producer or a loan shark to help make up the financial shortfall. “We’ll run the tube 24hrs on the second Friday of every April” isn’t the basis of an intelligent transport policy.

    Because (possibly completely wrongly) I think a strong Lib Dem candidate helps my preferred candidate win – and because I want an intelligent race – here’s a policy idea on late night travel: work with Network Rail and the train operators to improve late night services on a Friday/Saturday. You’ll come up against engineering problems here as well, but there are many areas where parallel routes serve similar areas, and perhaps dedicated buses could hop between the routes. But we ought to be able to guarantee a 1:30 or 2am train down one of the three routes towards Dartford, or along one of the two lines up the Lea Valley, or down one side of the Kingston loop. They’d need subsidy, not least because revenue protection would be an absolute nightmare, but it’d be nothing on the scale of that needed to run the Underground. A small step, but one which would help people who would otherwise have utterly interminable night bus journeys to the outer suburbs.

  14. Hi Tim,
    I hear what you are saying but the facts don’t stack up. The figures show that all candidates in Montgomeryshire did poorly and all candidates in Brecon and Radnor did well. These are the facts therefore I don’t see how you can blame Lembit. All you are offering is heresay eidence, no numbers. Actually Lembit’s result was the best of the elections in 2009, 10 and 11. Obviously you can find hostility to Lembit and there is also support. The question is whether there is any statistical evidence that there was an anti Lembit vote as a result of his profile: there is none. This thread leads me to the belief that Lembit’s profile did not lose him votes.

    Hi Martin,
    The people on this thread (apart from yourself who say “never ever have they been able to run a 24hour service”) seem to acknowledge that some 24 hour service is possible even if it is very occasional. We will seek out the best possible option and put it out as policy. It may be that only a limited service is possible but I believe that that you are wrong to say ‘never ever’, something better than that is possible and that is what Lembit will offer.
    Ed

  15. Ed, forgive me if this seems rude, but you are coming across as a bit…simple. You’ve got experts here giving you real, specific, thoughtful reasons on why the 24 hour tube idea isn’t practical, and you’re just responding to each of them with “Yeah, but if we had the political will, we could do it. Lembit’s political will means it could happen. We have the political will to…” etc.

    You must have a very high regard for the strength of Lembit’s political will if you think he can achieve something that every other political leader in London’s modern history has acknowledged is unfeasible. How odd, too, that Lembit’s apparently gargantuan levels of political will didn’t prevent him from throwing away a 7,000 majority last year.

    I can’t help feeling that this is just one mammoth ego-trip for Lembit. The poor quality of his campaign site and his infrequent attendance (complete absence?) at City Hall suggests he wants the publicity and exposure without actually bothering to put any effort in.

  16. Regarding the figures in 2010/2011, here are the raw numbers:

    Montgomeryshire Westminster 2010
    Conservative Glyn Davies 13,976 41.3 +13.8
    Liberal Democrat Lembit Öpik 12,792 37.8 -12.5
    Plaid Cymru Heledd Fychan 2,802 8.3 +1.3
    Labour Nick Colbourne 2,407 7.1 -5.2
    UKIP David W L Rowlands 1,128 3.3 +0.4
    National Front Milton Ellis 384 1.1 N/A
    Independent Bruce Lawson 324 1.0 N/A

    Assembly 2011
    Conservative Russell George 10,026 43.7 +13.6
    Liberal Democrats Wyn Williams 7,702 33.6 -5.4
    Labour Nick Colbourne 2,609 11.4 +4.5
    Plaid Cymru David Senior 2,596 11.3 -2.5

    So whilst Öpik got a slightly higher % and more numeric votes on a higher turnout, he dropped further in both % and numeric terms than the Lib Dems in the Assembly.

    And prior to 2010 Montgomeryshire wasn’t just any old “safe Liberal Democrat seat”, it was *the* bastion of last hope. With the solitary exception of 1979 it had returned a Liberal of one variety or another in every election since the days of Disraeli. It was the seat that had been more loyal to the party throughout the sark years than any other.

    (A point of pedantry that I’ve made elsewhere. In the 1931 Liberal split the sitting MP, Clement Davies, went over to the Simonite “Liberal National” group, though it didn’t solidify as a separate party until later. He carried the local Liberal Association with him and was returned unopposed in both 1931 & 1935. In 1939 he left the Liberal Nationals and rejoined the Liberals in 1942, taking the local LA back with him, becoming their leader in 1945.

    The Liberal defeat in 1979 is commonly attributed to a combination of the fallout from Rinkagate and a common story is how the local association spent a lot of time planning to celebrate a centenary of Liberalism and forgot to actually campaign!)

    At the same time that Öpik lost Montgomeryshire the other Lib Dem seats in the region, Brecon & Radnorshire and Ceredigion, saw the Lib Dems increasing both their numeric & % shares. The Lib Dem collapse in Montgomeryshire was very localised and to date everyone I’ve heard on the subject, regardless of their politics, has attributed it to Öpik’s personal standing there with just two exceptions – Öpik himself and the promoter of Lembit4London.

    (Yes the Lib Dems held Brecon & Radnor in the Assembly but with a bigger drop – 9.2% – than in Montgomeryshire, in spite of having the party leader as the sitting AM with all the benefits of an increased profile.)

    As for running the tube at night, it’s not about “political will”, it’s about some very major obstacles, not least the width of the tunnels. The Underground isn’t like other metros that have room for maintenance workers and cleaners to stand aside whilst the trains run past at a reduced service. The Jubilee Line Extension does have a walkway but that’s only a small part of the network and running just Westminster to Stratford is not going to be workable. The Underground is a network and a large portion of traffic will need the full service for all their connections. New Year’s Eve just about manages an overnight service but that’s a one-off event and helped by having a bank holiday the next day so the service is reduced anyway.

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