This week Boris Johnson has clearly been keen to show his true blue Conservatism, with two announcements that shove his Tory credentials into the faces on London. From a party-neutral perspective there should be nothing wrong with this. He is, after all, a conservative, and it is only to be expected that he should act like one. The problem is that they are both bad decisions.
First up was his appointment of a First Deputy Mayor and Chief Executive of the GLA Group, Tim Parker. Parker is a hard-headed businessman, a capitalist’s capitalist. The Times calls him a “slash-and-burn” chief executive, and hes quoted in the Telegraph as professing himself to be “quite a strong believer in free markets and…. quite against centralism.” He has turned around Clarks, Kwik-Fit, the AA and several more businesses. Exactly the dynamic, forward-facing type the modern Conservative party wants to get things done.
But Parker takes it several steps too far. In his first 100 days overseeing the AA he had 3,500 people fired, and he turned up at the Clarks plant to announce job cuts in a Porsche 911. Small wonder that Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union refers to him as the “Prince of Darkness”.
What’s most disturbing is his apparent condescension towards the GLA. In the mayoral press release he said “I relish this opportunity to bring out the best in the GLA Group. I’ve spent my career taking over struggling companies and making them strong.” Of course Boris wants to publicly brand the Ken era GLA as “struggling”, so that he can then claim to be improving it, but for Parker to call it such right at the beginning suggests he’s already seeing himself as the saviour of London, the man who’ll turn this two-bit town around. If I worked at the GLA I wouldn’t be looking forward to this man’s arrival at all.
Boris’ second announcement (although he announced it very quietly – over the bank holiday weekend, and without putting it up on his website) was that he’s ending the oil deal Ken Livingstone made with Venezuela. When the original deal was announced the idea was to provide Londoners on income support with subsidised bus travel by doing a deal with Petróleos for cheaper oil in exchange for London’s expertise in urban and infrastructure planning. It was also a way of flying Ken Livingstone’s socialist colours high, by aligning himself with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Small wonder that Boris would want to phase it out.
It is frustrating, though, that Boris couldn’t seemingly think of a single good reason to do away with the deal. While the deal was originally criticised by London’s Tories and Lib Dems, Boris claims that “many Londoners felt uncomfortable about the bus operation of one of the world’s financial powerhouses being funded by the people of a country where many people live in extreme poverty”. I wonder if he’ll use the same logic to shut down the sale of fair trade foods next. Perhaps we fat, affluent Westerners should be uncomfortable with our bananas being provided by people who live in extreme poverty? It’s a silly argument – the point of the deal was to help Venezuela improve its living conditions, in exchange for something that would improve living conditions for the poorest Londoners. Why should we feel uncomfortable about this? As Ken Livingstone says, “The suggestion that Johnson is motivated by any concern about the people of Venezuela is just a lie shown by the fact that he is withdrawing all technical support and advice provided by London under this agreement.”
I’m thoroughly unconvinced by both of these moves. Appointing someone who likes to axe jobs and piss off unions and axing a mutually beneficial deal with a South American republic show Boris Johnson to be two distinct things: A Tory (which is what he wants these moves to show) and a fool (which was presumably less of an intended effect).
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