Booting Boris

An anonymous commentator says of the last post:

Sorry I must disagree. You're clearly well out of your depth.

Boris has come up with a range of policy proposals - I advise you to look at his policies on www.backboris.com/policy.

Manifesto's galore (just a small one for you, Ken's Housing Manifesto was 11 pages long, Paddick's 1 page long...Boris' 38 pages). He's the only candidate with new ideas and the only one capable of leading this city at a time where corruption in City Hall is rife.

Now, I did actually check out Boris' policy pages before posting (the clue to that, anonymous, was that I linked to his webpage), and all I saw on housing was a vague commitment to work in partnership with councils to raise more affordable homes (note his objection to a quota, what that means is Tory suburban strongholds not wanting to develop affordable housing on their patch, which is what the current situation does). Likewise his promise to protect "historic views".

I've now looked in vain for his epic housing manifesto online at his site, and can't find it, after a good deal of searching. Now, maybe I'm a eejit, or maybe he's just not being very forthright about putting his policies forward.

But, lets look at what specifics I could find:

Release GLA-owned land and £130 million from the Regional Housing Pot to launch a new 'FirstSteps Housing Scheme', which will be open to first-time buyers frozen out of Government schemes

Work with the boroughs to build 50,000 more affordable homes by 2011

Invest £60 million from the Regional Housing Pot to start renovating the capital's 84,205 empty properties to help low-income Londoners off waiting
lists

Incentivise the boroughs to release dormant housing to those stuck in bed and breakfast accommodation, by returning the Mayor's precept to them

These are all driven by free market privatising dogma - as if lowering the precept (tax cuts! tax cuts! screameth the Dalek) is not itself going to be used by boroughs (esp. Liberal and Tory boroughs) to cut their own taxes (tax cuts! tax cuts! screameth the Dalek), even if strings are attached, money is fungible, and the boroughs would just reallocate the budgets elsewhere. Likewise, "releasing GLA land" is just more state shrinking.

As for the pittances outlined above, that renovation scheme amounts to about £700 per property, might do for a lick of paint, I suppose.

Like I said, Johnson is going to actively and as a matter of principle do nothing but channel the interests of the wealthy. The rest is bluster, blather and distraction from the reality of an exploited working class whose needs and interests always come in second place to the interests of profit and capital. A beautiful home is worthless if you can't afford to buy it.

Tired
Old
Tory
Ideas

The whited sepulchre

By special request, it's time to put the boot into Boris Johnson.

Essentially, I agree with Dave Osler, the chief characteristic of this campaign is the absence of policy, apart from a few populist gripes Johnson doesn't really say anything.

Of course, over the years he has said plenty, and is well known to be a hard Thatcherite and opponent of so-called "political correctness." And that is just it, it's known for those who care that he will veer to the wild right, and act in a manner to please the saloon bar bores of which he is one in extremis.

That's why he is policy light, because he is not a typical managerial machine politician, but a walking cipher for a certain Tory gut reflex - hence the "seat of your pants" approach he is trying to downplay.

The fact is, that his bluster plus his Chatshow Boris plus a few populist measures (lets plant some trees, do away with Bendy buses, etc.) might just sneak him in. Maybe the plan is to give him a competent team to delegate to like he did while he edited the Spectator; but, just as likely, he will blunder and bluster around like a loose cannon.

The real secret will be that he doesn't believe in doing anything, he will be sabbotaging the local administration so that his Tory mates, the city capitalists and the saloon bar bores can carry on without someone even having the temerity to try an alleviate the ills of capitalism.

Now, socialists are clear that the attempt to run capitalism against capitalist interests is doomed to failure; but Boris, behind the buffoonish facade represents capitalism's uncaring heart of darkness. It's easy to laugh at Boris the joke, but what he stands for, capitalism and elitism without even the pretence of caring, is no joke.

Whilst the wild ideologues have dreamed of such unrestraint, in practice, in power, they're usually kept in check by reality. Anarcho-capitalist wingnuts usually do not get within sniffing distance of power. Even Thatcher barely managed to reduce the size of the state, as she found after years of fruitless turmoil. Sadly, Boris' reality check would be unpleasant for us all.