The bosses
are over the moon. “Boris Johnson’s London
will be a Tory laboratory” trumpets the Daily Telegraph (May 4th). That makes David Cameron their Doctor
Frankenstein.
Don’t let anybody
fall for the line that it can’t get worse after Blair and Brown.
Already one of Johnson’s top aide’s has had to
resign for saying about immigrants who don’t like Tory policies "Well,
let them go (back) if they don’t like it here."
This nice gentleman is not some inexperienced junior. He’s
been a senior advisor to leading Tories including shadow chancellor George
Osborne for the last seven years. Then Boris Johnson banned the Rise festival
from being a campaign against racism.
He has
started as he intends to go on.
More or
less Johnson’s first act was to cancel a deal that enabled a quarter of a
million Londoners on income support to travel on London Transport for half
price.
Ken Livingstone
had arranged with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela
for London to have cheap oil in return in return
for help of various kinds to Caracas.
This was a good deal for London
and cancellation is a piece of gratuitous nastiness from Johnson.
It’s all
part of the reactionary right wing politics also shown in banning the Cuba
Solidarity Campaign from the Rise festival.
Next Johnson
tried to grandstand by introducing an alcohol ban on London Transport. But he
didn’t bother putting in place enforcement facilities in the form of LT Police –
or consulting with the unions. As a result there was a drunken protest that had
to be dealt with and cleared up by tube staff.
Those of us
who’ve been travelling on the underground for forty years (unlike Johnson –
there’s no tube system in his old constituency of leafy Henley)
know there’s never been a problem, until now.
Of course
if you want to see vile drunken misbehaviour visit the Hooray Henrys and
Henriettas at regatta week in… Henley. But
there’ll be no big Mayoral initiative there. Like all Tories Boris looks after
his own.
More
importantly in the long run, Johnson has made it clear that he is not going to
bother with plans for affordable social housing. Already more than 40% of young
workers in London
are priced out of the housing market, and it’s getting worse. Thanks a lot.
London
tube cleaners have gone on strike for the London
living wage of £7.20 an hour. Some are paid little more than £5.50. Try living
in London on
that! They are also fighting the practice of ‘third party sackings’, which is
just a way of victimising trade union activists. Johnson has made it clear he
is their enemy.
He has
appointed Tim Parker, a dodgy asset stripper whose spell of running the AA led
to a third of the workforce being sacked. His role is the square up to the rail
unions. Johnson wants a no-strike deal.
As Bob Crow comments, “The world’s finest metro system does not need an
asset stripper or a Prince of Darkness.”
Looks like
trouble ahead. He’s already waving his arms around after suddenly discovering a
shortfall for the £1bn a year needed to modernising the tube system. That means
he wants to put the burden on passengers, transport workers or both.
Gordon
Brown imposed the disastrous so-called Public Private Partnership financing
arrangement on Livingstone. When Metronet went belly up, £2bn of our money went
up in smoke. Is the ultimate madness of privatising the tube at the back of
Boris Johnston’s mind?
Millions of
people have little direct experience of Tory rule. The danger is they buy into Cameron’s Tory
relaunch. But it’s all lies. Cameron worked for the monstrous Thatcher
government, and as Boris Johnson shows, nothing’s really changed. Let’s make
sure they don’t end up running the country again.
At the
moment New Labour are tobogganing towards total disaster. Activists must
pressure the trade union leaders to halt that now. The unions hold the
purse-strings and have the power to turn the Tory tide. Defeat the Tories.
Socialist policies for Labour now!
