Today's mayoral poll confirms that Boris Johnson is maintaining his lead over Ken Livingstone in the May 3 race — for intriguing reasons.
Mr Johnson leads despite the fact that a large majority of those polled think the Mayor represents the rich: his main rival appears so far unable to capitalise on such perceptions. At the same time, the poll confirms the apparent peripherality of the other candidates — including, most significantly, Liberal Democrat contender Brian Paddick, who on present polling stands to do even less well than in 2008.
Mr Paddick is unlikely to help his case with his call today for sections of Tube lines to be shut for weeks at a time for upgrade work, rather than just in the evenings and at weekends as at present. Longer closures are certainly the preferred option of the engineers — but that does not mean they are in the interest of Londoners battling their way across the transport system on a daily basis. The idea that Tube commuters could travel on weekdays on replacement buses, for weeks at a time, as Mr Paddick suggests, is frankly fanciful.
Mr Paddick has some good ideas — such as a one-hour bus ticket that could be used across routes — and has today made further bold promises to this paper’s readers’ panel, for example on affordable homes. But his proposal on Tube closures simply would not work. Still, while he may stand little chance of winning, the competition between the Labour and Conservative candidates remains close. Boris Johnson has so far managed to convince a Labour-leaning city to vote for a Tory Mayor. But with two-and-a-half weeks of the campaign left, it is still too close for anyone to call with certainty.
Cab wars
The protest today by leading minicab company Addison Lee over cabs’ use of bus lanes will be a test for Transport for London. The cab firm, the UK’s largest, says hundreds of its cabs will enter bus lanes in protest at being banned from them on pain of stiff fines, along with the rest of regular traffic. The capital’s 24,000 black cabs are allowed to use the lanes. Addison Lee’s language — accusing black cabs of bullying TfL and of treating minicabs as “second-class citizens” — suggests the bitterness of relations between the black cab and minicab industries.
It is true that the majority of London’s taxi services are provided by minicabs rather than black cabs. Yet as TfL points out, if all 60,000 of the capital’s minicabs were permitted to use bus lanes, it would cause traffic chaos, effectively negating the whole point of the lanes, across the whole city. Such permission would also be difficult to enforce: minicabs are far harder to spot than black cabs. A line has to be drawn somewhere. It is true that black cabs are nowadays not cheap. But they provide a valuable service with a high level of knowledge guaranteed. That is not true of all minicab firms. Letting them use bus lanes would be unworkable.
Well done, Charlton
As Chelsea reach the FA Cup Final and prepare to take on Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final, we should salute the first success for a London club this season: Charlton Athletic won promotion to the Championship on Saturday. The Addicks are the first team in the whole League to be promoted and have already set new club records for points gained and number of away victories. Now we wish Chris Powell — one of football’s nice guys and one of its few black managers — good luck in landing the League One title they thoroughly deserve.
