London is not a Tory city and its Liberal Democrat and Labour voters will combine to keep David Cameron out of Downing Street, Tessa Jowell said today.
On the day that Labour launched its manifesto for the capital, Minister for London Ms Jowell said that its cosmopolitan and "progressive" nature meant that the public would refuse to back Tory cuts in services such as Crossrail and Sure Start children's centres.
In a strong overture to the Lib-Dems, she stressed that parts of London had a "strong Liberal tradition", a reference to the chain of constituencies in the south-west of the city such as Kingston, Richmond, Sutton and Carshalton.
"Better that than Tory," Ms Jowell told the Evening Standard. "The great risk London wants to avoid is a Tory government." She also sought to warn that Mayor Boris Johnson's cuts gave a clue to the sort of bigger reductions threatened by Mr Cameron nationally.
Cuts to police numbers, big fare rises for bus and Tube travellers, a watering down of affordable house building and cuts to the opening hours of 278 Tube stations were all proof of the Tories' approach when in power, she said.
Ms Jowell said that while she didn't believe in telling the public how to use their votes "tactically", there were "a number of areas of similarity" between the Lib-Dems and Labour such as on constitutional and electoral reform.
She claimed that London had shown in 2008, despite the triumph of Mr Johnson, that it had not turned "blue" overnight. Compared with a Tory lead of 18 per cent across the country, the party managed a lead of less than half that in the capital.
"Boris won by a whisker. Just 75,000 votes out of 2.1 million. I don't deny that people are taking a second look at Labour, but they are taking a long, hard look at the Conservatives," she said.
Ms Jowell predicted that if Labour stayed in power, over the next 10 years the number of London jobs in hi-tech, green, creative and construction industries would exceed even those provided by financial services in the City.
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The Olympics minister, one of the few Cabinet members to survive under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, said that up to 100 of the city's 561 children's centres would be threatened by a Cameron government's cuts to the education budget.
Middle-class parents in particular would lose out under Tory plans to restrict the centres for under-fives to just the very poorest. "David Cameron is wrong when he says he wants to return them to their original purpose of just tackling the poorest," she said.
"The original purpose was to create neighbourhood nurture groups, where children from all backgrounds would grow up together. Sure Start under the Conservatives will become a second-class service."
Ms Jowell, who unveiled the London manifesto alongside Harriet Harman at Canary Wharf, said that Labour's would-be MPs for the capital would reflect its diversity. Of 73 candidates, 30 (41 per cent) are women and 15 (21 per cent) are from black and ethnic minorities.
