The London Mayor is responsible for a £150 million annual budget, and has fingers in a great many pies which shape our movement, living, breathing and working. Check out the London Elects site for the full regional democracy propaganda. There will be a new mayor and 25 assembly members, 14 chosen on a constituency basis, and the others by a proportional-representation-based second vote system. Assembly membership is a great opportunity for up-and-coming politicians to get known, get stuff done and prove themselves.
[May 5th is also a sad day, the third anniversary of the 2013 Dhaka Massacre, ordered by the Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn's aunt, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. ]
Sadiq Goldaway and the Politics of Life
I remember spending a few afternoons of my misspent youth plastering Tooting High Street with pro-Sadiq posters. He does have a good chance of making it to City Hall, London is 'naturally' a Labour kinda space and he has the keys to their machine. However, his opportunistic behaviour and the conditions around him do not permit many principles to survive for long, and the Islamophobia industry is likely to skewer him, and prompt him to skewer himself more and more as polling day draws nearer. It is going to be cringesome.
Conservative candidate Zak Goldsmith used to edit the Ecologist magazine, and is the ex brother-in-law of Imran Khan. These two facts have an uncomfortably magnetic effect on my political affections, but there isn't much social justice about him, at least that is apparent. He'd block a third runway at Heathrow, and thats about it. He might just get in on big money, whiteness and Islamophobia alone.
Fresh from losing his Bradford constituency to the Quilliam-busting Naz Shah, political entrepreneur George Galloway is also running. Watching him arrive at a Stop The War Coalition meeting last year, I felt that he had aged a lot since I first encountered him a decade and a half ago, and didn't seem as fearless as he used to. The savage beating he received from former BBC manager Neil Masterton in 2014 probably had a lot to do with that. Remembering Ken Livingstone's narrow misses in 2008 and 2012, it is hard to be pro Palestine in Britain these days, it does your career and your sanity no real favours. But I guess in the scheme of things, Galloway's strategic mistake was pissing off a lot of white feminists with his defence of Julian Assange against rape claims.
GG is not the only figure in public life for whom a principled stand against the demolition of Iraq and Afghanistan has born some political fruit. What is educative however, is how Jeremy Corbyn is able to combine an anti-imperialist standpoint with being great constituency MP, the butt of establishment derision and yet carry himself with impeccably middle-class manners. As Corbyn's star has risen, it would be easy to conclude that the Labour position in London would naturally get stronger, with Momentum and everything. However, Sadiq Khan has spend most of his time alienating this movement, and it would probably be fair to say that the Labour list reflected the pre-Corbyn era of vanilla careerists.
Post Labour politics has a number of threads in the UK today, none of which are doing particularly well, but they could use a shot in the arm that is your vote and support. I think that the Green Party, for all the stupidity and blinkeredness of the Tower Hamlets Branch during last years coup, has the closest offering to Octarine, and the Politics of Life.
Drink The Green Potion
Their Mayoral Candidate, Sian Berry along with Party leader Caroline Lucas, was a consistent supporter of the Free Talha Ahsan campaign, and has been building her campaign's profile in recent months. See articles by Dave Hill in the Guardian and Rosamun Urwin, Evening Standard.
As mayor, she would support the London Renter's Union, which would voice, support and represent 2.3 million people living in that tenure. Housing in general is a strong point of policy platform, from enabling community building and supporting community defence from estate demolition. Transport ideas are pretty visionary too, from a fairer system of Tube fares, turning TfL into a renewable energy producer and the plan to replace London City Airport with homes and businesses.
This last idea will irk a few people, but I am sure they will survive a longer taxi journey home or to work. I think it will go down well in the one party state of Newham. Dusting of my Dhaka hat for a moment, I have always dreamed of replacing the elite golf courses of Dhaka with beautiful social housing landscaping for the urban poor, because that is what smiles are made of, and thats what Bhashani would do.
Here's Ma Berry talking to The Artist Taxi Driver a few months ago, from this interview you can tell she has solidarity with the most marginalised and is a fair person with a hunger for justice and a sense of humour.
Electorology
The ugly table above, pinched off an LSE blog, shows the state of play in 2012. Note the Greens slipping into third place just ahead of the Lib Dems. You only really need 1 million votes to win it, I don't see what the fuss is all about, you just need a turning-on and turning-out machine.
It is worth reflecting on how the situation differs from 2012. It seems like another world, but its probably much the same.
The Olympic Bread and Circuses are over, nobody really knows much about any of the main vanilla contenders, Russell Brand made some videos and now everybody is at it, the Lib-dems were routed last year, there has been 4 more years of social cleansing, the far right are on the rise, Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership campaign and survives, and this government's malevolence is being understood even better now that those nice junior doctors are protesting.
Historical London voting data can be found here. With linear growth goggles on there are a few boroughs where the Greens should pass 10% vote share, unless they've been Corbynated, and if campaigns are targeted, systematic and Labour beating they will do much better.
Who are these people that I've never even heard of?
The Londonwide ad constituency candidates are is as follows.
Last time around they got 2 London-wide assembly members, this time hopefully more.
London List
1. Sian Berry
2. Caroline Russell
3. Shahrar Ali
4. Jonathan Bartley
5. Noel Lynch
6. Rashid Nix
7. Dee Searle
8. Benali Hamdache
9. Andrea Carey Fuller
10. RoseMary Warrington
11. Peter Underwood
| Constituency | Name |
| Barnet and Camden | Stephen Taylor |
| Bexley and Bromley | Roisin Robertson |
| Brent and Harrow | Jafar Hassan |
| City and East | Rachel Collinson |
| Croydon and Sutton | Tracey Hague |
| Ealing and Hillingdon | Meena Hans |
| Enfield and Haringey | Ronald Stewart |
| Greenwich and Lewisham | Imogen Solly |
| Havering and Redbridge | Lee Burkwood |
| Lambeth and Southwark | Rashid Nix |
| Merton and Wandsworth | Esther Obiri-Darko |
| North East | Samir Jeraj |
| South West | Andree Frieze |
| West Central | Jennifer Nadel |
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