London's Mayor Boris Johnson leaves No. 10 Downing Street, London. 17th February 2016. ©Frank Augstein/AP/Press Association Images
As Boris Johnson prepares to move out of City Hall into temporary accommodation prior to his desired move into 10 Downing Street, it is time to draw up the first balance sheet on London's second directly elected Mayor. What was it all about? What did 2008-2016 amount to?
Boris clearly passes the personality test—he is a "first name" politician, regularly hailed in the streets and, when heckled, seen giving as good as he gets. Londoners recognise him, are amused by him and even feel fond of him. Though they are not, I think, proud of him. Sure, he was a genial host for the London Olympics, but it is the dark side of life that reveals true character. He has not, thankfully, been tested as Ken Livingstone (Boris's predecessor) was on 7/7 or as Giuliani (New York's Mayor until later 2001) was on 9/11. We do not know whether Boris's charm and affability stretch to be anything like the leadership and nobility they showed. He has left us with amusing phrases—an inverted pyramid of piffle—but not with poetry, words to live by.
So we are left with what he has actually done—the legacy of physical changes to the fabric of the city. There are the "Boris bikes"—actually a deal done by Ken Livingstone but not reversed by Boris. (And if there is an underrated strength in politicians, it is choosing to maintain and embrace the successes of your predecessors.) There are the Boris buses—hailed as the return of the "Routemaster." Over a million pounds each is a trifle expensive, especially since they do not have windows that open (which will be fun in summer), will not have conductors and do not have open platforms for jumping on and off in traffic.
Which brings us to the traffic jams he will leave us with. Or, more correctly, the cause of the traffic jams—the erection of building works to create a network of cycle super-highways through London. These are unequivocally a good thing—it doesn't matter whether you believe this work should have been started a while ago; it is now being done. And it will save lives: directly though making black spots like the Elephant and Castle and Blackfriars much safer, and indirectly by boosting further bicycle ridership and thus improving the health of Londoners. The problem for Boris is that these successes contrast with, and therefore highlight, his much greater failures in other areas.
The job of London Mayor is straightforward—keep London moving, keep Londoners working and put a roof over everyone's head. The powers for him to do this are all there: transport, economic development and planning. Judged by this metric Boris's mayoralty has been a disappointment. Remember that his first action as Mayor was to cancel Livingstone's transport schemes. The North-South tram from Peckham to King's Cross. The Ealing tram. The East London River Crossing. The last of these has been needed for at least thirty years—I remember campaigning for it when I was on the board of the London Docklands Development Corporation. I think that it will be built eventually, but every year of delay is a loss of growth for London and wealth for Londoners. The tramlines are a huge missed opportunity—we need more ways to be able to move the 10m who will soon live in the capital and we desperately need to get cars off our roads to clean up our air.
The individual projects may not matter in themselves (though it doesn't feel like that to a south-east Londoner); it's the overall attitude underlying the slow progress that is revealing—Boris just doesn't understand the importance of infrastructure. The only new transport he appears passionate about is the ludicrous Emirates ski-lift from the Greenwich peninsula to the Docklands. It is almost certainly a good thing that it will be the next Mayor who has to deal with the coming integration of overground rail services into Transport for London.
And housing? Well that has been an unmitigated disaster. The Global Financial Crisis brought new development of housing, particularly social housing, to a halt. And it has taken time to refinance and restart. There was almost certainly no way to deliver on Livingstone's aspiration for a 50/50 rule—two affordable houses in every four built—but there was no need for Boris's total retreat from the challenge. The "Skinny Shard" planned for Paddington (which I suspect will never get built) not only is set to include a ridiculously low proportion of affordable housing; the affordable units are to be delivered off-site.
There has been no rigour on housing under Boris, and equally no imagination. Why not use the planning powers to ensure densification around transport nodes? There are over 100 of these across London and each could have many more flats clustered round them. Or what about garden cities? An imaginative Mayor would have landed at least one for London in, for example, Tottenham. There is the land, the transport and, in Haringey Council, the leadership needed to pull off something special. But Boris just hasn't shown that kind of drive nor dream.
Si monumentum requiris curcumspice. And it's not much, to be honest.
