I bet you think there’ll be some clever twist in this post which will mean that the heading is completely the opposite of the truth – a bit like an Evening Standard advertising board.

Think again!

The Standard have given their team of reporters – the ones who haven’t come out on BBC News as self-proclaimed "Boris Johnson supporter[s]" (Andrew Gilligan on Question Time Extra last night, in case we weren’t sure) – the three leading candidates’ manifestos and asked them to pass judgement on their pledges.

In fact, they have largely interpreted their brief to be to pick as many holes as possible in the manifestos, but it’s interesting how easy a job they’ve had doing this with Boris’s.

The article opens well, pointing out that he is completely hopeless on the Tube:

1. there’s no chance of Aslef or the RMT signing up to a no-strike deal ("it will immediately lead to a strike" if he suggests one!);
2. his air-conditioning plans just amount to what is already being done or isn’t really possible; and
3. they question whether he’s really understood the Metronet contracts.

The piece goes on to criticise him on a further fourteen separate issues:

4. his bus costing;
5. his lack of detail on "reform" of the Congestion Charge;
6. the difficulties of his proposals to fine utility companies who dig up the roads;
7. his possible optimism about how far he could stretch money saved on advertising;
8. the "major headache" of enforcing his Tube alcohol ban (which "will not necessarily help" with cutting crime anyway);
9. his return to the days of stop and search;
10. his crime mapping potentially creating crime-ridden ghettos;
11. his pathetically low number of pledged tree-plantings;
12. his complete ignoring (ignorance?!) of climate change;
13. his hypocritical position on airport expansion which "would dramatically increase emissions from air travel and damage local wildlife";
14. the risk of his house-building policy letting "poor performing councils off the hook";
15. the fact that his supposedly ‘affordable’ housing scheme would require a household income of £60,000, which apparently puts it out of reach to 80% of London households!;
16. his complete misunderstanding of the empty homes situation – empty homes are at their lowest in 30 years and the majority may only have been empty for weeks: "the housing market can’t operate without a reasonable degree of turnover".

As well as all that, and particularly interestingly, they have this – we’ll call it no. 17 – to say about his promise to chair the Metropolitan Police Authority:

His pledge to run the MPA, and hold the Commissioner to account, is well intentioned but can he cope with being chairman of the body which oversees the biggest force in the country? Previous holders put aside three days a week.

Given that most people doubt Boris’s ability to run an alcohol-based event in a brewery, and certainly can’t imagine how he’ll cope with trying to run London, the idea that he could take all that on and cope with the burden of a chairmanship which would require as much as three days a week of his time is stretching credibility to breaking point.

Of course, given how little is left in his manifesto that the Standard haven’t exposed as fundamentally or seriously flawed in this article, one has to wonder why on earth they’re so keen to get him elected as Mayor. Nothing to do with a petty squabble with a certain incumbent, is it? As it happens, Ken’s manifesto comes off comparatively well under their scrutiny. (They even admit his crime reduction target is "realistic" and that "latest figures show crime fell by six per cent last year"!) No wonder they’re trying to distract voters from the actual issues in their more high-profile day-to-day election coverage!

This entry was posted on Friday 25 April 2008 at 22.30 by Mr. Stop Boris and is filed under Buses, Crime, Environment, Evening Standard, Housing, Incompetence, Media, Policies, Transport, Underground. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS2 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.