If you’re a Lib Dem who isn’t yet convinced that you should be a number 2 (or 3 or 4, which amount to the same vote for you!) in our tactical voting against Boris guide, I recommend Ken’s appeal to you today, particularly the well researched and clearly presented listing of policies on which the Liberal Democrats hold positions in agreement with him, while Boris has stated positions and views against them. For instance:

Cutting emissions from air travel

Ken’s policy:  Oppose new runway at Heathrow, Stansted, or Gatwick.

Lib Dem policy:  "Liberal Democrats believe that for the foreseeable future, and at least until 2030, limits on air flight capacity in the South East in particular should be set by limiting the amount of runway space to a level that is roughly equivalent to what is currently available. This is why we have opposed a second runway at Stansted and the third (and short) runway at Heathrow." A Soft Landing: Creating a Sustainable Market in Aviation, 21 December 2005

Boris Johnson’s policy:  Hoodwinked environmentalists by winning plaudits for coming out against Heathrow and then immediately announcing plan for new airport in the Thames Estuary, which he now calls his ‘big idea’ for London.

Civil Partnerships

Ken’s policy:  Ken introduced the first civil partnerships register, which was opened in 2001.  This paved the way for the 2004 Civil Partnerships Act.

Lib Dem policy: Supported civil partnerships register

Boris Johnson’s policy: Compared to gay marriage to the right to "the union between three men and a dog".

You get the idea.

Ken’s open letter to Lib Dem supporters is here. Thanks to Dave Hill for drawing it to my attention through his blog.

Dave agrees, in some detail, with our assessment of the Times’s unconvincing pro-Boris leader.

He also agrees with us about the Sunday Times’s similar leader today.

Martin from Mayorwatch’s comment about the Times one is also good:

I love the subheading

"Two terms is enough for Livingstone. Johnson should be allowed his chance"

it’s just insane to suggest that democracy is best served by voters being told they can’t elect the same person person three times (not sure that was the Times line when Maggie won three elections) and that offices should pass to new holders on a ‘his turn now’ basis.

Absolutely. Please, for goodness’ sake, this Thursday, think about how you’re voting and use your votes in a sensible way, not based on ridiculous statements like "time for a change"!

The Sunday Times follows its sister paper by endorsing "time for a change" Boris, without providing a single positive reason why. In fact, again, they provide instead some reasons why he should not be trusted with the job:

Many have doubts about whether he is the right man for the job. His campaign has shown that the qualities that have endeared him to voters as a political clown do not translate easily into being a powerful executive mayor. […]

Mr Johnson knows that this is his last shot at demonstrating that he can be a serious politician after many false starts.

"Many" occasions when Boris has completely messed up being "a serious politician", and a failure to translate his undoubted clowning abilities into executive abilities, are not reasons to give him four years’ major power.

Indeed, as the Observer (which, like the Guardian yesterday isn’t exactly glowing about any of the candidates) puts it:

The unavoidable choice is between an incumbent whose record and character are familiar from many years in office and a challenger whose image and beliefs have been cynically manufactured for the campaign.

London is not a focus group for national parties to test their tactics, it is a city in need of a competent mayor. The only way to guarantee it has one is to cast a [second preference] vote for Ken.

The Observer is the only paper I’ve seen offering a full recommendation for the use of both preference votes: they encourage readers to put Siân first, and Ken second, making them a ‘number 2′ type in our tactical voting advice.

Ah, the Sunday Telegraph’s leader has just appeared online and, in stark contrast to yesterday’s Daily Telegraph’s leader, does explicitly (and at great length) endorse Boris. In fact it reads like some sort of party election broadcast for Boris. The only hint that he might be an incompetent, risky candidate – a doubt which I have yet to see anyone independent seriously dispute (that is, say that he definitely isn’t risky) – is the tiny phrase:

In all modesty we cannot claim that his past as a journalist was the ideal preparation for political responsibility.

That’s certainly a "modest" way to describe the huge risk inherent in electing a clown to manage an £11bn budget!

Does Boris have particularly good friends in particularly high places at the Sunday Telegraph? Following their meticulously calculated bit of front-page electioneering on his behalf three weeks ago, to find them publishing a lengthy leader apparently written on an extremely rose-tinted computer screen does make me wonder if this ‘newspaper’ might be trying to be even more pro-Boris than the Evening Standard, which would certainly take some doing.

So, now we know where nearly all the newspapers stand. (I guess one or two more may be saving their leaders for polling day itself, or shortly before.)

A defeat for Boris would be a defeat for the most reactionary and cynical instincts of the Murdoch, Mail and Telegraph press. Yet another reason to vote against Boris on Thursday!

Starring two or three horses and an elephant in the room.

(Use this link to jump straight to our advice without reading the full post.)

This post has been brewing for a while now, as we’ve monitored the opinion polls throughout the campaign, and by coincidence this morning I received an e-mail from a Stop Boris campaign supporter urging us to make a post along these lines. So here it is.

The Stop Boris campaign was started and has been run with one objective: to do whatever it takes to keep Boris Johnson out of City Hall. I won’t list again the reasons why this is so important – there are 125 other blog posts, a web site and a group and application on Facebook that do that.

One thing we have been clear about from the outset is that this campaign is not seeking to endorse any particular alternative candidate to Boris: we’ve provided links to all but the BNP’s manifestos and other information, and been as meticulous as possible in retaining our non-partisan status throughout the campaign.

It also seems prudent at this juncture to remind readers that Dave Hill of the Guardian has independently confirmed that we are not a ‘Team Ken front’, without breaking the anonymity that we’ve (often frustratingly) had to maintain for personal reasons throughout this campaign. No-one is paying us to run Stop Boris – indeed no-one is even asking us to run it – and in fact only our close friends and family members even know who we are! We’re running this campaign in a personal capacity out of a genuine fear of the damage Boris would do if given control of London and its £11bn budget for four long years.

But now, at this point in the campaign, with barely a week until election day, we have to face facts. We have to acknowledge the elephant in the room: an elephant which the opinion polls suggest is not about to reach for its jumbo coat and leave the room.

While the opinion polls throughout the election have varied significantly, the overall picture is that Boris is at worst in the lead by quite some way, or at best pretty much exactly level with Ken Livingstone. Brian Paddick is bringing up the rear with only a fraction of the votes of either of these front-runners. In other words, this election is (some might say bafflingly!) proving to be a two-horse race.

In any normal, first-past-the-post (FPTP), one-vote-per-person election, the course of action for stopping Boris in these circumstances would be obvious and straightforward, if not to everyone’s liking: vote for Ken. But the election for Mayor of London gives each voter two votes.

LiveJournal user publicansdecoy has a dispassionate analysis of what this means for those of us wishing to stop Boris.

From his analysis (and further clarification among the comments) we see that using either your first or second preference vote for Ken is equally helpful in an attempt to stop Boris. It also does no harm to the chances of your genuine first choice if you put Ken as your second choice.

In the comments on that post, someone by the name of matgb (who sounds to be something of an expert psephologist based on publicansdecoy’s reference to him in his main post) goes one step further, offering advice on the ultimate Stop Boris pair of votes:

Use your first vote for the person you most want to win. Use your second for either Ken or Boris, unless your first vote is for one of them, in which case your second should be for Brian (there’s still an outside chance he could take a second place position, in which case he probably wins).

[…] if you really want to stop either Ken or Boris, then Brian 1st choice is the best way to go psephologically.

So if your only consideration is stopping Boris, Brian first, Ken second is the way to vote. It’s also your best hope of stopping Boris but keeping Ken out as well, although I wouldn’t want to overstate the likelihood of that happening, given how far ahead Boris and Ken are of Brian. But if enough people vote Brian 1, Ken 2, it’s certainly within the realms of technical possibility that it comes to a Boris v Brian run-off, with Brian taking the prize. Perhaps there are three horses in this race after all.

Before concluding this post, I would like to pre-emptively defend us against some potential attacks.

The Stop Boris campaign is not telling anyone how to vote. We are not endorsing a candidate, or indeed two candidates. We are simply advising our readers, from a psephological point of view, about how to vote in order to stand the best chance possible of stopping Boris.

That said, assuming the opinion polls aren’t unprecedentedly, enormously, wildly inaccurate, there’s no getting away from that aforementioned elephant in the Stop Boris living room: because this election is so very likely to come down to a run-off between Boris and Ken on second preferences, putting neither of your crosses against Ken does seem unlikely to have any more impact than a spoilt ballot paper would. But it’s still preferable to spoil (or effectively spoil) your ballot paper than to vote for Boris!

So in summary, here’s our advice, (to which this is a permanent link, which you are very welcome indeed to publicise):

If you want to use your ballot paper specifically to stop Boris, and…

1. …you think Ken’s the best choice for Mayor:

• Put Ken as your first choice.
• Put Brian as your second choice. It’s unlikely your second choice will be counted, so it almost certainly doesn’t matter who you put; but if it does get counted, it being for Brian would be of most use in stopping Boris, as he’s the only other candidate with a (very slim) chance of reaching the second preference run-off.

2. …you think someone other than Ken is the best choice for Mayor:

• Put your favourite candidate as your first choice. This will help them retain their deposit, but only in the event of a major upset will it actually result in them winning.
• Put Ken as your second choice.

3. …you’d rather avoid Ken being Mayor too, if at all possible, or
4. …you don’t really care who’s Mayor, as long as it’s not Boris:

• Put Brian as your first choice. He’s the only candidate with any slight chance of beating both Ken and Boris, if he gets enough first-preference votes to make the final round.
• Put Ken as your second choice. If you’re a ‘number 3′, hold your nose or look the other way as you cast your vote but, like it or not, Ken’s the only person with a good chance of stopping Boris. It’s a shame that a non-FPTP vote should require choosing ‘the lesser of two evils’ in many people’s eyes, but that’s the reality of the situation we find ourselves in.

So, with all that in mind, let the final week of campaigning commence.

Best of luck, Boris-stoppers!

Three Line Whip has some interesting information about some of the complications of postal votes which could see people accidentally spoiling their ballots.

One particular thing to look out for is the fact that you have to sign and date a slip of paper, but the date is your birth date, not today’s date as you would usually expect to write next to your signature.

All in all it sounds like the balance is tipping away from postal voting again.

I have heard of some people receiving ballot papers that have been damaged in transit by the postal service, which rather puts me off postal voting: what if the damage had happened in the other direction and their vote was no longer legible? That would be no way to stop Boris.

If you have got a postal vote but can get to the polling station on 1 May (or your local council offices beforehand), why not take it down there yourself and hand it in? Don’t put it in the ballot box though, give it to the attendants, or it might not count.

If you click through to just one link from this blog, make it this one.

if you or your friends and family haven’t registered yet, you need to do so now. You cannot register after this Wednesday, so you need to stop putting it off and do so today.

Register to Vote at London Elects

-Registration ends on Wednesday-

It’s vital to get turnout up because, as The Tory Troll explains in the linked post, Team Boris are relying on keeping turnout as low as possible. So please do register if you haven’t already, and do share this advice with anyone you know too.

I was going to arrange to send a similar message to the members of the Stop Boris group on Facebook, but sadly the group has reached the arbitrary membership level at which Facebook no longer lets its administrators send messages to its members. Quite why there is a need for such a level, I don’t know: if you join a group, you are surely interested in receiving information about it. Apparently Facebook thinks otherwise.

Every election blogger worth reading has linked to Vote Match, so why should we be any different?

In principle, we shouldn’t be. I think sites like this are a brilliant idea in any election, and always use them to check my voting intention against my beliefs and ensure I’m not backing the wrong horse. Vote Match is easy to use, presents the results clearly, and works really well.

But in the context of the Mayor of London election 2008, I think there is one problem with Vote Match: it’s built on the assumption that candidates’ stated policies are all that matters.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they don’t matter, but the problem is that this approach overlooks some of the most important reasons not to vote for Boris.

Boris is renowned for his unreliability, his lack of commitment and his liability to commit offensive and embarrassing gaffes which (unlike rival candidates quoting things Boris has written back at him) would demean the office of Mayor.

He also has a history of saying whatever he thinks will get him elected, regardless of what he really thinks or will really do when in office: in his university days, to get elected as Oxford Union president, he pretended to be a supporter of the then fashionable SDP, rather than declaring his true allegiance to the Conservatives. This leaves a large question mark hanging over anything he says now.

But it’s that unreliability, that buffoonishness, that is the main, clear reason why the Stop Boris campaign’s recommendation about using Vote Match is as follows: use it by all means, but if Boris comes out on top just ignore him and vote for whoever came next.

Whichever statements Boris claims to agree with – and he was the third most dithering candidate, answering ‘neither’ to five of the questions on big issues like Council Tax and unemployment – it’s important that we don’t allow people to forget that he fundamentally can’t be trusted to represent our great city or do a competent job as Mayor. It’s the idiocy, stupid!