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VALEDICTORY
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Warwick Lightfoot |
In June 2006 the Conservative Party announced that it would hold an open primary on the American model to select its candidate for Mayor of London in the 2008 Greater London Authority election. Anyone could come forward whether they were a member of the Conservative Party or not and every elector on the Greater London electoral register would have an opportunity to vote in the selection process. In July 2007 the Greater London Conservative Party selected four candidates from a wide field of men and women who had expressed interest in running for Mayor of London over the previous year to run in the primary. The process culminated in a series of hustings held throughout Greater London in September 2007 and the result of the postal ballot was declared at the end of that month. Boris Johnson the Member of Parliament for Henley on Thames was selected as the Conservative Candidate.
I announced in July 2006 that it was my intention to run in the open primary and I made plain that I would campaign for the nomination until any democratic process resolved the matter that the Conservative Party may choose to use. This website was set up to set out my agenda for Greater London. Its purpose was to lay out a distinctly Conservative agenda that was practical and would be attractive to a wide public audience in London. At its heart is an agenda of public service reform to tackle crime, improve the management of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the management of the London Underground. Over the last seven years spending on the budgets for which the Mayor of London has responsibility has more than trebled from £3.5 billion to over £10 billion. But the service the public receive has not improved on a scale that is proportionate to the amount of additional taxpayers’ money that is being spent. The challenges that lie at the bottom of this do not just apply to the metropolis. They are part of the wider challenge of obtaining value for money throughout the public sector in the UK. The core problems are those of efficiency and accountability aggravated by complex national agreements on pay and employment terms and conditions that make it difficult to get improvements in public services even when additional money is made available on a large scale. These issues are central to the debate on public services and economic management in advanced countries with mature welfare states in Western Europe and North America.
As well as making a contribution to this serious debate about public service reform, I hope that this website captures the vitality and interest of London as a metropolis. Greater London is made up of 33 separate local authorities: the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. Over 7 million people live in Greater London. It is a hugely diverse set of communities. The financial markets of the City of London are currently the most innovative and dynamic in the world. Greater London is home to many of the world’s principal scientific institutions and has a broad cultural and artistic vitality that stimulates and excites people around the world.
In my judgement this diversity is at the heart of London. A centralising policy of ‘one- size fits all’ will never work properly for Greater London. The London boroughs are the core institution of local government in Greater London. The boroughs reflect the diversity of their communities and it is very important for the Mayor of London to work with them in a constructive manner.
London needs a change of political direction and a changed set of policy priorities that only a Conservative Mayor can bring about. I shall be campaigning to support Boris Johnson in next year’s election and I hope that everyone who has supported me will do so as well.