The London Mayoral Election 2012

Who should you vote for? How do you work it out? Many people will vote, as they do in general elections, for the person they think they ‘like’ the most. “He seems like a nice man that Boris.” (Whereas Ken, well, looks a bit desperate and hung-over.)

Well to start off you probably want to look at the Mayor’s portfolio – what they do – which is: setting the budget for London (£14.6bn), policing, transport, fire and emergency planning, housing, environment, planning and development, arts and culture, public health promotion, economic development and regeneration. These are explained further at the very helpful London Elects.

Then you probably want to look at some of the policies Ken implemented and some of the policies that Boris implemented. Remind yourself of what they both did. And move out of the current media hype, get some perspective on reality (it certainly helped my decision process). Here is what I found I have tried to remove what look like dodgy or bias statistics/claims.

What Boris did (2008 – now)	What Ken did (2000-2008)
24 hour freedom pass for pensioners Boris bikes Got rid of bendy buses Got rid of Western extension of the congestion charging zone Got rid of a plan to pedestrianize Parliament Square Got rid of the mayor’s official newspaper and PR sheet the Londoner alcohol was banned on public transport Oyster on OG Planted 10000 trees 1000 more police on the street	Froze Oyster bus fares for 4 years Free transport for under 18s Secured 2012 Olympics bid for London Cut road fatalities by 40% East London Line Upgrade Doubled cycle numbers Introduced Low emission Zone Police numbers up by 32000 officers Brought in Oyster (2003) Introduced Congestion Charge set up Britain’s first register for same-sex couples Held Europe’s biggest anti-racism festival RISE Racist attacks reduced by 50% Had a beat police team with a minimum of six officers in every ward in London dedicated to that community
What Boris says he’ll do	What Ken says he’ll do
Cut waste at City Hall – freeing up £3.5bn Put £445 back in your pocket by freezing the Mayoral share of council tax Create 200,000 new jobs over next 4 years. 1,000 more police on the beat. Restoring 300 acres of green space and planting 20,000 street trees. Investing £221 million to transform local high streets, supporting small businesses. Olympic legacy – 11,000 new homes and 10,000 new jobs. Reducing Tube delays 30% by 2015. Building Crossrail and orbital rail to link suburbs. Extending the Bike Hire scheme.	Cut fares by 7 % Reversing police cuts Tackle heating bills to help households save over £150 a year Introduce a London EMA of up to £30 a week to help young people stay in education Support childcare with grants and interest-free loans – and campaign against government cuts to child tax credits

The data is there, for example after some quick trawling on Google, I came across the nicely bundled data sets at the Guardian who in turn had extracted lots of the data from the Office for National Statistics and the London Dataset. But if you don’t have hours to analyse it, you might be better off making a decision on what the candidates have done, and are proposing to do and their track record for sticking to their pledges (only Boris and Ken have ever been elected Mayors of London). Also – tactically you might not want to vote Green as based on previous figures and current polls they don’t really stand a chance (saying that, if everyone thought like that nothing would change).And then there’s the data. Obviously it’s really important to see where and when crime has risen or decreased, or where congestion has improved, or where cycle safety measures have been implemented, but the problem is with looking at time series data sets (like the change in crime rates in one London borough between the start of Boris’s mayoral tenure and now) is that many of the bigger problems like crime will not always change quickly in response to a policy. Also some policies may take so long to implement, that it might look like the current Mayor is doing it when in fact it was the previous mayor.

Also the two players with a track record will use stats to show how they are the men for London. Always be wary of stats as a rule of thumb. For example, Boris has said “The murder rate is down by a quarter”. This could be down to so many factors, I doubt police on the street is the single variable. It’d more than likely to do with police practices, local neighbourhood schemes. In fact when murder rates in the US dropped recently, no-one could explain why. If he says crime on buses is down – is that because less people can afford buses or because he has good public transport crime fighting strategy in place.

One view would be that because it’s ultimately so difficult to make a clear decision on an the integrity of either candidates campaign in terms of likelihood to deliver, then as a voter it would be better to just vote on the basis of either one area that you feel really strongly about or better still, that you know about. Failing that, go on personality – it’s not as stupid as it sounds: how do these guys appear on the international stage for example? Boris certainly has a flair that sparks a wider identification of the London mayor with his electorate, which is always a good thing. But also, Ken secured the 2012 Olympics bid so he knows how to operate.

Commentators have also suggested that Ken’s advisory posse are just better at connecting with local neighborhood committees on issues such as racially motivated crime and social inequalities, compared to Boris’s team who have been criticized as removed from the real issues. This, in itself, if true would be enough to swing it for me.

Then there’s the wider politics. Will Boris be able to secure a better deal from Davey and Nicky at Number 10 – he seems to think so? Either way, in 24 hours we’ll know. Vote wisely, it’s your capital.