I’ve been out this evening since not long after Blair resigned, but I’ve just come home to catch up on the coverage and noticed this quote from Boris’s brief statement, which I overlooked earlier:
He will be especially remembered for his successful introduction in London of the Safer Neighbourhood teams and for falling crime levels virtually across the board.
This is interesting, as it’s certainly not what the Back Boris campaign said in the run-up to the Mayoral election.
I hope this doesn’t indicate that after fighting an election on the basis that the crime figures were a misleading irrelevance, Boris is going to expect us to believe that he’s made a difference by showing us the very same figures demonstrating falls in crime.
I’m sure his friends at the Evening Standard will help him spin it if so – assuming they haven’t had a big falling out by then, of course.
Meanwhile on the main issue of the day there’s a strong opinion emerging against the move. Whatever people thought of Blair – and there’s certainly been a lot of people lining up to call for him to go over the past year or more – Boris’s actions in forcing him out rode roughshod over the correct procedures for removing a Metropolitan Police Commissioner and have set a dangerous precedent.
Whatever Boris may want, the fact is that the Mayor doesn’t currently have the power to hire and fire the Commissioner, nor does he look likely to have it in the future, even under a government of his own colour. In obstinately ignoring this and refusing to develop a working relationship with Blair, Boris has shown a complete disregard for due process, and as Tom comments, opened the floodgates for a potentially awful Goldilocks-style recruitment process, where the Home Secretary repeatedly recruits new Commissioners until Boris decides he can work with the one she puts forward.
This would amount to a unilateral instatement of his desired position whereby the Mayor can hire and fire the Commissioner – certainly a display of power politics, but it all sounds a bit of a distraction from, er, tackling crime, which I kind of thought was the point of the police, not to mention one of (sic) Boris’s ‘number one priorities’.
Then again, now Boris has suddenly noticed that crime levels are “falling…across the board”, perhaps he doesn’t think it’ll matter if he plays politics with the top job for a few months.
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11 responses so far ↓
Goldilocks? ROFL! The idea of a beauty contest of grim-faced hard-bitton chief coppers parading through London with Boris checking them over, doubtless consulting Anthony Browne to make sure they’re suitably politically correct (i.e very right wing) is so appealing they ought to sell tickets.
So, to recap, in order to tackle the rising crime he campaigned on, Boris uses a power he doesn’t have to sack Sir Ian Blair, who now officially presided over falling crime. Boris will now presumably use the other power he doesn’t have to hire someone who will make crime fall even more, but on less money.
It’s not Goldilocks, it’s Alice in Wonderland.
I’m looking forward to the Gillispin tomorrow. What’s your thoughts on the line he will take?
Adam: something like this?
“Good on you Boris, you have kicked out another of Ken’s cronies. Let’s hope this is just the start of a new phase of Boris’s mayoralty, where he finally kicks back against TfL (Trotskyites for London) and all the other remnants of Ken’s loony administration and shows them the enlightened way forward, scrapping bendy buses and the Congestion Charge Western Extension within weeks. Don’t worry about all the red tape - ‘due process’ as the Stalinists might put it - any more, like you didn’t in this case either: just get on with making the difference Londoners elected you to make!”
Blimey, Gilligan’s job is really easy isn’t it? I wonder how you apply to do his holiday cover. Mind you, I don’t think he ever takes a holiday from ranting against Ken so I suppose there isn’t a vacancy.
“Meanwhile on the main issue of the day there’s a strong opinion emerging against the move”
I haven’t seen much evidence of this strong opinion against the move that you mention.
Most of the reaction to the decision itself that I have seen has been of the opinion that it’s been a long time coming. Falling crime is an important metric, but it’s not the only thing to consider and there’s a catalogue of issues surrounding Blair’s leadership of the Met. It should be possible to find someone carry on the positive aspects of his tenure whilst restoring better leadership to the organisation.
Regarding the processology of it all, the nuts and bolts of it is that the Mayor, once becoming chair of the MPA, let it be known that he didn’t have confidence in Blair to offer the leadership the Met required. Should he not have an opinion on this subject or is only allowed to have an opinion if he supports him? The last Mayor buttressed Blair’s position with his unremitting support. I don’t see the current Mayor’ s actions as being any more controversial than that.
The job of Mayor is still relatively new and there was always going to come a day when a Mayor and the Met Chief were at odds. That day has come and the power of the Mayor has become a bit more clearly defined as a result, although I think it would be a good thing to have that power formalised.
“Most of the reaction to the decision itself that I have seen has been of the opinion that it’s been a long time coming”
People are purposingfully conflating the concept of Blair going and the Mayor of London refusing to work with him. Two different subjects IMO.
You can think somebody should leave office, and be glad when they do, but that doesn’t excuse the how and why if it was nefarious.
“You can think somebody should leave office, and be glad when they do, but that doesn’t excuse the how and why if it was nefarious.”
Indeed, which is why I’ve started asking ‘what next?’. There are plenty of ways central government can make Boris’s life more difficult.
Yes, exactly - I didn’t mean opinion was particularly strong against the actual loss of Blair as Met Commissioner, just against the way in which it was done, with the Mayor effectively exercising a power he doesn’t have.
I think one of the previous Mayor’s biggest strengths was a very detailed understanding of the exact remit of the Mayor and how best to make use of every last bit of statutory power to achieve whatever goals he wanted. Of course he could also complain about lacking any extra powers he would have liked - I certainly heard him say on a number of occasions that he’d've liked to have the powers to raise taxes on the City to redistribute wealth to the poor, for instance - but these complaints tended to be offered in direct answer to related questions and weren’t, as far as we can infer from Ken’s fairly decent (some complain too cosy) working relationship with City bosses, used as a stick to beat anyone or an impediment to getting on with tasks the Mayor *was* statutorily able to do.
Another strength was working with the system to negotiate extra powers for the Mayor, some of which have come in in time for Boris to benefit, such as enhanced control over aspects of education in London (since the spring) and now the ability of the Mayor to chair the MPA, which came in on Wednesday.
In typical Boris petulant schoolboy style, he has simply mouthed off a few times about wanting to be able to hire and fire the Commissioner, and then when this didn’t result in him getting his own way instantly, as he’s been accustomed to for much of his life, he simply threw his toys out of the pram and did what he wanted to do anyway.
When even those equally keen to see the back of Blair are doubtful that this power should be handed to the Mayor, it’s clear that this is a bigger issue than Boris just doing the popular thing and so getting away with it. In such a sensitive and controversial area, I don’t think any ends can justify tearing up the means’ rulebook.
(That Marie Claire link is down at the moment. The relevant bit of the article is also here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/can-he-be-serious-janet-streetporter-vs-boris-johnson-802610.html
starting with “Has anyone ever said no to you?”)
Boriswatch.com seems pretty chuffed.
“Sir Ian, even from the outset, has been seen as a prickly thorn in Boris’ side, destined never to see eye-to-eye with the new Mayor. Their backgrounds and ideology were never going to collide in harmony, and frankly Sir Ian has been nothing if not controversial. The Jean Charles de Menezes fracas, Tariq Ghaffur, the Met race row and may other problems have dogged him for years, and while some crime has fallen during Blair’s reign, in the end there seems to have been too many downsides to his leadership.
Sir Ian may blame Boris - but who can blame Boris for wanting to clear the murky cobwebs at the top of the Metropolitan Police?”
“frankly Sir Ian has been nothing if not controversial”
Boris of course, sedulously avoids controversy and keeps a low profile wherever he goes. What tommy rot.
[...] not a lot I have to add to what I’ve already said in my last three posts on this subject. He still doesn’t give any justification for his actions or even give [...]