I’m not speaking to Ken. Whether he can’t sleep nights because of this, I don’t know!

But what a wimp he is turning out to be when London really needs him – when the chips are down.

At Mayor’s question time last week I called on him to rally the people of London in a mass lobby of Parliament on St George’s day, April 23. We never quite know what to do with our national day in England with respectable national pride often seeming to be squeezed out by the drunken violence of so-called football fans or the nostalgic xenophobia of those whose pride in our country extends no further than reminiscing about bombing Germany.

London’s underground system should be a source of national pride. As with so many public services, our forbearers led the way in their construction and bequeathed us with a infrastructure of trains, tunnels, sewers and so much more that was the envy of many other countries. In an ironic historical twist, the first chairman and managing director of London Transport was Albert Stanley – an American brought in because of his successful track record in the US. Sounds familiar?

But there’s little to be envious now of the state of the tube. And other countries certainly aren’t looking to copy Labour’s plans to break-up and privatise the Tube. This isn’t just a transitory issue, a chance for a bit of political swordplay. If PPP goes ahead it will determine the fate of our Tube system for the next thirty years. Just imagine, if Ted Heath had cooked up a similar scheme and signed contracts when he was Prime Minister we would only now be coming to the end of them.

And, of course, with the local elections upon us on the 2nd May – a time when a mass movement of people against the Labour government generally carries more weight than usual. Labour is sensitive to very little – except in the ballot box!

So, where does Ken stand? He says he is opposed to PPP but when it comes to sending Labour the only sort of message they listen to – in the ballot box, he wriggles and squirms.

I remember only too well last year when the General Election presented an opportunity to make the point, Tony Blair made Bob Kiley take the Chair of London Underground ‘to show willing’ – and effectively killed the issue during the election. Two minutes after the election was in the bag for Labour – the whole thing fell apart and Mr Kiley was unceremoniously out of the job and PPP was roaring ahead again.

If it was a Conservative government, would Ken really be so shy of urging people to vote against PPP in the ballot box? Of course not. But he still can’t quite tearing himself away from flirting with Labour and never quite being willing to stand up and be counted when it really matters.

Last week at Mayor’s cabinet, Ken Livingstone made an extraordinary statement. He said that he believed that government ministers Stephen Byers, Nick Raynsford and John Spellar supported the PPP plans to partially-privatise the Tube because they were being misbriefed by their civil servants. Poor little innocents!

Oh please! These three grown men, Ministers of State of the United Kingdom, are supposed to be running the country- and Ken sat there making excuses for them. They have at their disposal all the resources available to the machinery of Government to find the truth.

They have no excuse for not knowing how badly flawed their privatisation plans are. The government hasn’t just failed to persuade transport experts, the public and Bob Kiley that the plans make sense. The government has even failed to persuade the Labour MPs on the Transport Select Committee. The reality is that PPP is not safe, not cheap and not wanted.

Even the Ernst and Young report, commissioned to examine value for money by the Government itself, says that the calculation they make is ‘part art, part science’. And that report only concludes that privatisation offers value for money by assuming the public sector would get nearly everything wrong and the private sector would get nearly everything right. Yes, that’s the same private sector that has brought up Marconi, Equitable Life and Railtrack.

It is highly implausible that the private sector would really perform better than the public sector in this case, especially as the public sector has on its side Bob Kiley, a man with a proven track record of turning round other failing public transport systems.

So it is no wonder the government is so reluctant to hand over information about the details of the contracts. After promising on TV to give the Mayor the details of the profits private companies would be allowed to make from the Tube, Stephen Byers did duly deliver the documents – but with the key numbers missing and replaced with asterisks!

These and other contract details are being kept secret because changes were still being made to the contracts as the private companies get colder and colder feet about accepting any risk transfer at all. It is such an unbelievably bad deal, that I keep hoping against hope that the cavalry will somehow appear and save us at the 11th hour. Sadly, there is no cavalry!

And all that stands between London and the PPP now is Ken. And that is why Ken needs to get tougher. Kowtowing to Labour and making excuses for government ministers is not going to get us anywhere. There isn’t much hope left – but the Mayor of London must go as far as it is possible to go to stop privatisation.

Labour, meanwhile, hope and pray that London is fed up with this row, and is growing impatient and simply wants to get on with it. But given that by Kiley and Ken’s account, the contracts now deliver virtually nothing to London in terms of benefits in the first decade – what’s to delay? Ken went soft on the Government over PPP during the General Election and refused to use it against Labour then.

He has another opportunity coming soon. Will he help make Labour pay the political price this time through the ballot box in the London council elections on May 2? When push has come to shove, Mayor Livingstone so far hasn’t been willing to truly stand up for London against Labour. The umbilical chord always proves to be too strong for that final cut.

The father of the youngest witness ever to give evidence to the London Assembly to date equated graffiti to the spraying of tomcats. I don’t know if he was suggesting neutering for our young male population – but it’s a thought!

The 14-year-old boy was terrific, and of course, he only used legal walls and decorated his schoolbooks with ‘tags’. For the uninitiated, a tag is a kind of logo of your chosen brand name for yourself, with the idea being to spray it on as many places as possible so it can be seen by as many of your graffiti peers as possible. To the eye of the graffer these are works of art and beauty. A ‘legal wall,’ used in some areas, is a surface for use by graffiti artists and sometimes supervised as a community project. Of course, as part of the point of making your mark is to be anti-establishment, a lot of taggers sneer at a legal wall.

To some, it may be a work of art – but to me it just looks like a mess. Pillar boxes, walls, fences, utility boxes, shop fronts, viaducts, railway walls – it’s everywhere now – rich and poor neighbourhoods alike – graffiti knows no boundaries. And now the windows of our buses, tubes and trains are also etched with graffiti – expensive to replace and no means of painting it over or cleaning it off. So how do we deal with this epidemic of graffiti and clash of desires between those who want to live in clean neighbourhoods and those who want to leave their mark?

At the London Assembly, I am on an investigative panel looking at this challenge. The level of resources and the political will that different boroughs commit to dealing with graffiti varies hugely from £15,000 to £600,000 per annum across London. The political will goes hand in hand with the money. The solutions emerging from our scrutiny combine a range of best practice from different boroughs -from improving youth facilities, providing legal walls, having a policy of instant removal, supplying cleaning materials free to volunteers in the community, having a clear enforcement regime for those caught (it is a crime), involving parents and so on. There are many things that can be done and we will be disseminating our findings in due course.

One thing we found from New York’s experience on the subway was that instant removal took away the point for the taggers. In my own dear borough of Haringey, however, graffiti usually remains in place for months, if not years or even decades – thus encouraging others to join in with their own tags. Graffiti is only removed promptly if it is racist or obscene – rarely otherwise. Recently, there has been a huge rise in reports of graffiti and so I have been putting together an information sheet for my local area on how to get graffiti removed and who can do it, etc. Local residents, knowing my abiding interest in graffiti,started reporting to me sightings of a mystery woman removing graffiti in the Highgate area from walls, fences and utility boxes. Three cheers I thought – power to the people.

Last week my sister telephoned me to say that she had had a brilliant idea – why didn’t councils train volunteers to clean off graffiti themselves? She then told me that the idea had struck her when she was out cleaning graffiti of utility and post boxes the week before. So that’s who the mystery woman was – my own sister!

But if it is my sister who is cleaning the utility boxes, who is the other woman who is cleaning it off the walls and fences? Whoever they are, they are demonstrating how effectively we can make a difference in our communities when we put our minds to it. So thank you sister and thank you other mystery woman.

What’s wrong with South West Trains (SWT)? It would take more than one column to answer that! But their latest trick is to try to dodge any public scrutiny over their role in the outbreak of train strikes.

Last week, the London Assembly held a special meeting to question both SWT and the unions over the threatened rail strikes. London is sick of strikes. Over the past couple of years they seem to be on the agenda again – both on the Tube and on the railways. Is it Ken? Does he make unions feel striking is OK again? Or is it having a Labour government, which prefers spinning to substance?

Either way, strikes are the last thing us poor long-suffering travelling public need to add to our transport woes. The Assembly rightly decided it should invite both parties in and we should question them in public on behalf of Londoners.

Well! It was a good idea but as I said at the beginning, SWT didn’t want to come and play. And that’s a shame, because it was a good session. The RMT turned up in the form of Vernon Hince to present their side of the argument. I felt we got to the bottom of the RMT’s position. We heard the scale of the problems they feel they face, with the pay for drivers approaching treble the amount for guards, with a serious skills shortage and with twenty odd different train companies offering different rates and creating a ‘market’ of pay rates which simply leapfrogged all over the place. All problems that need tackling. It all sounded very reasonable.

I’m sure this is not a view SWT would share. But sadly they wouldn’t share any views with us. SWT may also have had extremely good reasons for their position – but we will never know as they refused to turn up. Even worse in a way, they actually said they were happy to come and talk to us in private, but not in public session. Sally Hamwee, Chair of the Assembly, rightly told them where to go with that offer. SWT is meant to run a public service, for the benefit of Londoners. They should be willing to stand up in public and defend their record – not creep around in private meetings.

SWT only exist because they have been given a franchise to run a public service, but they seem reluctant to acknowledge this and the responsibilities that go with this. The offer SWT was given was a good one – not to exchange a series of soundbites with the RMT but for an hour-long session with both parties able to rebut or agree the other.

This is part of a general malaise in public life, with companies flinching away from public exposure. How many times have we heard the tired old excuse about "commercial confidentiality" be used to hide away the details of contracts? There is a role for genuine commercial confidentiality – just as there is a role for private talks in resolving strikes – but the overwhelming presumption must be in favour of openness and accountability, not comfortable secrecy.

The good news in the end is that the imminent strike was cancelled but two more are in train. At least they have agreed to go to arbitration – but will it be binding?

My own preferred solution would be to bang both parties heads together, then put them in a room together with a TV camera in on them, and broadcast those ‘discussions’ live to London. And if one of them doesn’t turn up? Well, we could borrow a trick from Have I Got News For You and replace them with a tub of lard. How about it SWT?

I just came back from buying Sunday croissant at my local corner shop. The owner and two of the guys who work there were discussing whether or not the Bin Laden “confession” video was genuine. Their view seemed to be not. Drawing me into the discussion, there appeared to be two theories as to why it could not be genuine.

The first was Bin Laden’s profile – which apparently is straight on the video but according to one of the guys is quite different in reality. The other theorist proposed that there was a multi-million pound deal being offered to Afghanistan for mini-bourkhas following the predicted change in regime and that was the rational for the American involvement in the region. A faked video was being used as a cover for American commercial self-interest.

I have no pukka information that could guide me as to whether or not the video is genuine. I am from the West and therefore my presumption is that it is genuine – even though there is a tiny thought at the back of my brain that says: ‘it’s a bit convenient having a video showing Bin Laden admitting guilt’. But, for the most part it is swept away because I, like most of the West and regardless of the validity or otherwise of the video, believe that Bin Laden is responsible for September 11 and therefore justice must be sought.

Anyway, the point of relating this is – given that we are in that wonderful pocket of time between Xmas and New year, stomachs are full, the hangovers are receding, the children (if we have them) are preoccupied with the outrageous amount of money we have all spent on them, whether we can afford it or no – there is, for once, time to think a bit.

And I am a great believer in thinking, albeit pondering the great imponderables doesn’t appear very fashionable these days. This conversation with my mates in the corner shop simply brought sharply into focus for me how clearly we are all products of our upbringing – both personal and national. If we are ever to resolve issues, be they personal, local, national or international, the only real solutions come from allowing us all positions that are tenable given our own starting point and this means we have to be able to think beyond our initial preconceptions.

So where does this mean for my day job? What has Bin Laden got to do with London government? Only this. People often ask me what is the point of the Assembly? (There are days when this question seems more valid than others!) What is its role?

For me the answer is simple. If a policy, be it from the Mayor or the Government or whoever, is examined by the Assembly, and then all parties on the Assembly can agree a response, this response will not only benefit London because of what it says, but also because the very act of having to come up with cross-party agreement means the result is robust and tenable to all.

This is the value in the work the Assembly does. It isn’t always headline catching. It isn’t always sexy, but it produces work that stands full square for London across its entire people because it is forged through debate, crossfire and heat to reach a position of agreement.

So as the New Year approaches I suppose my own resolution for 2002 will be to try even harder to understand others perspective on issues which come to me on the Assembly and to remember that just ‘cos I believe I am right, so others believe they are right – and we need to reach across the differences to find a way through for us all.

Happy New Year!

Former Tory London Mayor candidate Steve Norris is out of Ken Livingstone’s big tent! Unceremoniously dumped! Thrown off of the Board of Transport for London! Hurrah!

A radio interviewer asked me whether I thought Ken couldn’t deal with Norris’s criticism of his proposals on congestion charging and cycling and was that was the reason for Steve Norris’s forced exit? Oh please! Ken is a very big boy and I doubt whether the few paid for slings and arrows thrown by Norris were even a minor blip in the scale of criticism Ken meets on a daily basis from a whole range of foes.

Rather, Steve Norris was dumped because his position on the Transport Board had become untenable. You simply cannot take money from as many transport interests as Steve Norris did – and then speak with any credibility whatsoever on the transport issues discussed at board meetings. For example, Norris is on the board of one of the companies in the consortia bidding to take part in the Government’s part-privatisation of the Tube. How could anything he said about the future of the Tube be taken to represent London’s interest rather than those of the company set to make a nice little earner from Tube privatisation?

Another interviewer asked me what difference Norris’s departure would make to London? I think my answer was probably unprintable – suffice to say – b****r all. But what will make a difference to London – well particularly my part of London – is the Muswell Hill to Swiss Cottage bus link. I and others have been campaigning for it for a long time and we are now on the brink of success. The relevant three boroughs – Camden, Haringey and Barnet all now back the scheme, as does Transport for London. The final hurdle is Ken – all he has to do is give it final approval by granting the financial bid and we’re in business. And remember, this new route had Ken’s full backing when he was campaigning to become Mayor – that’s not something I’ll let him forget!

In fact, he recently made the mistake of sitting next to me at a lunch – far too near for me to resist a bit of a lobbying attempt – and he admitted that with all that support it must be in a good position to get the financial bid through. Feel free to deluge the Mayor and with letters of support for the new bus route – it all helps. Ken’s address is Romney House, 43 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 3PY.

So fingers crossed, we will know in December. Just think – all that school run traffic and congestion which is currently caused by the lack of a realistic public transport alternative but which the new bus route will help reduce. And also remember older people and mothers with toddlers who currently have no really choice but to use their cars, because the alternative is to face endless waits and changes. All those car journeys saved because people are given a new public transport alternative – that’s really dealing with congestion. It’s just the sort of bus route improvements we should be seeing all over London.

The other thing that will make far more difference to London than Steve Norris’s exit is Ken making sure that he has another look at some of the boundary issues around the proposed congestion charging areas.

Personally, I am convinced that a sensible congestion charging scheme is an absolute must to help tackle London’s transport problems. However, I am still concerned that the Mayor’s timetable is leaving the boroughs in some distress. I hear tales of woe about lack of discussion, high-handed decision-making by the centre and so on. Two things here: firstly the success of this scheme means that the boroughs, including Camden and Islington where the boundary splits the whole, need to be firmly on board. The Mayor needs to foster a happy relationship with them. So my advice, as it was to Ken at Mayor’s Question Time last week, is be nice to the boroughs. Whilst Steve Norris may not be your partner any more – he was totally dispensable – the boroughs are not.

In the cause of genuine rapprochement, I am hoping to bring all sides together in the near future in the form of a summit. Where angels fear to tread! It’ll be interesting to see what happens …

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2001

If there’s one way to get up Ken’s nose, it is to suggest that he is not quite up to the Giuliani New York model of mayor-hood. So I had a real go at him at last Mayor’s Question Time. I accused him of lacking leadership and being invisible compared to New York’s Mayor who was getting out there and telling people to go to the theatres, get on with life and go back to the restaurants. I advised him to get out there too and show some leadership before all our theatres went dark and more jobs were lost.

Following my outburst, there were articles in the papers and a column from Simon Jenkins all urging much the same – and blow me – soon after Ken was seen on the news visiting rehearsals for Kiss Me Kate. Quite right too!

To my pleasant surprise, Ken ambled into my office last Friday to tell me that he was giving £500,000 to London’s theatres for free tickets. Now, whilst I am not sure that would have been my first course of action, it is good that the Mayor is finally taking a lead in saving London’s theatres and tourist industry – an industry on its knees following the September 11 atrocities. And as for the Government, they have done sweet FA as yet to help London.

They appear to be impervious to the needs of London. They haven’t yet stomped up a penny to pay for the extra policing needed at this moment in time and if they do now find some money to help the theatres, it will only be because they have been embarrassed into it.

Labour seems to have completely fallen out of love with London – not just because of Ken – but because even the emasculated form of government that is the Mayor and Assembly is another voice for London – and one they can’t control. And losing control is so not Millbank.

They screwed up Wembley. They lost us the World Athletic Championships at Pickett’s Lock. They changed the Index of Deprivation criteria to switch money away from us to other parts of the country. They’ve stuffed us with the break-up and privatisation of the Tube (although the sudden announcement last week that the PPP arrangements may fail the safety case could be the first steps in a climb down – let’s hope so).

And the latest proposal from Bob Kiley that London should have its own strategic Rail Authority following the Railtrack debacle will no doubt fall on stony ground. Yet it is an eminently sensible proposal and the best solution for London to have the power to integrate our transport policy, to fight London’s corner and deliver better transport services.

Anyway, back to the theatre, to be honest I was as guilty as the next person. I lived in London and barely used the wonderful cultural opportunities that abound. My kids moaned that I never took them to the theatre. Finally – enough with the guilt – I sat down the day after New Year’s in 2000 to fulfil my millennium New Year’s resolution and booked 6 nights out throughout the year. It worked pretty well – because it was virtually a year to get tickets for shows like Lion King and Mama Mia. We had a great year of theatre visits and I did the same this year.

So, unlike me – don’t wait for New Year’s. Get your tickets now. And right now getting tickets is the easiest it’s ever been.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2001

It’s a year today since the election for a Mayor and Assembly for London. So – how was it for you?

Speaking personally, it’s been quite something. To be in, not just at the birth of a unique new form of government, but Chair of the Assembly’s Transport Policy committee and a member of the new Metropolitan Police Authority is an honour I am more than grateful for and an opportunity few people get in a lifetime.

There are some drawbacks. I don’t have enough time for my children. I don’t have a social life and I am looking older and a bit haggard. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. London is just an amazing city and I get to play a part in working to deliver an even better capital city. We all know what needs doing – it’s pushing it through and doing it that is the challenge.

If I had to give Ken marks out of ten for his first year as Mayor, I guess I would give him six-ish – perhaps seven if he’d be even tougher in fighting the Government over its Tube privatisation plans.

What are the good things he has done? He hired Bob Kiley, New York’s transport saviour, to be London’s Transport Commissioner. That single move will probably do London more good than anything.

Livingstone also deserves praise for fighting the Government’s plans to privatise the Tube. This is the key battle for London. My fear at this moment in time is that Livingstone is afraid of hurting them in the run up to the election. He balks at telling Londoners to send Labour a message through the ballot box, which is a shame, because that is the only place this Government seems to listen to.

Instead he has handed over absolute control to Kiley to negotiate a final deal on the Tube. Well, as much as I respect Kiley, he is in the end a transport manager and this is a political battle. As much as Ken may wish to avoid the political confrontation with Prescott, Blair and Brown – the row is a political power issue and it is his political job as Mayor of London to fight for what’s best for London, not what’s expedient for the Government – to keep quiet until after the election.

Also to Livingstone’s credit is that he has put congestion charging firmly on the agenda. This huge undertaking is an important step towards the cultural changes that will be necessary in every major, traffic-ridden city in the world. There are all sorts of difficulties ahead, but the major one is changing the car culture.

We all love our cars – comfortable, relatively cheap, no exposure to the elements – but it can’t go on. And any politician who challenges the notion that we might not be able to use our cars just when we like and how we like is a very brave one. But not beginning the long road to control car usage would cost us far more in the long term. Of course, the challenge for Ken here is to make public transport so good that the pain of withdrawal from our cars is mitigated by a better and cheaper alternative. And let’s not forget that cutting congestion on the roads will also benefit people making those journeys that still have to be made by car.

And he finally showed real leadership – unequivocal condemnation of anarchist’s plans over the May Day demonstrations. By the time this is published, we will know whether anarchy or peaceful protest over capitalist globalisation was the order of the day. But the Mayor of London stood full square in the public arena and condemned violence, and pointed out that it damaged what actually are valid protests and did those causes harm.

Small but important things Ken has done: put pigeons in their place; encouraged businesses to give old computers to London school kids; made travel on public transport for school trips free. All good moves.

But there are also things he hasn’t done in his first year and should have. Firstly, he hasn’t got any real plans to tackle traffic congestion in outer London. He has done nothing about the killer school run where better public transport can make a real difference – such as much needed introduction of a bus route linking Muswell Hill, Highgate and Hampstead.

He should have got a shovel underground on at least one of the major infrastructure projects such as Cross Rail or the Chelsea-Hackney line.

He should have condemned the Tube strikes unequivocally. They hurt Londoners who already have an impossible time getting to work. Whilst everyone in London is concerned about safety on the Tube and probably in some sympathy with that aspect of the unions’ concerns, Ken should have used his close relationship with the unions and advised them to use their power to tell people to send Blair a message on the Tube. Alternatively, he could have suggested to them instead of striking, to work a normal day – but refuse to take any fares. That’s a good message too – that hurts the government not the people.

So happy first birthday Mayor Ken. Push harder and move faster. And remember Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a politician – “An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organised society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.”

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2001

Bob Kiley, London’s Transport Commissioner said it. ‘It smells like privatisation. It walks like privatisation. It talks like privatisation.’ We have all known what Labour’s PPP plan for the Tube really is all along, but it’s been a bit like the Emperor’s New Clothes in the Labour camp. The Public Private Partnership. The privatisation that dare not speak its name.

So where are we now in this sorry, sad and dangerous saga? The much-heralded compromise talks between John Prescott and Bob Kiley have fallen apart. Mayor Livingstone and Kiley have gone to court and judicial review is on the agenda for mid-June (just a few days after any general election on June 7!).

And where are the Liberal Democrats in all of this? Holding firm to our twin commitments: to keep the Tube in public ownership and to fund this by a bonds revenue issue. It is the only safe, economic way forward.

Livingstone has half backed down. He says he is now happy to give up bonds as a way to raise the revenue if, in exchange, he can get a convoluted, bastardised compromise that through some legal contractual nightmarish twists sort of allows a ‘unified’ management structure for the Tube.

In answer to one of my questions at Mayor’s Question Time, Livingstone basically said he didn’t care where the money came from. Well that’s old Ken – not caring about where the money comes from, even if that means things costing far more in the long run – and PPP will cost far more than bonds, with all the bad knock-on effects that means for levels of service and ticket prices.

Of course, it is no surprise that Ken is willing to wobble on such a key issue, because ultimately he wants to crawl back into the Labour womb. He is caught between wanting to fight for London and wanting to get back in to the Labour party.

Despite Livingstone’s best efforts, there are a number of reasons why there can be no clean, clear, economic and safe compromise position on the Tube.

Firstly, there is no compromise between owning 51% of a company and therefore having control over it – or not having control. Any legal structure, which seeks to negate this basic tenet of business, will be so complicated and so torturous, that only lawyers will benefit – not London. Kiley has made it quite clear that without a unified management structure and without overall control of day-to-day maintenance – the Tube will not be safe. Currently, the Tube has a very good safety record that can be attributed to the fact, despite the management often being poor, it does at least have unified management. Splitting it up between three private companies and Transport for London will build in a fault line making the Tube an accident waiting to happen.

Secondly, as much as Prescott continues to state that the Government is pushing ahead with PPP and that this is an absolutely wonderful way to fund a safe Tube – his two favourite ‘spins’ are false. One – That the Tube will remain in public ownership because after the 30 year contract the ‘assets’ revert to Transport for London. Translated from the warm words this means that for 30 years the Tube will not be in public ownership. Two – that the London public need not worry because safety comes first with the government and they will not proceed until the Health & Safety Executive pronounce it safe so to do.

London Underground has to make the ‘safety case’ to the Health & Safety Executive. Cold comfort then to know that this ‘safety case’ has already failed three times and if it ever succeeds, who knows what they will have had to do to get around the innumerable difficulties. And Prescott, remember, was determined to steam ahead and hand over large parts of the Tube system to Railtrack until the Ladbroke Grove tragedy forced even him to have second thoughts.

Thirdly, this whole row is nothing to do with what is best for London’s Tube. Make no mistake; this is a battle to the death over power. If Gordon Brown and the Treasury relax fiscal rules to allow Ken to raise money by a bonds issue for the Tube, what else might Ken then wish to raise money for in this way? And what other Mayors in other future cities, or indeed what other public bodies might then wish to raise money this way? And – oh my goodness – if Ken can raise money to achieve things for London, he might have real power and London’s devolution would no longer be the toothless regional government that Labour intended. If the Government lose fiscal control, ultimately they lose political control. For the most controlling government in living memory that is the nightmare of all nightmares. Therein lies the true difficulty. Labour wants power, and it doesn’t want Mayor Livingstone.

Given everything that has happened in the last few months, it is easy to forget what happened during the London Mayor contest last year. In that Mayoral contest, Dobson – the official Labour candidate – stood on an anti-Tube privatisation ticket. It was there in black and white in his ten-point plan for London. Check out point number three.

All Labour’s GLA candidates stood with him on this programme, many happily appearing in leaflets, press releases and photo opportunities backing Dobson and his plan. But where are they now? Having run for election claiming to be opposed to Tube privatisation, they are now firmly backing it in the guise of PPP.

Well, Labour may have got away with this last year, but at the next general election we can make sure that reality catches up with them. I have no doubt that in the election, Labour candidates for Parliament will also try and infer in their literature and in their press releases that they are actually against privatisation or that the PPP is not really privatisation. Don’t let them get away with it!

I wanted to give Ken a hug last week and say you’re doing OK – keep going. He looked so miserable, sitting alone at his little desk towards the front of the stage at ‘Peoples Question Time’.

This is a twice-yearly event where Mayor and Assembly face ‘the people’ and answer public questions. The first had been in central London. This one was south of the river, and next time, hopefully, the road-show will come north. So be ready!

We (the Assembly) sit in two lines along the back of the stage, like some dreadful chorus line, only less decorative and certainly less entertaining. A minor celebrity chaired the event. Ken Livingstone was definitely not his usual chirpy self. Not surprising given that this was the day he had announced he was taking Labour to court over its plans to sell-off and privatise the Tube. Maybe he was thinking that this might not be the best way for him to win friends and influence the party into whose womb he reportedly wishes to climb back. No – the ‘cheeky chappy’ was definitely downbeat.

Or maybe his low spirits were caused by the fact that it is so desperately difficult to engage ‘the people’ successfully. There wasn’t adequate time for a real debate or argy-bargy. Ten minutes for policing. Ten minutes for equalities. Ten minutes for housing, etc. Transport was given longer – but of course there is so much that people want to discuss – but in the end the answers are always much the same and predictable.

Ken answered each question first – followed by a relevant member of the Assembly or two. From the feedback we got, it would seem that the audience felt Ken should have said more and the Assembly less. Thanks a lot folks! It confirms my view that much of London barely knows that there are 25 elected members of London government – let alone what we do. If people don’t know who we are, or what we do, how can we sensibly be held to account at the next London elections?

But how can we engage people? It is easy to be cynical about these events. I feel they serve a purpose – if only that the Mayor and Assembly actually go out into an area outside of central London and put themselves directly in the firing line. Perhaps it’s difficult because people have been turned off by previous consultation processes that were actually public relations exercises by their local councils to push something through?

Consultation should be an engaging experience that informs and affects outcome. Sometimes it works. For example, “Planning for Real” – involving local communities in decisions over regeneration projects on their estates – was done properly and did produce wonderful results.

However, over-consultation – particularly when it is used as a thin cover for already closed minds – is devaluing this genuinely valuable and democratic tool. What an earth are people to make of the current consultation across, not only London, but the whole country, on what form of local council structures we want?

I just came back from a week-end away with two friends and assorted children and I was telling them that I was minded to write a column on consultation. They started telling me about consultations they had recently received – one on the new forms of local governance and one on what sort of secondary education she wanted in the borough.

‘What do I know?’ asked one friend. ‘I don’t have the information to make a real contribution to this. What’s the point? They don’t listen anyway!’ And the other said: ‘Do we want a Mayor and Council Manager? Do we want a cabinet and Leader? How the hell should I know? How can I judge?’

We still have to try though. And Ken is one of the few politicians (outside of Liberal Democrats of course!) who I believe is genuine in wanting to engage with the public to find out what they really think. So cheer up Mayor!

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2001