The last meeting of the Assembly to question Mayor Livingstone before the Christmas break.

Of course, the key banter was about the new love in between the Mayor and Labour – and how Labour have changed their tune – overnight!

It was quite sick making. John Biggs (Labour’s Transport lead) fed the Mayor a planted question about Simon Hughes’s plans to make Oxford Street a pedestrian-friendly environment. And the Mayor savagely attacked Simon and the Lib Dems. It is quite clear from the vituperative nature of attacks that Ken Livingstone feels Simon Hughes is a real threat to his re-election.

Fireworks today at a full session of the London Assembly. We had before us Sir John Stevens, Met Police Commissioner and Lord Toby Harris, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, to answer the Assembly’s questions on policing in London.

Well – it wasn’t so much the content of the meeting that produced the fireworks, but the political row that erupted and engulfed Sir John. Interestingly enough, Sir John does reasonably often lose his rag. I am always surprised when I meet people who have reached the top of the tree and, despite all their experience, training and political nouse, can’t keep a lid on their feelings. It’s so human – I love it!

Today’s explosion resulted from a discussion during the Assembly about Mayoral policing policies of the Tories. There was clearly prior animosity between Sir John and the Tories over statements about Norris’s plans for policing in London. Clearly Sir John was not enamored of them.

Anyway – the row rumbled on a bit – when suddenly, during the meeting itself, Eric Ollerenshaw (Tory leader on the GLA) ran to us waving a bit of paper in his hand. It was a ‘press briefing’ from the Labour Group headed something like ‘Top Cop slams Tory and Lib Dem mayoral policing plans’ and went on to elaborate and totally misrepresent what Sir John had actually said during the meeting. A journalist had slipped it to him for information!

It was a really disgraceful bit of politicking by Labour. Then, there was a call to suspend standing orders to allow an emergency motion condemning the Labour Group for this tawdry and untrue piece of spin.

So we all (except Labour of course) condemned this roundly and poured shame on them. Toby Harris, Labour leader, stood up to defend himself as best he could, claiming no knowledge of the release – which to be fair had gone out when he was still in the witness chair. But he started shouting during his speech, which is always a sure sign he is on the run!

Anyway – Sir John Stevens also had a chance to put his views on record about this mischief. He said he was apolitical, he would always use the right to comment on anything which might affect operational policing AND then totally denounced the ‘press release’ from the Labour Group who had misrepresented what he had said.

It was stirring stuff! The media went into a frenzy and as he exited, I could see Sir John with camera, lights, action all around him.

There is a little twist to the end of this tale. As I came down the ramp under the chamber I saw Toby Harris locked in intense conversation in a little ante-room with two of Mayor Livingstone’s key henchmen. Methinks I see the Mayor’s hand in all of this. I am only speculating – but I probably wouldn’t lose money on a bet that the origin of the release was in the Mayor’s office, but given to Labour to be issued by the Labour Group. The wording of the release was so Ken – using extreme positions and phrasing and also attacking both the Tories and LibDems.

The LibDems had not been involved in the row in the chamber between Sir John and the Tories – but Mayor Livingstone feels very threatened by Simon Hughes (Norris being kind of out of it since taking the Jarvis shilling) and always attacks the LibDems.

With the election in June – things can only get worse!

I spent the afternoon being Simon Hughes!

Not easy. Capital Transport at its AGM was holding a sort of early hustings for the Mayoral candidates – but Simon is in New York, so I was standing in for him in his absence. However, in the event, Mayor Livingstone wasn’t there (because he was hosting the London Conference), Norris wasn’t there because he won’t appear unless Ken is there (plus I think he should be hanging his Jarvis head in shame and not being seen), Nicky Gavron wasn’t there because she doesn’t know if she is the candidate for Labour or not – and doesn’t want to appear in debates until this is decided. That left me (as Simon) and Darren Johnson.

It was fun, however. Transport is one of those issues that everyone has a view on and gets everyone going. As I was representing Simon, I couldn’t tell everyone our manifesto ideas as they will be launched in due course – so I had in the initial speech to speak in general terms about where we are going on transport.

I suppose there are two main thrusts. The first is that ‘things cannot go on the way they are’ – i.e. outside of buses which are greatly improved, everything else is falling apart. We have no redress on the tube, no control over the rail and so on – and obviously what Simon would do about it.

The other thrust of the speech was about our main themes for the election. I suppose you could sum it up with: ‘think customer, think local, think environment’. But more of all of this as the campaign hots up.

The questions rained thick and fast for about another hour and a half – on bus driver behaviour, speed, pedestrians, ticketing, congestion charging, disabled exemptions, road building and so on. Time flew – and then I did too!