The Candidates (for Mayor). What Do They Stand For?

Only a few weeks to go and the mayoral statements from the various candidates have been released. We take a brief look at them in the order in which they appear.

A New Social Contract

Attic is clearly aware, in a way that most Labour councillors do not seem to be, that since Mayor Fiaz entered office that the planning process has become more than a little, let’s say, sluggish. He wants to change that.

A subject that exercises several candidates is litter and fly-tipping. He pledges to engage new community patrol officers with body cameras who can issue on the spot fines. Sounds like a new name for the enforcement teams gutted by Fiaz, but whatever the name many will welcome a robust approach to cleaning up the borough.

It begins to sound like a dusting off of the Wales manifesto with a promise of 12 hours of sports pw for all children, over two hours a day for every child. Not sure how schools will react to that.

In addition, there is a promise of free breakfasts for school children. There may be a demand for this, but we are not sure, it may simply be a bit of one-upmanship on Fiaz. She is now promoting Wales’ free school meals policy; that’s right, the same policy that she tried to ditch and now she is claiming it as her own; there’s politics for you. Attic promises free school breakfasts, as well or instead of free school lunches?

Community Safety: Attic notes that with 31,000 crimes reported in Newham that we have become the second worst in London. He promises to work with the police (whereas Fiaz seems to see her job as being to be in conflict with them), and implies a genuine partnership to cut crime.

He promises yet another review of parking, and will seek to limit the number of betting shops, (we think that he might be about four years behind the times on this one), with a view to reviving High Street shopping. Not convinced by this one, there may be other forces at work driving people to Westfield and out of town centre trading estates.

He pledges to improve the performance of the second worst council in England with regard to recycling. He can’t do worse than the present incumbent.

‘All Newham Council Does is Cut, Close and Charge.’

Visually this is the most striking! Not the most attractive, nor the easiest to read, but it does stand out from the rest. Generally, TUSC can expect to get about 3% of the vote and we suspect that that will largely transfer to Mehmood Mirza.

We’ve got to say that the statement from Lois comes across as a bit of a wish list that is not rooted in any reality. She is the first to state that she will take a pay cut if elected, taking only a ‘worker’s wage’. Not sure which worker she will be benchmarking against. If it’s the Chief Exec that won’t be much of a cut.

She lists the community campaigns she will support, City Farm, anti-Silvertown Tunnel, Stratford Circus, Durning Hall etc. under the rubric of ‘save our services’, most of the ‘services she lists aren’t run by the council, but that is us being pedantic!

No to gentrification; build thousands of council homes; seize empty properties; introduce rent controls. This is where the wish list really begins to take off and where TUSC seems unaware that most of its proposals are not legal nor viable. Maybe they are aware, but proclaiming a socialist virility is more important than policies which work.

In short, the programme is ‘fight the Tories and spend more money’.

A Six Point Plan

Six points; it sounds like a catchy proposal designed to win support. Until you read the six points!

A promise of 2000 new homes, (that’s either 500 or 1500 more than Mayor Fiaz, see later), but this might be rather like Fiaz’s plan to build 1000 thousand new homes. Sorry, when she said ‘build new homes’ she obviously meant ‘plan to build 1000 new homes’. It seems to be a number plucked out of the air. His commitment to ‘put into use’ boarded up homes may be workable, using compulsory purchase powers, but this would hardly be immediate.

Tax cuts to business sounds great, if you run a local business, but the only local business taxes are business rates and these are set and collected by national government and the local council has no influence over them.

He’ll review the parking and road closures, like the Tories.

He commits to improving waste collection and recycling. He doesn’t mention litter or fly-tipping.

In what must be the unique part of his programme, he commits to guaranteeing free supplementary school places for all children, (he runs a supplementary school). He could also look at how the council might support schools to improve, but doesn’t seem to address the mainstream education offer. Perhaps how the majority of children spend the majority of their day isn’t that important.

He calls for an end to spending on vanity projects and ‘disingenuous climate initiatives (greenwashing)’. That doesn’t sound too bad.

Working Hard for Newham-The Listening Mayor?

Very little to say or to critique. Ahsan will ‘listen to’ residents and make their ‘voices heard’. She is ‘your neighbour’, she lives in the borough. We wonder if this is a coded suggestion that maybe one of the candidates doesn’t live in Newham, maybe in say, Hackney Wick? Just wondering.

The key message is that Labour is ‘failing’, ‘neglectful’ and ‘lazy’. She, (and the Lib Dems) will be hard working, and, err, that’s it.

Rob’s Four-Point Plan

Two less than the CPA, the Greens have a four-point plan, but sneakily, they have stuck four or five additional points under each main heading.

The USP for the Greens is clearly their commitment to a ‘Greener Newham’. Protecting green spaces is unlikely to be contentious, not sure that any party wants to change a policy that has been in place since the Wales era. Committing to being carbon-neutral by 2030 might be a bit more problematic, it implies local funds going into insulation schemes in the private sector.

We get the obligatory commitment to save the City Farm, Stratford Circus etc. and Stop the Silvertown Tunnel.

Commitments to reduce fly-tipping and improve waste collections are welcome, but it’s a bit motherhood and apple pie. Still there are some suggestions that might help to improve Newham’s recycling figures, assuming that they stop sending recycling waste to land-fill.

Fairness: the first commitment is to transparency. This was the same pledge made by Mayor Fiaz, when she was first campaigning. Funny how that worked out. The rest tends to be wishful thinking.

When they talk about a ‘Safer Newham’ they are generally looking at road safety, not knife crime. That being said, the roads are definitely more dangerous than groups of young people, so their suggestions should not be dismissed by any of the parties. In terms of violent crime amongst young people, the answer is ‘more youth clubs’. It always is. Perhaps one of the parties will take a more reflective look at what is inducing young people to carry and use knives. They might discover that the answer is a little more complex.

Building a Fairer Newham

Everyone wants fairness, problem is that everyone reads their own meaning into the word. So good marks to Labour for PR, less good marks for transparency.

Mayor Fiaz has a six-point plan.

First, deliver 1500 council homes. The statement is a little unclear as to whether these are 1500 council homes in addition to the 1000 that she has already pledged (but not yet delivered), or whether this is in reality a commitment to some 500 new council homes in addition to those she has already pledged. We suspect the latter but would be happy to be proved wrong.

She will ‘invest £40m’ to keep the streets clean and cut fly tipping. First response is this is welcome but four years too late. She is now running to catch up with a problem she created. The second problem is how much of this £40m is new. We don’t know what the current budget of the Public Realm department is. If they currently spend £9.5m a year on street cleaning, then £40m over four years aint gonna cut it.

It sounds good, but without more detail, detail they apparently want to obscure, we don’t know if this is a good deal or the same old story in a different package.

More vehicle charging points and cycle hangers. Sounds good. They might like to repair some of the existing charging points that have been vandalised while they are at it.

Pay the London Living Wage. Sounds good, but in reality more gratuitous virtue signalling.

Fiaz is going to ‘hold the police to account’. No talk of partnership here. No joint working, no joint initiatives. It sometimes seems to some people that Mayor Fiaz is happier campaigning for dead drug dealers than she is working with the police to prevent drug dealing.

Supporting ‘all of our people’ and ‘local businesses’. Great. How? More gratuitous fluff.

Change the Face of Newham

Ex-Labour, now Independent and proudly displaying his Palestinian flag on his lapel, (a bit of a dog whistle you might think), Mirza is building upon his twin themes of community engagement and cleaning up the ‘dirtiest borough in London’.

There is little meaningful by way of policy proposals, though he does commit to freezing council tax, possibly the only policy agreement that he would have with the erstwhile mayor, Robin Wales. 

Mirza is against the closure of the City Farm, and against the Silvertown Tunnel. He references the considerable work he has done with a foodbank, building a man-of-the-people image.

The linked issues of parking, charges and road closures are issues where he has been active in the NE of the borough for years. It would not be a surprise to see him pick up electoral support on the back of this.

The big issue that he has championed has been the state of the borough’s streets and Mirza is intent on cleaning up the streets and acting forcefully against fly-tippers. This might appeal to a wider constituency.

The Big Issues that they ignore:

What none of them cover, sorry one does, (congrats Mr Mirza), is council tax. Mirza has committed to freezing council tax, the rest are silent, even the Tories. At a time of austerity, you might think that politicians would be anxious to reduce and additional financial burdens upon their voters, but apparently, they aren’t.

Education; free school meals and supplementary schools get a mention, but apparently everything else is going swimmingly, ‘cos none of the candidates seem to be bothered about what is happening in the almost 100 or so schools in the borough. But then, they’re only kids and they don’t vote.

Safety on the streets; whatever the problem, the answer is more spending on youth clubs. Maybe. But perhaps we should ask for a little more complexity in the analysis of the problems before spending millions on a strategy that has no clear aims. The approach taken by Mayor Fiaz, whereby the police are seen as the opposition if not the enemy seems to fly in the face of any real attempt to reduce violence and knife crime in the borough. None of the candidates have been brave enough to do more than say how dreadful it is, nor offer steps toward a solution.

Well, that’s our take on the candidates.  Labour must clearly be confident. We have only observed minor levels of activity on the doorstep with nothing from the opposition parties. In terms of the candidates, there is nothing outstanding. Let’s see how the people vote.