Some thoughts on the results

It is a good thing that I made no predictions as the only one that other people made that came true was Sadiq Khan becoming Mayor of London. I did say that it was unlikely for UKIP to get three seats in the London Assembly and I was right. They now have two, Peter Whittle and David Kurten, one more than the Lib-Dims, which says something about the latter. The Greens also have two members (as they always did) but they seem to have got more votes. None of it matters in the slightest as the Assembly has no real power and role beyond writing reports nobody reads and have its members prance around in all importance.

I wish the UKIP members luck but I have no clear idea what they intend to achieve - the London Assembly has no control over immigration; nor will it have any even if we come out of the EU. As that seemed to be their only campaigning issue I cannot quite envisage their future political activity.
The last time there were two UKIP members in the Assembly, Damian Hockney and Peter Hulme-Cross in 2004, there was a split in the party very soon after the election. The UKIP group became Veritas under the leadership of Robert Kilroy-Silk, then One London without him. It continued to be One London until it was voted out in 2008. The basis of the split, readers of this blog will not be surprised, was personal clashes between the UKIP/Veritas/One London group and the Dear Leader of UKIP, who is still there in that position. [I was there and could tell many tales.] Judging from this year's election campaign, the same problems will not arise with the latest UKIP Asssembly Members but, of course, one can never tell.

One thing did intrigue me: the UKIP mayoral candidate's somewhat poorer performance than predicted by himself and many others. Instead of third, he came fifth. Was that because he had allowed the Dear Leader to muscle in on the campaign? Well, he can't say I didn't warn him. 

There is some jubilation about the fact that More Britons Voted For Sadiq Khan Directly Than Any Politician In British History. This is a meaningless statistic as London is the largest place for direct voting. We vote directly for MPs but no constituency is as large as London and neither is any other city with a Mayor. As it happens the turn-out was still 45.30%, exactly the same as it was in 2008. Of that 56.90% voted for Khan, which still makes it only 25.78%, just over a quarter of London's electorate. As it happens, there are constituencies where the winning MP gets more than a quarter of the electoral vote.

Altogether Sadiq Khan got 1,310,143 votes; in 2008, with the same turn-out, Boris Johnson got 1,168,738 votes, undoubtedly the highest number at the time of what any British politician had got in a direct vote. I do not recall anybody mentioning this.

It has also been pointed out to me by a reader of this blog that it is not " right to give the winner credit for 56.9%. That's on the basis of his 1st and 2nd preference votes. But what is a 2nd preference vote?" What, indeed? Ought we have a two turn election - with the top two having a run-off vote a week later? I do not think even that will bring the turn-out to over 50%.

I shall pass over the various predictions, both of the horrified kind (a Muslim elected Mayor of "one of the major European cities") and of the cheerful, happy-clappy kind (we have a working Mayor who will deal with issues and not be an international star). There are very few issues the Mayor can deal with and with the ones he can Mr Khan's promises bode ill: he is unlikely to stand up to the transport unions, he wants to control Uber and anything else he can lay his hands on, he has not explained how he is going to be able to afford a freeze on transport fares and so on, and so on. I fear the worst, not because he is a Muslim (is that really worse than a buddy of Yussuf al-Qaradawi or of the IRA leaders, as Ken Livingstone was and is, of course) but from his stupid, ignorant socialist ideas. I rather suspect that the new Mayor is going to be more cautions than our Ken about whom he will invite to City Hall and with whom he will share a platform as he is looking to a post-London political career.

Meanwhile, what of Zac Goldsmith, the loser? He was chosen as candidate because the Conservatives, knowing that London does incline to be pro-Labour, wanted another charismatic person, like Boris. Zac's main rival, Syed Kamall, a good chap and very sound in his politics, appeared to lack charisma (and, I was told quietly by his own supporters, performed poorly on the hustings). In hindsight, the party should have realized that Kamall had one enormous advantage: he, too, was the son of a bus driver, though he did not grow up on a council estate. His parents bought a house and let out rooms. These were the two points with which Saddiq Khan started every single statement, speech and piece of electoral literature. It worked. People voted for him. Probably they would have voted for Syed Kamall as well.

There seems to be a general assumption that Zac Goldsmith's campaign was terrible, lacklustre and negative at the same time. Here is Tim Montgomerie putting the boot into Lynton Crosby, who has just been knighted. His opinion is that Zac should have campaigned as himself (an already known quantity) not as a Lynton Crosby candidate and there is a great deal to that. We certainly saw nothing of that charisma for which he was chosen though, I have to add, Saddiq Khan's campaign was also dull as ditchwater as was that of most of the other candidates.

Andrew Roberts thinks differently and blames the Consrevatives who sniffed nastily and distanced themselves from Zac when he attacked Saddiq Khan for sharing a platform with some very foul people, indeed. This was turned into Islamophobia by people like Andrew Boff, who had lost to Zac in the nominations and the ghastly Baroness Warsi as well as a number of commentators. I agree with Mr Roberts: in itself there is nothing wrong with pointing these facts out but there ought to have been more. A couple of interesting comments from Andrew Roberts's piece:

Full disclosure: I know and like Zac, contributed to his campaign financially and – despite not agreeing with much of his green agenda – was proud to be among the more than 994,000 people who voted for him last Thursday. That total was not that much fewer than the 1.3 million who voted for Sadiq Khan in what has been a pretty uniformly Labour city since before the 1970s, once the unique personal phenomenon of Boris Johnson is taken out of the equation.
..........
When Baroness (Sayeeda) Warsi – a semi-detached Tory at the best of times, though still nominally one – then also jumped on the bandwagon and denounced Zac on Twitter as “Britain’s Biggest Bigot” for his “Dog-whistle, nasty politics”, it was clear that the Left was having its job done for it by Zac’s fellow Conservatives. Ditto Ken Clarke’s negative comments on Zac’s campaign. In fact, Zac was perfectly right to point out, for example, that Khan had employed someone who believed that Private Lee Rigby’s murder was fabricated.

Of course these people will have to eat their words over the coming months and years when Sadiq Khan’s former political acquaintances continue to spout their repulsive Islamist comments about the subservience of woman and the evils of homosexuality, whereupon Zac’s warnings about Khan’s lack of judgement will be proven right. His denunciation of Khan “giving platform, oxygen and cover to extremists” will be seen as prophetic, and we’ll see if the likes of Boff, Warsi and Clarke – and indeed Zac’s own sister Jemima – are then big enough to admit it.

I predict that the day is not far off when many more than 994,000 people will wish they had voted for Zac Goldsmith.

I cannot imagine any circumstance in which people like Baroness Warsi will admit that they are wrong.

All this secession stuff creates problems

Catalonia is unhappy. Actually, they have never been all that happy about being part of Spain but in the last few years they have acquired certain rights, for example that of using their own language, which had been banned under Franco and for some years afterwards. However, they are beginning to feel that the few concessions they have received is not enough. What an ungrateful lot, to be sure. They say they will be calling a referendum on independence next year about the same time that Scotland will have one though the cases are somewhat different: Scotland is not the richest part of the United Kingdom and its independence is unlikely to worry investors too much, whereas the loss of Catalonia will deal a very heavy blow to the already weak Spanish economy.

As EUObserver says:

The secessionist movement in Spain’s wealthiest region gained momentum last week after a million people locked hands to form a 400km human chain on its "border" with Spain.

Some of the organisers called for a referendum while others demanded immediate independence.

The demonstration, held on Catalonia’s national day, was a symbolic reference to the 1989 Baltic Way 600km human chain which demanded independence from the Soviet Union.

The Spanish Prime Minister says that only the Spanish government in Madrid has the right to call a referendum so all these demands are nonsense. (And we know from their attitude to Gibraltar how much attention the Spanish government pays to referendums.)

Another problem has reared its head, as described by the Wall Street Journal and EUObserver.

The European Commission's vice president said Spain's wealthy region of Catalonia would have to leave the European Union if it declared independence, remarks that disappointed many in the growing Catalan secessionist movement.

"If one part of a territory of a member state decides to separate, the separated part isn't a member of the European Union," Joaquín Almunia said on Monday during a conference in Barcelona, in one of the strongest statements on the issue by a leader of the EU's administrative body.

The EU,as we know is all in favour of strengthening regions just as long as they don't get above themselves and start demanding that they should be seen as member states. After all, what the EU wants to do away is member states, turning them into subsidiary organizations of varying sizes but all integrated into a harmonized EU. They do not want another uppity nation state messing things up at various levels.

Catalan politicians are not happy:

In an op-ed in the New York Times last week, Catalan president Artur Mas described Catalonia as a European Union partner for strengthened political unity, security and economic growth.

He said the region is bound to Spain through history and close family ties, but wants to have more control over its own economy, social services, and politics.

He noted that Catalonia pays out more on average than other regions to the central government but receives less public expenditure per capita in return.

The region fought for the Second Republic in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, but its defeat led to the Catalan language being outlawed under Francisco Franco’s 40-year military rule.

Catalonia's autonomy and language was not recognised again until 1978.

“Catalans are deeply pro-European and we do not imagine a future outside the European Union,” said Mas in the US op-ed.

Catalonia's pro-independence regional government economics secretary, Andreu Mas-Colell, who attended the Almunia conference, shared the sentiment.

He said Catalans belong inside Europe and that Alumnia’s statement is based on a strict legal reading.

Nor are the Catalans getting much support from those Baltic States they wish to emulate.

The press in Spain had given ample coverage to comments supporting the right of self-determination attributed to Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius, who occupies the EU's rotating presidency.

On Monday, Lithuania's Foreign Ministry posted a statement expressing "concern over the tendentious and erroneous interpretation" by the Spanish press over the Lithuanian position.

The statement said, "The Soviet occupation of the Baltic nations cannot be compared with the situation in Spain. Spain is the democratic country, a member of the European Union, our close partner in the EU and NATO."

It said all domestic matters in Spain "should be resolved according to democratic and legal measures that exist within the country, respecting the Constitution."

How will this affect matters in Scotland? As the Scotsman pointed out, this adds to the uncertainty.

The SNP Government hopes to negotiate its EU membership – including opt-outs from the euro, free travel areas and a budget cut – in the period between the referendum in September 2014 and its proposed independence day in March 2016 if Scots vote Yes.

But the future status of an independent Scotland’s place in Europe remains unresolved.

Can we, therefore, assume that any region of any member state breaking away from it loses its place in the European Union? Dear me. Have we not heard from various politicians including Hizonner the Mayor of London that EU membership is harmful to London and especially the City? Well, here is the answer. Let London declare independence from the UK, defenstrate the Westminster politicians and Whitehall civil servants, and the EU will declare that London can no longer be part of it. And the Porcine Aviation Force will take off in large numbers.

Any predictions?

Predicting local election results is very difficult for obvious reasons: they are local and are affected by local considerations and individuals. Also, the turn-out tends to be quite low, which is unhelpful for those who like to see patterns.

The assumption is that there is a general and widespread dissatisfaction with the main parties, which these days means the Lib-Dims as well, and this will show itself in the vote. But how, is what few people know. Will there be a stronger vote for the small parties, for independent candidates or will more people simply stay at home, recognizing that local government in this country is a bit of a farce?

Then there is the problem of several cities having a referendum on whether they want a directly elected Mayor. One hopes that they will take one look at London and, especially, Tower Hamlets and vote against such a terrible notion in droves. But it is possible that they like the idea of having someone like Lutfur Rahman at the helm of an expensive but powerless body. If the turn-out remains as low as ever in those cities, then the chances are the proposal will go through and Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham will face London's problems: there will be another expensive layer of government that will not actually be in control of anything much but will be able to spend a lot of money irresponsibly and interfere with people's lives from time to time. A jolly prospect.

The Boss of EURef tells me that the suddenly revived Respect Party is likely to play havoc with the Labour-controlled Bradford council. I would be in favour of the big parties getting their noses bloodied if it were no Respect that profited from it.

Talking of which, what of UKIP? Hard to tell. For various reasons I have, as ever, been subjected to a barrage of over-optimistic predictions about that party's probable performance but that happens before every election and by-election and the necessary results have nor been forthcoming. Mind you, over-optimistic in this case means "we shall beat the Lib-Dims and come third". Even if that happens across the country it is hardly the most spectacular achievement after 20 years of existence, a goodish amount of publicity, a situation in which the Lib-Dim vote is, apparently, in free-fall with the electorate heartily sick of all major parties and the EU front-page news of the negative variety every day.

Almost twenty years ago at the Newbury by-election Alan Sked stood for the Anti-Federalist League, UKIP's predecessor and came fourth, something he pointed out forcefully when he made his speech. One would like to think there has been progress since then but, apparently, next to none.

I would prefer to see one of two results for UKIP: either a spectacularly good achievement, with lots of seats on councils and a number of votes across the country that would put them, if not first then close second or a result so poor that they would be forced to reconsider their policies, strategy and tactics (though it has been pointed out to me that nothing short of complete annihilation would make them do that). The chances are it will be neither but a kind of OK outcome with a few places gained and a few close misses with many more that can be called progression. There will then be much rejoicing and calls to "bring on the GE" as if they were on track to forming the next government.

There is talk that UKIP might win one or two places in the London Assembly but predictions for that highly expensive and completely powerless and purposeless body are hard to make for two reasons: most people have a very slender notion of its existence, let alone its activity and for good reasons as I know, having worked in the Great Glass Egg for nearly four years; and the voting is barely comprehensible with a Continental-style system of candidates from various rather large "constituencies" plus a top-up vote from lists.

The BNP will most probably lose its seat but what will happen to it and to other seats is hard to predict. I seem to recall that in 2008 most of the predictions for the Assembly turned out to be wrong.

Another complicating factor for UKIP is that somewhere along the line somebody made a terrible mess of filling in the required forms so UKIP candidates have been listed as "Fresh Choice for London". The ballot paper for the Mayor appears to have both names on it but I am not sure about the two for the Assembly. This may actually be something in their favour in that people who would not vote UKIP might put a cross against that fresh choice. Or it might confuse everyone even more.

One thing I can predict with a fair amount of certainty: if one or more UKIP (Fresh Choice for London) candidates do get into the Assembly, there will be an almighty row in the party within a couple of months and a split between those inside the Great Glass Egg and those outside.

Of course, what matters in London is the Mayoral election and that, practically speaking, boils down to a choice of Boris Johnson or Ken Livingstone. According to the Evening Standard it is too close to call but their polls are not clear in their indication, again for two reasons. One is that, as Damian Hockney, erstwhile Leader of the One London group in the Great Glass Egg, pointed out in a letter some weeks ago, the assumption seems to be that the turn-out will be over 50 per cent. This has never happened before and is unlikely to happen now. The other problem is that second transferable vote. All predictions are based on first vote only and while Boris is leading the gap is not enormous. What will happen with the second vote?

There again, the predictions were misleading last time. On the basis of the first vote it seemed too close to call for a long time but the second vote gave Boris a decisive victory. However, that was not declared till Friday evening yet by then Ken's minions had cleared their offices and packed their belongings, having summoned the removal firms, presumably, on Friday morning. So they knew more than the exit polls had told the rest of us.

The next time I write about these elections I may well be in the position of having to acknowledge that I was wrong or nearly wrong. We shall see.

Really, it is not hard to work out

Once upon a time we had general elections and we had local elections and people knew more or less how they worked and who was responsible for which part of our lives. Either way, one could be absolutely certain that the government in whatever form took on far too many responsibilities, which it could not carry out but which involved appointing lots of people in unnecessary jobs, raising taxes, regulating whatever they could and making it clear that we could not make proper decisions for ourselves. But, at least, the system was more or less comprehensible.

How times have changed. Governments, in whatever form, still claim too many responsibilities and we are trusted ever less with the making of decisions but there are several more layers around and many more elections, run on very different lines. In fact, the situation resembles that in certain Balkan countries where there seem to be some kind of elections every few months and nobody quite knows who is being elected to what and according to which method.

London is particularly difficult because we now have a Mayor, who has very few powers though a great deal of money at his disposal and, therefore, a great deal of patronage. There is also an Assembly that has no powers at all, not even to control the Mayor in any real sense; it is, in fact, a very expensive talking shop whose procedures are less well known than those of the European Parliament (another layer that needs to be elected in a completely different way from any other layer).

The GLA elections, which are coming in about three weeks see the largest number of spoilt ballot papers even though the turn-out is never more than about 35 per cent, because of the sheer incomprehensibility of the process. Thus, the Mayor is elected by a single transferable vote with every voter getting two votes to share out between the various candidates. That's quite difficult enough for an electorate that is used to first past the post but there is the extra complication of the Assembly that is voted in partly by FPTP and partly by a top-up system. So, one votes (if one bothers, which one may not as it is such a pointless organization) for an individual in the particular constituency (not to be confused with the boroughs) and also for a party.

After all that and with all the hype that is going on around the KenandBoris show, one must repeat that the Mayor of London has very few powers and those that he does have come from legislation that was passed by Parliament in 1998 and amended in 2007. In other words, those powers are strictly defined and limited by Parliament and cannot be changed neither by the Mayor nor by the Assembly nor by the people of London, should they be asked. (They were asked in the first place whether they wanted a Mayor and an Assembly and the usual thing happened: more than 60 per cent did not bother to turn out and those who did voted overwhelmingly in favour.)

This needs to be remembered and, despite the various difficulties I enumerated above, it is not hard to do so. Why, then, do we get hacks producing articles such as the one in today's Torygraph by the hackette Sue Cameron, entitled The Cities Are Taking Over?

According to this rather ignorant analysis, Labour MPs are set to abandon their seats in droves because they will want to be elected to be Mayors or new Police Commissioners. The Labour High Command is unhappy because that would mean unwelcome by-elections that they might lose.

Why do these people allegedly want to abandon their cosy little nests in Westminster? Because, if you please, power is about to seep to those elected Mayors and Police Commissioners and we shall end up with a quasi-American situation (or the French situation) where local authorities, elected mayors and police commissioners and other suchlike individuals will have far more power than Whitehall.

Really? Let's think about it a little. The powers of all these elected officials, as I said above but it is worth repeating, are very strictly defined and limited by Westminster with the legislation written by Whitehall. Elected mayors or police commissioners will not be in charge of the budget as a good deal of the money will still be decided on by the government and will not be raised locally. Most of the little that will be in their remit, as we can see in London, they have no real control over as there are numerous statutory obligations laid on them by Westminster, Whitehall and Brussels, in whatever order and which they have to fulfil. In what way is power seeping away to the cities? If any of the referendums produce directly elected mayor, the only thing that will achieve is another layer of highly expensive and largely impotent government plus some more elections.

Not that the candidates know the facts any better. I have already written about the independent candidate, Siobhan Benita, whose policies were concerned entirely with matters that were outside the Mayor's remit. Out of some misguided sense of loyalty to the eurosceptic cause I have kept quiet about the UKIP manifesto, which also consists of policies that had nothing to do with the Mayor's remit. But this has now been noted by the Metro newspaper, which has stated quite frankly that UKIP cannot deliver on any of its policies because none of them are matters over which the Mayor has any say. The candidate has agreed with that judgement. It might be a good idea for hacks on supposedly grander newspapers to learn a few of those facts. Surely, it cannot be that hard.

If you think politicians have short memories ...

... what about the electorate? We hear a great deal about the need for politicians to listen to the people, about the importance of elections and elected officials just about everywhere and about the short-termism of politicians (that, actually, cancels out the other two as the short-termism consists of concentrating on the next election). But what of the short memories that the electors have?

The Evening Standard (not, one must admit, the most reliable of newspapers) had an article by Joe Murphy, their political editor, which said that, according to a recent poll, Ken Livingstone is leading in the mayoral race, of which, thankfully, only three months are left.

To be fair, the lead is so small as to be of no significance, once we remember the error margin and the fact that only about 30 - 35 per cent usually turns out to vote in the London elections. (And, to be even more fair, the comments on the article, by and large, sound horrified at this information.)

This, however, stunned me:

"It amounts to 100,000 Labour voters switching back from Boris to Ken. It looks as though Ken Livingstone's promise to cut fares on buses and the Tube has made an impact."

Mr Johnson remains far more popular than his party among voters and beats Mr Livingstone for charisma.

But the survey reveals a drop in the number of Labour voters who are willing to vote for the Conservative incumbent. Last June almost a quarter of Labour voters said they would choose him - but the "Labour for Boris" brigade has halved to 12 per cent.

Another change is that the number who see Mr Livingstone as "in touch with the concerns of ordinary people" has risen from 37 to 40 per cent; the number who think Mr Johnson is "in touch" has fallen from 20 per cent to 13.

Moreover, the three issues that Londoners regard as most important are those that Mr Livingstone has campaigned hardest on: tackling crime (picked by 42 per cent), improving transport (41 per cent) and easing the cost of living (33 per cent). Only four per cent think promoting London abroad, a regular Boris theme, is a priority.

As it happens, promoting London abroad was a boringly constant theme with Livingstone as well and, as I recall, he even opened a number of highly expensive London offices in various countries, one of which was Venezuela. Have people forgotten that?

Did crime go down, transport improve or cost of living go down under Livingstone? Did it, heck. The amount we paid in taxes for the GLA went up by leaps and bounds every year, apart from 2007. Strange, isn't it? Anything to do with the fact that the mayoral election was coming in 2008? Surely not.

As for the promise to cut fares on tubes and buses, we have been here before, as the Boris Backer site shows. There may be a bias in the site's attitudes but the facts are incontrovertible.

I cannot believe that so many people have forgotten already. (Well, actually, I can.)

More grandstanding

For some reason this sort of nonsense is taken seriously:

BORIS JOHNSON is not reading from David Cameron’s script at the Tory party conference in Manchester. While the Prime Minister described a "modern and compassionate" party on Sunday, the Mayor of London went wildly off-piste by discussing his new demand for tough laws against swearing at policemen.

Johnson is to address the conference this week and as a true darling of the party he will be a major attraction. His words will be carefully scrutinised for signs of friction with Cameron, or of increased ambition.

So Boris Johnson is ambitious. Well, well, well. Any stories about dogs biting men or supermodels taking drugs? No? Well, I guess one about an ambitious Tory politician will have to do.

Apparently, he is grandstanding at the party conference. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. And there is a biography that shows a continuing rivalry between the two, Cameron and Johnson. Are we going into another stage of the "political rivals in one party" soap opera, last seen starring Blair and Brown? Surely not. (Excuse me while I yawn.)

Meanwhile BoJo as he is known by the hacks, has been boasting about his achievements as Mayor of London and telling us to re-elect him. As the alternative to him is Ken Livingstone, I see no real problem about that re-election. But is Hizonner the Mayor going to boast about this?

Tube drivers in the capital will see their pay go over the £50,000-a-year mark under a four-year wage deal negotiated between London Underground and union leaders.

The Rail Maritime and Transport union began consulting on a four-year pay deal, which LU said offered the prospect of no industrial action over wages until at least 2015.

Under the deal, staff will get a 5% pay increase this year followed by RPI inflation plus 0.5% in the subsequent three years.

Industry sources said that if RPI inflation stays reasonably high, some tube staff will receive a pay rise approaching 20% by the end of the settlement period.

This will not be popular in London and among people who struggle into London to work here, work a darn sight harder than those drivers and mostly for considerably less money.

Bob Crow has been crowing:

General secretary Bob Crow said: "We saw major movement from LU and we now take this improved offer back to our local reps.

"In these days of austerity we have shown … trade unionism is the best defence from attacks on jobs and living standards. I doubt you will find a better offer than this anywhere else in the public sector."

He is, of course, one of the prominent supporters of the People's Pledge Campaign that is fighting for that referendum we are likely to lose. All of a pattern, I'd say.

Because bland is best

I rarely get involved in rows about small shops closing because usually the reason is quite clear: the shops or businesses in question do not serve customers as those customers would wish it and so they have to close. Or, as in the case of the late lamented Travel Books in Notting Hill, it really is the non-customers' fault. That bookshop was hit by the curse of being a tourist attraction. Ever since Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts mooned at each other in that film, people went to look at the shop (I know because I have been asked for directions several times), photographed each other but bought nothing. No doubt they also drove away bone fide customers. Sad but true.

However, this story really annoyed me. I know and like Gaby's. It is a cafe rather than a restaurant and the prices reflect that. The food is good, a mixture of Middle Eastern and East European Jewish, the staff are friendly and the place is highly successful with Londoners and visitors who often complain with some justification that it is hard to find anything affordable that is not part of a chain to eat in.

So what is about to happen? Well, it is about to be forced to close down

Gaby's Deli near Leicester Square will close after Westminster council chiefs forced through a planning application.
...

The application, made by planning consultants Montagu Evans on behalf of freeholders Gascoyne Holdings Ltd, was passed at a planning sub-committee meeting last night, despite petitions from members of the public.

The other shops that will be forced to close are a newsagents, a theatre ticket booth and a souvenir shop.

To be honest, I am not that bothered about the others. They come and they go but Gaby's is an institution and part of the remaining charm of that area, rapidly destroyed by Westminster City Council and Gascoyne Holdings Ltd.

And for sick-making, hypocritical self-justification, you cannot beat the following two statements:

However, Montagu Evans today said: "Gascoyne Holdings Ltd has a very varied portfolio and is one of the biggest supporters of small shops. The proposals we're looking at will hugely improve the visual of Charing Cross Road. We don't know what restaurant is going to move in, but they said they would be seeking a tenant similar to the calibre of Strada or Côte."

Robert Davis, the planning sub-comittee chairman, said: "The extension will significantly improve the look and feel of St Martin's Court and the surrounding area, and in the long term these benefits will outweigh the loss of the existing retail units.

"Because of this the committee granted conditional permission."

But, of course. You support small shops by closing them down and seeking instead a tenant that is part of a bland, boring chain. Exactly how would that improve the look and feel of St Martin's Court and the surrounding area?

It might be worth noting that Gascoyne Holdings Ltd is largely the Cecil family as headed by the Marquess of Salisbury.

Something to cheer about

Back in the days I was working for the One London group in the highly expensive and completely pointless London Assembly, I wrote fairly frequently about one particular way Hizonner the Mayor Livingstone spend large amounts of taxpayers' money: the so-called London embassies that he set up in various countries, allegedly to ensure that businesses in those countries knew about London and all it could offer. As one of the biggest of these offices was in Venezuela, I begged leave to doubt the Mayor's good intentions.

The idea, as I pointed out repeatedly, that there are businessmen and women out there who had never heard of London, a city that has had centuries of commercial history, was laughable. Quite apart from which there are various other organizations, starting with embassies and trade delegations, to deal with various issues.

I am pleased to inform everyone that Hizonner the Mayor Johnson is shutting them down. First to go were the ones on the Indian continent, whither many an expensive taxpayer-funded trip had been taken unde Livingstone.

Pippa Crerar, City Hall Editor, does not like this. Maybe she was hoping for a trip or two herself. She maintains that Johnson had promised to keep those "embassies" open, which is not exactly true: he promised to review the situation and a review was naturally going to lead to closures.

Secondly, she quotes dissatisfied "business leaders".

Business chiefs warned that closing the offices to save money would send out the wrong signals to potential investors. Colin Stanbridge, chief executive of the London
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “It is essential that we maintain offices in Delhi and Mumbai so that we can continue to market London in one of the fastest growing economies in the world. If we are not out there selling London as the best place in the world to do business, our international rivals will be more than happy to fill the vacuum.”

Graham Capper, of business group London First, added: “If representatives and offices in India are adding value then they should be retained — there's no point saving cash by cutting them if it costs us investment and jobs in London.”

However, he said there should be better co-ordination between agencies
promoting London abroad — UK Trade and Invest, the City Corporation, the LDA and Think London, its inward investment agency.

The trouble is these are not business leaders but quango leaders - people who live off the taxpayer (and very comfortably, too) while hoping for those trips. The fact that Mr Capper can list a number of other agencies, all engaged at promoting London, while gobbling up other people's money, disposes of the need for those embassies. Let us not forget that businesses may decide to go elsewhere if they find taxation overwhelmingly high and beneficiaries of that high taxation are hardly in a position to talk. (Though that has never stopped any of them before.)

I am delighted to say that almost all the comments on the article agree with the decision as does the Evening Standard's editorial [second one down] on the subject.

Is there an election coming up in the next year or so?

I used to have a lot of time for Sarah Brown, the PM's wife. Of course, she is not nearly as entertaining as Cherie Blair but she has always seemed very pleasant and intelligent, even elegant in a quiet way, obviously a fond mother and a sensible spouse (though even she could not make a human being out of her husband).

I am beginning to change my mind. There seems to be rather a lot of Sarah Brown around. Clearly, the Labour strategists have realized that there are many people who feel as I do and find the lady quite attractive. What they have not realized, being the usual kind of political dim-wits, is that if they keep pushing her into the limelight that good will is going to disappear. Mine, for one, is already fading.

Apparently she visited Glastonbury with the model Naomi Campbell. I missed this momentous event as I am profoundly uninterested in Glastonbury but now that I know I cannot help wondering at the preposterousness of neat, quietly pleasant Sarah Brown at that muddy, rowdy, noisy event.

Now we are told that she will march in the Gay Pride parade this Saturday because both she and her husband (who cannot attend for security reasons) want to show their support for the gay community in this country.

Excuse me, but is the gay community in any way oppressed in Britain? Has anything happened since the last Gay Pride parade to make the Browns feel that their support is needed? Or did they not know that there has been an annual Gay Pride parade for good many years now? (I must say, if I were the Gay Pride parade organizer I would run shrieking away from the Browns and their support, not wishing to be contaminated.)

Tomorrow Trafalgar Square is being taken over for Canada Day. I am not a great fan of Trafalgar Square being taken over by any taxpayer-sponsored demonstration but I shall go along to this one. Canada and the Anglosphere need supporting and it would be nice if the Prime Minister and his lady thought so, too.

Incidentally, the Gay Pride parade is on July 4. Is there not another event to be celebrated on that day, one that has to do with our greatest ally and with the Anglosphere in general? I trust Mr and Mrs Brown will lend their support to the community that has been under attack for some years in this country - Americans who live and work here.