2012: London’s Year (and probably Boris’s)

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

Whatever happens elsewhere in the world this year, the summer surely belongs to London. On 27 July, the greatest show on earth begins. To remind us: London 2012 involves more than 14,700 athletes, 21,000 media people and broadcasters, a workforce of 200,000, a £2bn budget, 10.8 million ticket-holders across 37 competition venues, and a whopping TV audience of some 4 billion worldwide. And all of this before we factor in the Queen’s diamond jubilee, which brings with it a four-day holiday, the largest Thames flotilla in 350 years and a weekend of partying focusing on the capital.

The Queen’s jubilee and the Olympics will take care of themselves, but the mayoral contest on 3 May – when Londoners go to the polls to deliver the first major test of political opinion in England, other than in local elections, since the coalition was formed – will be watched keenly as a mid-term test of electability, with major implications for all three parties. To be sure, the candidates are fighting their campaigns very much as individuals and not party hacks. It will be a major blow to Boris were he to lose, but a bad defeat would also reflect particularly badly on their respective party leaders if the Lib Dems or Labour candidates get walloped.

Boris’s campaign won’t like me saying it – it’s said they’re terrified of allowing complacency to creep in – but the omens are not good for Ken Livingstone.  

Last time around – with the same three candidates – of the 11 polls published in the month preceding the 2008 election, only two showed Ken with a lead over Boris after reallocating second-preference votes. Most first-preference polls had Ken’s vote share down in the thirties, well below the level needed to stand a chance of winning.

Thus far in the race, Boris has turned a deficit against Ken (of second-preference reallocated, turnout-weighted polls) of 51 per cent to 49 per cent in March 2011, into a lead in November 2011 on the same calculated basis of 54 per cent to 46 per cent.

In the post-mortem of the 2008 race, a number of factors were cited in Boris’s victory. Some of these were very specific, including allegations of cronyism and a strong campaign against Ken by the Evening Standard. Presumably that will largely be absent from this campaign.

But Ken faces other obstacles, some of which were also evident in 2008. His party leader then was Gordon Brown, but in 2012 it will be Ed Miliband, assuming he’s still in the post. Then there is the incumbency factor: in 2008, voters had had enough of Ken after two terms and wanted change. It’s much harder for Ken to use the same message, because the obvious retort is that a vote for Ken is a vote to return to the past.

But the most intractable obstacles for Ken are the demographics. Much was made in 2008 of the ‘doughnut’ of inner London that predominantly votes for Ken, and outer London, where Boris tends to be ahead. The outcome then rests on turnout, and in 2008 the Conservatives were highly effective in getting outer London to the ballot stations in sufficient numbers to tip the scales in Boris’ favour. This strategy was outstandingly effective, as the following table shows: turnout was higher in areas more likely to vote for Boris and lower in areas more likely to vote for Ken.

The latest polling underlines the difficulty Ken will again face.  After taking account of likely turnout and re-allocating second preferences, Boris leads Ken among men, who are significantly more likely than women to vote. The only age group among whom Ken has a commanding lead is 18 to 24-year-olds, but only one in four of those will vote. But the real killer for Ken’s electoral prospects is the resurrected doughnut: Ken leads Boris in inner London by 60 per cent to 40 per cent, but in more populous outer London Boris is ahead by 61 per cent to 39 per cent.

The one glimmer of hope for Ken is transport, which is the only issue on which he leads Boris in terms of trust. This is underlined by the fact that a large proportion of Londoners do not believe the tube has improved under Boris, and seven in ten say they are not prepared to pay more in fares to fund improvements. Indeed, this is a proper vote-winner for Ken, since 13 per cent of Boris voters say they’re more likely to vote for the former mayor if Boris increases fares by seven per cent as planned in 2012.

But, as is glaringly obvious from the graph below, Ken’s challenge is a monochrome one. Boris is trusted more on all of the other key issues. Moreover, London has a unique vulnerability, being at the mercy of Bob Crow, and Ken’s historical reluctance to go fully into battle with the RMT is not going to win over those outer London voters likely to vote for Boris. Ironically, though, as Dave Hill of The Guardian points out, there have been more tube strikes since Boris took over in 2008 than in all of Ken’s eight years in the job. Ken is, however, unlikely to take much credit from voters for bringing peace to London’s public transport network.

What of the other big events this year? Despite Ken’s having been mayor at the time of London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics, more Londoners say Boris deserves credit for the Games, and more would prefer to see Boris as mayor during the Games themselves.
Perhaps this is in light of the former mayor’s admission that “I didn’t bid for the Olympics because I wanted three weeks of sport”, but to “ensnare the government to put money into an area it has neglected for 30 years”.

May’s mayoral election will surely be Ken’s last electoral hurrah; he’ll be over 70 by the time of the next one in 2016. On current form, in the absence of a major upset, it’s difficult to see how he can win.

The question is what the wider political implications will be. In particular, a heavy defeat for Labour may pile more pressure on Ed Miliband if he ends up taking a big part of the blame, notwithstanding Ken’s individualistic brand. A heavy defeat for Boris is easier to shrug off on the basis of mid-term blues.

Andrew Hawkins is chairman of ComRes

Tags: Andrew Hawkins, Boris Johnson, Issue 44, Ken Livingstone, London Mayoral election, Olympics London 2012