Tories and term-limits
Tories in the House of Lords have voted to limit the Mayor of London to two 4-year terms.
This strikes me as fundamentally undemocratic - it should be up to voters whether they want Ken to do 4, 8, 12 or 40 years in the job.
It's ironic that people who themselves have no democratic mandate are trying to limit voter choice like this.
And it's a bit of an admission that the Tories already concede they can't actually beat Ken in an election - so they're having to resort to constitutional fixes.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 10:00 am
7 Comments:
They could put their own house in order first! Some of their councillors around here were first elected when Victoria was still Queen...
10:20 am, June 20, 2007
Yes but are we going into coalition with the Lib Dems? Presumably it was leaked to The Guardian on the basis that most of their readers would think it was good news.
10:28 am, June 20, 2007
What about Hazel Luke? No news??
1:05 pm, June 20, 2007
It looks like a blatant admission by the Tories that they won't ever be able to find a credible challenger to Ken.
1:09 pm, June 20, 2007
Blimey I feel sorry for the eventual Tory candidate...
1:31 pm, June 20, 2007
It's ironic that people who themselves have no democratic mandate are trying to limit voter choice like this.
It's even more ironic that people who have been appointed for life are complaining that 12 years is too long for someone to serve.
No, not ironic - what's the word... hypocritical? Opportunistic? Shameless? Unprincipled? Oh well, it'll come to me.
2:56 pm, June 20, 2007
Luke is absolutely right - it shows that they have no confidence in the abilitiy of their candidates to beat Ken Livingstone.
The amendment passed - if it were ever to become law - would take effect before the mayoral election in 2008, thus preventing Ken Livingstone from standing.
Only a few months ago - in the House of Commons on Jan 18 - Michael Gove for the tory front bench said:
'any attempt to call for term limits will inevitably be seen as an attempt to clip Ken’s wings rather than ensure that the principle applies impartially to the mayoral office. More than that, we have to accept that the whole principle of term limits is alien to the British constitution,' adding: 'I hope that I made it clear that we do not believe in term limits in principle or for the Mayor of London.'
The question is what has happened in the intervening period for the Tory front bench in the Lords to adopt the polar opposite view?
According to Jonathan Freedland's article in the Evening Standard today the Tories claim that the position set out by Gove remains their policy - which can only mean that the Tories are in total chaos over London and the London mayoralty.
The latest example of this can be seen by their current attempts to prevent Labour from paying the living wage to fire station cleaners
http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/news.php?slug=Blair-Backs-London-Living-Wage-Call&article_id=686
12:53 pm, June 21, 2007
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