Politics blog + London

Notting Hill: went up in the world. Photograph: Philippa Lewis/Edifice/Corbis

No problem spotting the moral from today's YouTube story about the Swiss couple who were insulted in a local tongue while renewing their wedding vows in the Maldives: don't go near a contract in a language you don't understand.

Nearer to home, is our coalition making the same mistake with its package of spending cuts, which seem to be unravelling in lively ways? After all, it's what overpriced investment bankers did when they chopped up sub-prime debt and sold it on in shiny wrapping paper.

When mayor of London Boris Johnson, a media-savvy rascal, uses a disgracefully emotive phrase like "social cleansing" to describe changes to housing benefit changes we can be sure ministers have a problem.

As for the abolition of top-rate child benefit, even the FT carries a page one story today about the reform – small change to the Pink 'Un's readers – because it threatens husbands with fines if their wives are less than frank about claiming the cash.

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The London Underground: scene of the crime. Photograph: Getty Images

Travelling into central London in a crowded rush hour train the other evening I had my wallet lifted. It was the third time in 25 years that a thief had picked the same trouser pocket. Stay with me while I briefly refrain from trying to make sense of the coalition's cuts. This is a more positive little story.

Covering the Philippine revolution in Manilla in 1986 I had been part of a great crowd trying to get into Ferdinand Marcos's presidential palace to inspect his wife Imelda's newly famous collection of shoes. I never got to see them because I felt my wallet go and wasted hours with the police after a witness – accomplice? – accused an innocent man of the theft.

Fortunately, I'd already adopted the habit of hiding some of my credit cards and other valuables – notably my passport – at my hotel during foreign trips, so they would not all be lost if I was robbed.

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Labour's Ken Livingstone, left, lost the London mayoralty to Boris Johnson in 2008. Photograph: Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images

Labour's candidate for the next mayoral battle needs to steal Johnson's populist touch if he is to return to City Hall

The cover of Blair's book. Photograph: John Swannell

Tony Blair will not be taking any chances at a signing to promote his memoir A Journey next month.

The Bookseller reports that the former prime minister will be meeting his public at Waterstone's in Piccadilly, London, on 8 September.

But Blair fans will have to comply with a number of strict conditions before being allowed near the great man:

Customers cannot be photographed with Blair, there will be no personal dedications, and all bags, backpacks and briefcases must be checked in, along with cameras and mobile phones, before meeting the former Labour leader. Blair will sign a maximum of two books per customer.

In addition, those wanting to have their book signed must show proof they bought it from Waterstone's that morning. They will then receive a wristband, although, as the Bookseller points out, this "does not guarantee Blair will sign the customer's book". Ouch.

A Journey will be released on 1 September, as a hardback, and a special red and gold edition, as the Guardian reported earlier this week. Blair was reportedly paid an advance of £4.6m for the book. Continue reading...

City Hall in London. Now you can see inside to where the money goes. Photograph: David Levene

The GLA Data Store now publishes spending over £1,000 in machine-readable format - so let's do some analysis

Central London. Photograph: Paul Owen

At the start of the year David Cameron must have been aiming at winning around 40 of the capital's 73 constituencies, doubling his London tally and turning most of the metropolitan parliamentary map as blue as Boris Johnson's City Hall. Now he may have to be content with only half of the 20 gains he'd dreamed of. If the Lib Dem surge doesn't turn out to have been made from yellow blancmange and if Labour candidates can resist big money Tory onslaughts in half a dozen razor-edge marginals, the Conservative leader's hopes of commanding the Commons have been significantly reduced.

At the top of the Tory hit list are Finchley and Golders Green, Battersea and Croydon Central.

The psephology says the first two are doomed, with Labour defending tiny majorities. But the third, which was actually won by a Conservative in 2005 and has become notionally Labour due to boundary changes, has been transformed into a delicious drama thanks to the last-minute entrance of Andrew Pelling, the man who scored that Tory victory five years ago.
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A 2007 aerial view of the Shoreditch part of the Hackney South and Shoreditch constituency Photograph: David Levene

Simon Jeffery: Denny de la Haye, 36, a web developer, is standing as an independent in Hackney South and Shoreditch on a platform of direct digital democracy. See what that means and put questions to him

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London. Photograph: Jon Furniss/WireImage.com

Boris Johnson may condemn violence and antisocial behaviour in his day job as mayor of London, but he is not averse to expressing a rather violent desire to "end what is left of my political career with one almighty head-butt" levelled at Ed Balls, the schools secretary.

Johnson's tirade against Balls was a response to what the Conservative mayor described as "death-defyingly stupid" comments from Balls on the subject of Latin in schools.

"There are times when a minister says something so maddening, so death-defyingly stupid, that I am glad not to be in the same room in case I should reach out, grab his tie, and end what is left of my political career with one almighty head-butt," said the mayor, renowned as a passionate classicist. "Such were my feelings on reading Mr Ed Balls on the subject of teaching Latin in schools."

Johnson's comments, provoked by the minister's claim that "very few parents" are pushing for Latin in state schools, were not blurted out in a red mist moment, but crafted for his Daily Telegraph column, for which he earns £250,000 a year.

Is this fighting talk fitting for such a key Tory figure? Continue reading...

Boris Johnson has revised his arrangements for nominating the next chair of Arts Council England in London after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport made clear it wouldn't appoint any candidate he recommended for the post if the panel conducting their initial interviews included Boris himself.

The Mayor had proposed that he chair a panel of three people to conduct a re-run of a process that had previously foundered because culture secretary Ben Bradshaw vetoed his nomination of former Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley on the grounds that Nolan Rules ensuring transparency and fairness in public appointments had been breached.

But a letter from the Mayor received by the DCMS at the end of last week proposed instead a panel of five people to be chaired by the distinguished arts administrator Sir Brian McMaster, who the Arts Council had suggested be involved, and also including Boris's culture adviser Munira Mirza - but not Boris. The remaining three seats on the reformulated panel have yet to be filled, and I understand that the DCMS has made clear to the Mayor that it expects "credible and independent" people to secure them if it is to sanction the outcome of the re-run. Continue reading...

Seumas Milne and Julian Glover join Allegra Stratton and Tom Clark to discuss the week in politics

Boris Johnson has been at it again. David Cameron would no doubt like the mayor of London to use his weekly slot in the Daily Telegraph to defend Conservative party policy, but Boris often uses it set out a rival agenda and today's column includes a particularly intriguing example of him veering off-message.

It's about the new 50p tax rate for top earners. When Alistair Darling unveiled this in the budget, Cameron correctly identified it a trap designed to tempt the Tories into opposing a tax rise popular with the general public. Some Tories said the party ought to oppose the increase on principle, but Cameron decided to sidestep the trap. Instead he said he would keep the new tax rate, at least in the short term, because Britain could not afford to abolish it.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, explained the policy in his party conference speech.

I am no fan of high tax rates. We know that in the long run they destroy enterprise. That is why we should not accept Labour's new 50% tax rate on the highest earners as a permanent feature of the tax system.
But we could not even think of abolishing the 50p rate on the rich while at the same time I am asking many of our public sector workers to accept a pay freeze to protect their jobs. I think we can all agree that would be grossly unfair. Continue reading...

Pervez Musharraf salutes as he leaves the presidential house in Islamabad. Photograph: AP

Did you spot Declan Walsh's article in today's Guardian about Pervez Musharraf, the general who used to run Pakistan until 13 months ago? I hadn't realised he's living in a nice-but-modest flat off London's Edgware Road.

His presence here raises the familiar awkward question: should those described as dictators (Walsh, who knows Pakistan well, uses the word) be allowed to live in exile in Britain when some people at home want him back to face a treason trial?
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Boris Johnson appears in the October issue of Elle magazine, on sale Wednesday 2 September. Photograph: Henry Bourne/courtesy of Elle magazine.

An iconic blond he may be, but no one was more surprised than Boris Johnson to find out the mayor of London was to be the first cover boy to pose solo for fashionable glossy Elle magazine.

With a guest appearance on EastEnders in the pipeline, the media savvy Conservative politician has marked a mayoral debut by appearing on the cover of a limited edition special issue of the magazine to celebrate 25 years of London Fashion Week.

The mayor, famed for his often dishevelled appearance, is seen clad in a black suit and white shirt, looking straight to camera with his arms crossed, surrounded by lyrics from the Clash's London Calling, a shot which echoes Elle's best-selling cover of 2008 featuring Sienna Miller.

Johnson is the first male to pose for the front cover alone. Continue reading...