Saturday, July 03, 2010

Oona King for London

Oona King has started to add flesh to the bones of her mayoral bid. Importantly she is focusing on fairness.

In her Progress interview she is clearly trying to fill the gaps in Labour's unsuccessful campaign in 2008, when incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone lost to Boris Johnson. She is right that living in zone 6 London is very different to life in inner London. Regular readers will know that I'm angry that at a basic level access to regular transport and the Oyster card is sporadic at best out on London's edge.

To successfully wrest the candidacy from Ken Livingstone she needs to offer more that just a fresh start. This is important but not enough. I agree that it would be foolhardy to attempt to replay the 2008 election. King needs to start to presenting some big ideas to enable her to topple Livingstone. I hope she does because I fear that a re-run of the last election would end in defeat.

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