Ten years earlier, in the infancy of Tony Blair’s government, London had no housing crisis. Although Big Bang and Canary Wharf had reversed the city’s falling population and London was no longer a tired city, Blair ignored the inevitable demand for more homes after he encouraged immigration. Young Britons and Europeans flocked to the capital. As the 2011 census would show, London’s population would grow faster than predicted from 7.5 million to 10 million by 2031. Tony Blair, reported Rick Blakeway, Boris’s new housing chief, had created London’s housing crisis.1 Livingstone’s revised ‘London Plan’ published in early 2008 was redundant.
The new Greater London Authority (GLA) created by Tony Blair in 2000 denied the mayor any power or money to build houses. The mayor’s only power was planning. Livingstone’s solution was to draft a planning scheme for a particular area of the capital and cajole the local authority to build homes to match his proposal. With a combative manner which alienated the people he needed, Livingstone’s success was limited. ‘Ken’s always looking for a fight,’ noted Peter John at Southwark Council, echoing other boroughs’ housing directors. Those prepared to co-operate were usually unable to satisfy Livingstone’s demand for ‘affordable homes’ – a crunch issue in the city. In exchange for obtaining planning permission, Livingstone wanted developers to subsidise 50 per cent of the homes they built to be sold at lower, affordable prices. The result of his demands disappointed him. In Barking Riverside, a new town of 11,000 homes created in 2000, only 600 homes would be built in the first ten years. In effect, Livingstone’s ‘affordable homes’ target had become 50 per cent of almost nothing.
The problem was money. Public authority housing depended on attracting finance from private developers. Facing high costs for infrastructure and resolving complex legal ownership on brownfield sites, most developers rejected Livingstone’s demand that 50 per cent of any development be ‘affordable’. They saw his schemes as a recipe for losses. Livingstone’s demands had become especially self-destructive in areas like Dagenham where land was available but where few people wanted to live at that time.
A further complication was added by the Labour government. All the finance for civic housing required Whitehall’s approval. London was limited to 20,000 new homes annually. To achieve that number, Livingstone abandoned quality and built what David Lunts, his own housing official previously employed as an expert by Prince Charles, called ‘ugly, minimalist rabbit-hutch flats’.
Before his election, Boris had not understood the mayor’s limited powers to influence the construction of new homes. Since he had never asked the questions, he had not considered how to exercise the mayor’s solitary but critical power to approve or reject planning applications. In the recent past, he had simply attacked all planning regulations. Developers, he had urged, should be free to build anything – except tower blocks, other than in clusters at ‘appropriate locations’ like Croydon and Docklands. Under pressure during the election, he had modified his personal prejudices but maintained his disdain for the pastiche classical buildings designed by architects like Quinlan Terry.
Those ideas put Boris at odds with Prince Charles, a passionate advocate of Quinlan Terry and an opponent of towers. Soon after Boris’s election, Charles invited the mayor to Clarence House.2 The prince urged him to protect London’s skyline and reverse Livingstone’s collaboration with Richard Rogers, a modernist architect Charles disliked, to build huge skyscrapers in the City and along the Thames. The river would soon flow through a valley of twenty-one towers, complained Charles. He had good reason to recruit Boris as an ally. During his election campaign, Boris had told questioners, ‘I’ll stop this madness.’ Towers, he agreed, were eyesores and destroyed residential communities. Approval for a further twenty-one ‘drab and featureless … phallocratic buildings’, said Boris, would be stopped by overruling the local authorities.3 The development of three towers in Waterloo, blocking the views of Westminster, had been immediately frozen. ‘This fetish for tall buildings anywhere and everywhere,’ Simon Milton agreed just after the election, ‘will be a disaster in London.’4 But by early August, Boris changed his mind. He decided, without giving any reason, that he favoured a thirty-one-storey tower block at Queen’s Market in Upton Park, east London. The 2,600 objectors, including all the local shopkeepers, suspected commercial pressure. Was the mayor, some wondered, persuaded by the last person he spoke to? Boris rushed to reassure the protestors.5 ‘Planning is central to my vision for London,’ he promised. Every building he approved ‘will be wonderful for one hundred years’.6 Eventually he would reject the Queen’s Market tower but two weeks later he ignored the guidelines to protect the skyline and allowed a high-rise luxury development in Doon Street, Lambeth.7
Politics dictated his U-turn. Having pledged to build 50,000 homes in three years to answer the housing crisis created by Blair, he realised that his headline promise was undermined by the banking crash and the bankruptcy of builders. Moreover, all his plans were subject to scrutiny and approval by Bob Kerslake, the chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), a bureaucratic quango recently established by Labour to dispense grants for housing across the country. Obtaining money from Kerslake was complicated for a Tory mayor. To overcome those obstacles, he understood, the tower blocks became a more attractive proposition. Not only did they deliver politically advantageous numbers of homes but they were favoured by developers. To entice the few remaining solvent developers, he reduced the number of ‘affordable homes’ required in every project to 30 per cent. He also hinted that, if pushed, he would agree to an even lower target.
The biggest prospective development was Nine Elms in Battersea, a site four times the size of Canary Wharf and blighted by a redundant power station. Several developers had already been ruined by the site’s complicated finances. The government had stipulated that the iconic four cooling towers be preserved. Developers were also burdened by lower house prices and rents south of the river.8 Negotiating a realistic package to encourage a developer to accept the challenge demanded exceptional expertise and, critically, the construction of a new Tube line.
To understand that new world, Boris began touring building sites, asking technical questions about construction. Unlike Livingstone, he tried to establish good relations with the boroughs and Whitehall. ‘He doesn’t do nasty,’ Tony Travers realised.9 Sucking in information at meetings with developers, he sat like a student, sleeves rolled up, writing notes on an A4 pad. With the help of Rick Blakeway, the housing director, and David Lunts, he checked to make sure he could speak with conviction. ‘He can do detail,’ Lunts reported, ‘but doesn’t necessarily enjoy it.’ Livingstone’s rabbit-hutch flats were to be replaced by homes large enough to be comfortable, and often with balconies. ‘The meetings were enjoyable,’ Lunts found, ‘because there were lots of jokes.’ In November, Boris was interviewed about housing by John Humphrys on the Today programme. The famously aggressive journalist was silenced as the mayor reeled off statistics. ‘It’s all a question of energy,’ he later explained about his attitude to detail. ‘If you’re interested in getting something done, by God you focus on the detail.’10 By contrast, while briefed about waste disposal as he munched a packet of crisps or an apple, his eyes glazed over.
Five months after the election, a relaxed rhythm was spreading throughout City Hall. The familiar daily dramas sparked by his predecessor had disappeared. Even the most fervent members of Livingstone’s clique were converted because Boris, unlike Livingstone, ate in the canteen and spoke to everyone while queuing for lunch or travelling in the lift up to his eighth-floor office with views of the Tower of London. On a wall hung a painting by his mother. Beyond City Hall, John Humphrys was not the only frustrated sceptic. Boris’s detractors remained convinced that the reign of the blond bumbler would end in a car crash, and even seemed miffed that the wicked racist they had prophesied had not yet materialised. Defying the caricature, ethnic festivals continued and Boris called for an amnesty of 500,000 illegal migrants estimated to be living in London. ‘They would pay taxes,’ he explained.11 He also introduced a minimum wage for City Hall employees, a third higher than the government’s minimum wage: ‘It’s about people who are struggling to put bread on the table for their families, people on low incomes who are working hard and who are ambitious.’12 He even professed enthusiasm for electric cars.13
The so-called ‘lazy buffoon’ got up at 5.30 a.m. to read the briefs and documents for that day’s meetings, to set off before 7.30 a.m. to speak at one or two breakfast meetings on most days and arrive by 9 a.m. in City Hall. On weekdays, he was usually invited to two lunches and two dinners but seldom ate the meals. After making his speech, he would leave. Guarded by Ann Sindall, his loyal PA imported from the Spectator, he usually took a thirty-minute nap in the afternoon. Sindall particularly enjoyed repelling visiting Tories, a tribe she hated. ‘Fuck off, he’s got no time for you,’ she snapped. ‘Stop that,’ ordered Guto Harri. ‘We need those people.’
Londoners were his strength. Walking along the pavement, on the Tube or cycling, he was regularly accosted by strangers eager to shake his hand and express their affection. His popularity was enhanced by appearing on TV programmes including Top Gear and a series about Rome. Even Andy Beckett of the Guardian, a natural critic, was begrudgingly impressed after following him at a careers fair in the East End. ‘Boris we love you,’ the teenagers shouted as they surrounded him. Boris’s initial apprehension had been replaced by delight.
In contrast to the drudgery of being a dispensable MP, as mayor Boris had a platform to develop his own image and political ideas. He could express his ideology in conventional sound bites – spending taxpayers’ money did not automatically improve people’s lives, and dependency on social benefits by healthy people was unacceptable – and offer his own solutions. Tory success depended on proposing a solution to poverty, housing, the NHS and multiculturalism. To narrow London’s wealth gap, he would seek philanthropy from the super-rich to train the disadvantaged. Civic Conservatism would mobilise the voluntary sector to help and train people into productive lives. Labour, he argued, would not be allowed to own the answers to those social problems. His inspiration remained Pericles, the general of Athens in its golden age. ‘He was a real genius of municipal politics in action,’ said Boris. To those who assumed that Cameron was giving the orders, Boris replied ‘We’re doing our own thing.’ His proof in 2009 was to decide the fate of the Metropolitan Police.14,15
Few Londoners understood Livingstone’s iniquitous legacy at Scotland Yard. London’s police force was dysfunctional. Commissioner Ian Blair was accused of allowing warring factions of maverick and disloyal officers to disrupt the Yard’s management. Blair’s control of crime in London had also failed. The city’s teenage murder rate had spiralled. ‘How can this happen in the richest city in the world?’ Boris asked Blair. The commissioner provided no satisfactory explanation for closing down a successful specialist anti-gang unit. But Boris’s dissatisfaction went deeper. The Yard had lied about the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station in July 2005 and Blair was accused by a newspaper of favouring a friend with police contracts (which he denied), of being obsessed with public relations and being politically aligned with the Labour government. Scotland Yard, Boris said just before the election, needed ‘a yank on the steering wheel and that’s what I intend to provide.’16 Blair had replied that he supported ‘continuity’.17
In hindsight, Ian Blair should have been suspicious as he walked into the mayor’s office on 1 October 2008 for a routine consultation with Boris, acting as the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority. Not least, as he later said, ‘because Boris’s hair was combed’. Blair was taken by surprise by what followed: ‘There’s no easy way of saying this Ian but I want a change of leadership at the Met. You’ve lost the confidence of the locker room and Londoners. You’ve reached the end of the line. I want new leadership. I want you to leave by Christmas.’ Blair reeled. He told Boris the mayor did not have the power to dismiss the commissioner. Not one had been forced to resign in 120 years. Boris did not retreat.
The mayor’s decision took Whitehall by surprise. Neither Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, nor her officials had been consulted. ‘Only I have the power to fire and hire,’ said Smith. Gordon Brown, the prime minister, urged Blair not to resign. Both Labour politicians were impotent. Boris demanded ‘a clean break and a new start for policing in London’. They reluctantly agreed. On his retirement day, Blair accused Boris of making ‘a very political move’. Boris did not disagree. The criticism of ‘Bumbling Boris’ would, he hoped, be heard less often. In the interim, Sir Paul Stephenson, Blair’s deputy, would be the acting commissioner. Stephenson’s appointment had been unusual. Three years earlier, on the eve of his retirement as the chief constable of Lancashire, he had been asked by the Home Office to move to London. Not one of Scotland Yard’s senior officers was trusted to act as Ian Blair’s deputy. After thirty years’ service, Stephenson was the favourite to become commissioner and radically reform the Yard. Blair and Scotland Yard’s politics tested his credibility on his first day as the acting commissioner.
At 10 a.m. on 27 November 2008, the same day as Ian Blair finally departed, Boris’s fear about Scotland Yard’s politicisation materialised. Stephenson called Boris with a warning. Later that day, he said, the police would raid the homes and offices of an unnamed MP. At 1.19 p.m., Stephenson called Boris and identified the target as Damian Green, the Tory MP for Ashford. Fifteen minutes later, Green was arrested and taken to Belgravia police station for nine hours’ questioning. Meanwhile, police officers searched his homes, his constituency office and his Westminster office. They took away a stash of private documents and his computers.
The raids were led by Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, the counter-terrorism chief. The reason for the raids was Green’s embarrassing questions to government ministers in the Commons about failed immigration policies. Green’s questions were clearly based on confidential government documents received from a Home Office civil servant. Quick needed Stephenson’s authority to arrest the MP. The justification, Quick explained, was Downing Street’s declaration that the leak was a matter of ‘national security’.
At 2 p.m., after Green’s arrest, Boris called Stephenson and ‘expressed outrage’. Using the anti-terrorist squad to target an MP for receiving leaked documents was not ‘proportionate’, protested Boris. This, to Boris, was further proof of the Yard’s political prejudice, revenge for Ian Blair’s dismissal and evidence that the Yard was out of control. Leaks from Whitehall to MPs, said Boris, had been an element of countless MPs’ careers, especially Gordon Brown’s from Treasury civil servants during the Conservative government. But none had been arrested and subjected to an intensive search. As the uproar increased, Quick openly denounced Boris for illegally warning Green about the raid. He would later call the Tory Party ‘wholly corrupt’.18 Quick lacked any evidence that Boris had alerted Green and a formal investigation would clear Boris of that accusation.
By the end of the day, Stephenson and Scotland Yard were mired in accusations of political bias. Jacqui Smith had been told about the investigation by David Normington, the permanent secretary; and the Speaker, Michael Martin, a Labour MP, had approved the unprecedented search of an MP’s office and the closure of Green’s email address.19 Within days, Stephenson admitted to Boris that the arrest was politically motivated and national security was not an issue. ‘This will cause trouble,’ replied Boris. ‘This was exactly why Blair had to go.’
‘Stephenson told me it’s a mess,’ Boris told colleagues, ‘and he’s ordered an external inquiry.’
Boris was now in uncharted territory. Although sceptical about Scotland Yard, he did not properly grasp the contagion of incompetence among senior officers. He’d naively assumed that getting rid of Blair would be sufficient, and failed to see that the problem was infinitely more complex. He’d missed the bigger picture.20 Nor did he realise how his reaction would be exploited by Labour and the police to tarnish him.21 As the police authority chairman, he was expected to remain utterly neutral. Instead, four days after the raid, he called Green. In a short conversation, Green explained that no one had been bribed and there was no breach of the Official Secrets Act. ‘I hope they haven’t taken your passport,’ said Boris, ‘so you can still go skiing.’ Regardless of its innocence, Boris was unwise to have made the call. He provided his enemies with grounds to accuse him of prejudice.
Jacqui Smith bowed to Boris’s demand that he join the selection panel to interview candidates to be the new commissioner. The choice was between Stephenson and Hugh Orde, the successful and outspoken Ulster police chief. Unlike Stephenson, Orde had served twenty-six years in London and had better skills to cure the Yard’s malaise. Yet surprisingly neither candidate at the selection interview was asked for his plan to restore the Yard’s integrity. Reflecting his ignorance about government machinery, Boris wanted a police chief to reduce murders and violent crime and shun the limelight. As a retail politician, his priority was favourable crime statistics, not the unglamorous resolution of the Yard’s internecine feuds. Stephenson was the ‘safe pair of hands’ and got the job.
Relations with Stephenson started well. Asking sharp questions and writing the officer’s answers into his A4 notebook, Boris urged Stephenson to copy New York’s zero tolerance. ‘Give me 8,000 more policemen on the streets and I can deliver that,’ Stephenson told Boris. ‘There’s no money for that,’ sighed Boris, still unaware of the Yard’s staggering financial profligacy. Instead of ordering a forensic investigation of the Yard itself, he demanded announcements on knife crime. Stephenson introduced Operation Blunt, a new stop-and-search dragnet of mostly black youths to curb gang warfare. Thereafter, every week Stephenson reported his increasingly successful results.
‘Ping-pong,’ exclaimed Boris after they finished a satisfactory briefing. Two tables were cleared and pushed together. At the end of the match, Stephenson acknowledged Boris’s victory. ‘Boris cheated,’ he later told Nick Ferrari, the LBC radio host. ‘He put a line of law books as the net, but they were on his side of the table split, so he had the advantage.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ Stephenson was asked. ‘I’ll challenge him to a swimming competition.’ Boris was heard to decline. ‘I don’t want to be seen in my budgie smugglers,’ replied the seventeen-stone mayor.
Boris hoped he was beginning to solve Livingstone’s legacy at the Yard. Next on his agenda was the city’s transport system, crippled by an appalling deficit.