Preoccupied with his new MP role, the mayor has washed his hands of two important City Hall bodies
Boris Johnson has been accused of ‘clearing his desk a year early’ after he handed over two important roles to civil servants today.
The London Assembly will hold confirmation hearings today for the mayor’s nominees to take over as chair of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) and the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC). Johnson was the chair of both bodies until he resigned shortly before the election.
He has nominated Sir Edward Lister and Neale Coleman as his replacements.
Johnson caused anger among local residents when he resigned from the OPDC just one month after he took up the chair, having attended just one meeting. Local Assembly member Dr Onkar Sahota said he received letters of complaint from residents about the mayor’s blatant lack of interest.
Today Dr Sahota accused Boris Johnson of ‘leaving Londoners increasingly mayorless’ in the wake of his becoming MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip:
“This is just the latest chapter of Boris Johnson’s long goodbye from City Hall. The Mayor seems intent on clearing his desk a year early and focusing his energies elsewhere since his election to Parliament, leaving Londoners increasingly mayorless.
“These two regeneration projects are massively important and make many controversial decisions, handing over the reins to civil servants like this will remove an important layer of democratic accountability.”
The London Legacy Development Corporation was set up to create jobs and opportunities in the community around the Olympic Park, with the aim of transforming a deprived area of the capital. The corporation says it is ‘directly accountable to Londoners through the mayor of London’.
That accountability looks likely to suffer now that Johnson has abandoned the project.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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5 Responses to “Boris Johnson accused of leaving London mayorless”
stevep
Has he ever had any interest in London? It seems to me establishment forces wanted to keep Ken Livingstone out, who has done more for London and Londoners over a 30 year period than Boris ever will. Vast amounts of money were poured into a vile, negative campaign against Ken to ensure the CONservatives had a trophy mayor in the prestigious capital of the UK. I expect Londoners will tell their own stories, but I`ll bet life was better for most them when Ken was leader of the old GLC and then mayor.
Gerschwin
Guess he’s picked this up from Ken Livingstone, shame, nasty habit these London mayors get into but then the trend was set by the first man to take up the post so no one should be too surprise – typical cynical Labour approach to governing but to be expected from men who rub shoulders with vermin like Hugo Chavez, thanks Ken Livingstone for your despicable example.
James Chilton
The snag with doing a job purely for its entertainment value, is that you will probably get tired of it before its ‘responsibilities’ can be laid aside and leave you free to amuse yourself somewhere else.
Dave Stewart
Care to expand on this a bit?
There have been two modern London Mayors, Ken Livingston who continued as mayor until he was voted out and Boris Johnson who is the one who has basically washed his hands of the job. I can’t see how you can lump the two in together and claim it as “typical cynical Labour approach to governing”. Firstly Boris Jonson is clearly not part of the Labour party so how his approach is “typical cynical Labour approach to governing” I cannot understand and Ken didn’t do the what Boris has done.
Gerschwin
Livingstone was never MP and Mayor as well? Amazing. There must be two of them.