With a poorly kid off school I couldn't attend Boris's City Hall launch of his equalities policy this morning. Pity, that: you can bellow at the webcast all you like and he still can't hear you, you know. Still, despite an apparent paucity of questions on the morning's central issue - Mayorwatch Martin and the Beeb's Tim Donovan were among the few who contributed - a clear enough picture emerged of The Blond's wheeze for reconciling his liberal economic instincts with his liberal social ones.
His stout defence of that inquiry he wants done into earned amnesties for illegal immigrants - see my report - was an example of that and of the role of pragmatism in resolving any tensions: we'll never deport them all so we might as well make them legit and paying tax; if they're legit they're less likely to get caught up in crime. Further evidence of his faith in the moral virtue of market forces surfaced again in his remarks about immigrant numbers. Doubting predictions that the capital's population will "increase vertiginously" in coming years he said:
"If you look at the figures at the moment...the population of London is actually beginning to plateau and that's very largely because immigrants are going home."
Such are the natural self-corrections of the market, he seemed to say. He's just the same about the recession. No wonder, unlike his party leader, he sees no need for immigration caps. He did, though, open up by insisting that in order to ensure Equal Life Chances For All (pdf) you have to be "pro-active" because disadvantage doesn't go away all on its own.
Of course, his definitions and emphases are different from those of Ken Livingstone, whose achievements he said he wanted to build on. He conceded the existence of "prejudice" without getting specific and talked a lot about the the disabled. The underlying point seemed to be that you broaden opportunity in ways consistent with good governance and financial management and, of course, an "accessible" Olympic Games. Hence Richard Barnes's words at the end about procurement practices helping "to bring into line economic and social policy so that they reinforce each other". Which is, just about, where we came in.
