George Osborne loves mayors and says we had better learn to love them, too, especially those who want to be part of his northern powerhouse.
One interesting thing about mayors is that they are pretty much obliged to have to care about diversity. In London, the Greater London Authority Act puts specific responsibility on the mayor to ensure community cohesion. There were questions about the extent to which the first London elected mayor, Ken Livingstone, fulfilled this role after his awful skirmish with a Jewish reporter – with those incoherent references to concentration camp guards. But there was no doubt after 7/7 that he took that part of his remit seriously.
Last week, on the anniversary, I re-read part of the speech he gave, still ashen-faced, the day after the atrocity. I had forgotten how good it was. It was an attack, he said, “aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners – black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old ... They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other.”
Referring to the attackers directly, he added: “Look at our airports, our seaports and our railway stations, and even after your cowardly attack you will see that people come from the rest of Britain and from around the world to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams ... They come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves.
“Nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another.”
Last week, asked about the police failure to arrest a man seen bearing the Isis flag near parliament, the current mayor, Boris Johnson, told LBC’s Nick Ferrari: “I think a balance has got to be struck. We live in a free country and I think you’d have to have primary legislation to designate certain bits of iconography as being illegal. It would be quite difficult.” Risible.
Mayors are OK. But it does depend on the mayor.
