Guy Beres

Boris Johnson, the incoming Mayor of London, has looked to get off to a sensible (and popular!) start by announcing that alcohol consumption will no longer be permitted on public transport in the city. Speaking as someone mostly familiar with the public transport system in New South Wales in Australia, this seems at first glance to be a bit of a policy “no-brainer”. Alcohol consumption is of course already banned on buses and trains in New South Wales and has been for some time. Surely it is just plain common sense that giving people a license to get smashed on public transport is a recipe for commuter discord and unruly behaviour.

Unfortunately for Johnson, it seems he is just about to learn that delivering a policy entails more than simply announcing it. It appears that the new mayor has unveiled his policy with a rush of blood as if he were still a candidate rather than the city’s top elected official, without stopping to actually first talk to the people who he has thrust onto the frontline of crime deterrence:

“Our members are in a situation where it is difficult enough to get help from the British Transport police. They are going to have to face the wrath of people who are probably going to be drunk and angry at being forced off a train or bus and that is not right,” said a spokesman for the Rail and Maritime Transport union.

He added: “Train drivers, platform staff and bus drivers are not police. We were not consulted on this.

“It doesn’t seem to be very well thought out. We all want to improve passenger safety but the best way to do that is to talk to the people who work at the front line about the best way to do it.”

For the unfamiliar, public transport staff in London seem to habitually exclude themselves from security incidents on the vehicles they help support and administer. Partially this is no doubt a result of operational issues and a broader focus on keeping the whole system running efficiently. Is a single bus driver carrying a load of over fifty people really going to be in a position to deal with a situation where a single drunk on board starts annoying passengers? On a metro system where trains run every few minutes during peak hour, is it really going to be viable to hold up trains on the platform while public transport staff (e.g. not even police) attempt to eject people drinking alcohol on them?

It also appears Johnson has not announced the hidden costs associated with actually making this policy a reality. It is obvious to every person who uses public transport in London that the existing staff will be operationally unable to enforce this new policy; certainly not without training, and very likely not without quite a sizable increase in British Transport Police numbers.

While it seems like common sense at first glance, it would appear that this policy has been subjected to negligible consultation and scant consideration as to the operational implications. If this policy is to serve as an example of how Johnson is going to tackle problems facing London today, the entire city is going to get stuck in the mud pretty quickly.

“Red” Ken Livingstone’s reign as Mayor of London has come to an end over the last couple of days, with Tory candidate Boris Johnson easily winning the mayoral poll on May 1. Despite Johnson polling quite strongly in the weeks leading up to the election, I admit to being fairly surprised by the result. I did not really believe that Johnson was a serious candidate. His high profile background as a former satirical game show host and his often edgy forays into “humorous” wordplay have made him a star among the wealthy inner city set, but controversy still lingers. It is indeed odd to think that somebody who once thought nothing of using the term “piccaninny” to refer to African people is now the mayor of one of the most multiracial and cosmopolitan cities of the world. I am not sure if this reflects a magnanimous willingness of Londoners to forgive racism, an increasingly bitter dislike of Ken Livingstone’s more machiavallian tendencies or the modern political world’s obsession with celebrity. Possibly, at least in part, a combination of the three.

Strangely, at least based on what I have seen thus far, much of the media coverage of the London mayoral race and the associated council elections has been presented through the rubrik of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s trials and tribulations. The dismissal of Livingstone and the installment of Johnson in London has taken a back seat to the question of what this means for the leadership of Gordon Brown. To be honest, I am not sure how much can be read into it. It goes without saying that if an election was held tomorrow, it would be a brave Labour supporter indeed who would put money on a victory for Brown. On the other hand, there is still something a shadow of an expectation out there that sooner or later, the Prime Minister is going to shake off the cobwebs and punch through the current malaise besetting the Labour Party. Whether this latest setback proves to be the straw that breaks the back of this malaise remains to be seen.

In any case, London now has a new mayor, and it is a man who several conservative commentators have described as someone unfit for the job, and the infamous British National Party’s second choice in the mayoral race. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has a lot to prove. London will need to have the new, uncontroversial, spin doctored Boris of the mayoral election campaign holding the reins, rather than the toff-oriented comic wit of years past. If that old, more popular (among some) Boris returns, things could get a bit ugly.

ELSEWHERE: Charlie Brooker provided a comical summary for The Guardian as to why Johnson is a dubious choice.