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I must admit that I was delighted with Boris becoming Mayor of London, I think that he will be very good at the job though he may upset the Tory Party from time to time in the process. I thought that his acceptance speech was very good and after a hard fought and at times bitter contest, he was generous and graceful to his opponents.

I have never been a fan of Ken Livingston but Boris was quite right when he pointed out that he had “built” the job of Mayor and at least in his first term, did quite a lot of good things for London, his second term, less so. But I will also give Livingston credit for not deflecting the blame for losing the election and instead fully accepting personal responsibility, he did better as an independent than as part of Labour.

Electoral Patterns

Although not possible with our Parliamentary system, as Local Elections including the Mayor of London are based on fixed 4 year terms, I wonder whether we should also copy our American Cousins and their Presidency by limiting the tenure of jobs like the Mayor of London to a maximum of 2 consecutive terms.

That Ken Livingston created both the job and the profile of the Mayor of London both in this country and abroad is undeniably true. This was wholly down to his own character and from the days of the GLC, a personal passion for a London wide forum for local government. But strangely, the very positive qualities that made this happen, the Ken Livingston personality, were also the means by which his second term fell into cronyisim and allegations of corrupt practices by the people closest to him. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, it might well have been different if he had been “term limited”.

The Separation of Powers

The American Constitution was essentially built around the principle that human beings are fallible by nature and given total power, will inevitably abuse it, consequently there are strict separation of powers between the Presidency, Congress, The Senate and The Supreme Court plus of course, the whole Federal System itself.

The current US Election due in November is an interesting example from a nation where 2 consecutive terms is the limit on the Presidency. Even so, consider this: If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination and then goes on to win the Presidency, the White House would have been occupied by only two families, Bush and Clinton for almost a quarter of a century and this a country with no monarchy and rules to prevent anyone seizing the reins of power for long periods.

Our System

Has been found wanting also. It is one that traditionally rested on a presumption of integrity and service to the nation but whilst we have had our fair share of establishment rogues over the centuries, by and large it has worked. However since 1997 and the election of New Labour, it has been like an invasion by Vandals and Goth s with the wholesale destruction of everything that made it work. This has not been because Blair and his cohorts had any better ideas, more a case of total and egotistical ignorance on their part.

Because a Parliament does not have a fixed term by its very nature, the only thought that occurs to me is that perhaps we should time limit the post of “Party Leader” in any political party to say a maximum 10 years and regardless of whether their party was in power at the time or not, it might encourage them to develop talent in depth and make political parties more dynamic.

The Labour Example

What has become crystal clear following the Labour Party getting the drubbing it deserved last Thursday is that our national politicians are totally out of touch with ordinary people. Gordon Brown saying that he will “listen” would be very funny if it wasn’t so sad because the chap is so clearly disconnected from any reality and has no political “feel” for the electorate anyway. Instead of calling him the “Iron Chancellor” we ought to rename him “Micawber Brown” on the basis that he hopes something will turn up.

Whilst anything can happen in politics and there are 2 years yet to run before Brown will have to call an election and sure as heck, he won’t go early, in political and personal terms, he is a dead man walking. The interesting thing is that quite apart from their convoluted electoral system in the Labour Party, even if it were easy to change their leader, they haven’t got any obvious candidate to replace him anyway, there has been no “career development” of Labour politicians during their time in Office.

All that happened for a decade was a constant battle between the Blair and Brown ‘camps’. When Blair went, all the ‘Blair camp’ departed and what was left was a collection of Brown placemen and women like Balls, Cooper and a generally insipid bunch like Harman, Hoon, Kelly and the arrogance twins, the Millibands.

In reality, regardless of party and any particular “top political job”, present day reality would suggest that 10 years at the top, is probably the maximum duration in most cases before the public want a change. Gordon Brown was given the chance to prove himself as PM by the electorate but flunked it on the failed Autumn Election and he has not recovered from that, nor will he. To the electorate at large, he is ‘stale’, yesterday’s news, been around far too long. Even if the economy improves which I suspect it will during 2009, it won’t save him now, come May 2010, the Labour Party will be decimated at the General Election and Brown’s political career will be over.