I've been looking again at Adam Bienkov's scoop of yesterday:
Ken Livingstone will not bring back the Western Extension of the congestion charge if re-elected as Mayor...speaking to The Scoop after a meeting with students in Plumstead, Labour's Mayoral candidate said:
"In an ideal world where money is no object I would reinstate the Western Extension but given it would cost a hundred to a hundred and fifty million to do it I think I'd much rather spend that money on front line policing and keeping the fares down."
Think about those figures. Transport for London estimates that it is losing �55 million in revenue a year as a result of Boris axing the WEZ. So if Ken brought it back at the sort of price he mentions, wouldn't it pay for itself in a mere two or three years and then generate much-needed extra income to help "hold down" fares (to use Ken's own careful words)?
I'm intrigued. Is there more behind this retreat from quite recent pledges to re-instate the WEZ than a re-thinking of budgetary priorities? In his Politics Show interview last month Ken displayed his customary stubbornness when asked if he has changed since his defeat in 2008. Yet at the same time he's clearly been trying to erode those big negatives that cost him.
That stubbornness struck some as arrogance. How interesting, then, that his "Tell Ken" tour of the boroughs invites Londoners to see him as a listener. That "Zone 1 Mayor," tag? The Tell Ken exercise leaves no suburb ungraced. What about the hostile view that Ken loves to tax and over-spend? Well, the new line on the WEZ gently challenges it - not to mention defusing electorally unhelpful antagonism with parts of West London.
True, Ken also told The Scoop that he intends to stick to his �25 super C-charge on "gas-guzzlers," but I suppose he still sees that as a tax only on the rich. And though he still wants to revive some of the transport schemes Boris shelved - the cross-river tram and the DLR extension to Dagenham Dock - he says he doesn't anticipate government funding. His team says this measured approach was also witnessed by voters in Ealing when he told them he wouldn't try to breath fresh life into his old, abandoned West London tram idea.
Well, you'd expect caution at this still-early stage in the 2012 campaign. But as someone who knows Ken of old remarked, "He may be stubborn but he isn't stupid."
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