Parliament Square is Cleared.

Boris Johnson finally got his way, clearing the Democracy Village which sprung up outside the UK parliament on the grounds that it was "an eyesore".

They battled hard in the courts, but in the end the inhabitants of the Democracy Village put up little resistance when the bailiffs finally moved in.

Shortly after 1am yesterday, a squad of approximately 60 people, dressed in high-visibility jackets and helmets, moved on to Parliament Square to evict the motley coalition of anti-war protesters and rough sleepers who had taken over the patch of grass outside the Palace of Westminster since 1 May.

I can't think of a better place for people to protest than directly outside the Palace of Westminster, where our elected officials debate and decide policy, but Blair ruled that this was not to be allowed and Boris Johnson had gone to court to ensure that the area was cleared.

Johann Hari describes what he saw when he visited the site:

When I first saw them they were a mixture of students and activists and professors, voicing the conviction of 70 per cent of British people that the war is unwinnable and should end. One of them, Maria Gallasetgui, said: "We have a responsibility to stand up to what they're doing. It's immoral." She added: "We support the troops, that's why we want to bring them home. They" – she pointed to Parliament – "are the ones sending them to die."

They held up signs with pictures of maimed Afghan children, and waved them at the MPs as they walked to work. The MPs invariably looked down and away and they hurried through Parliament's iron gates.

[...]

So just a few metres from where the Prime Minister lives, people sat on an open green barbecuing food and sharing drinks and calling for that Prime Minister to be indicted for war crimes. They had daily meetings where they shared out the responsibilities, while every 15 minutes, Big Ben bonged.

In that first month, I saw a group of Chinese tourists staring at the camp in disbelief.

"This would never be allowed in China," one of them said to me. "Not anywhere. Never mind at the centre of power. This is what democracy really means."

I remember protesting in Parliament Square as MP's voted on whether or not to allow the Iraq war. It seemed the perfect, indeed, the only place to be.

Well, now the space is empty again, save for Brian Haw - who was protesting there before Blair outlawed the practice and is, therefore, exempt from that law - and I can't help but feel sad about that.

They should see it every day – the faces of the Afghan children we have caused the deaths of, and the faces of the mentally ill people we have left to rot on the streets. I can't think of a healthier sign in a democracy – that we don't allow our problems to be cleansed, China-style, from the sight of the powerful, but leave them there, in full view, demanding to be dealt with.

Yes, a few parts of it smelled. But waging war in Afghanistan, against the will of the people there and the people here, smells a lot worse. Yes, there were a few crazy people in the tents. But none was as crazy as the belief that we can win a land war in Afghanistan now, after nine years, with the population rapidly turning against us and pleading for a peace and reconciliation process. Freedom is not an "eyesore", as the London Mayor Boris Johnson claimed: citizens pressuring their government for justice are the most luscious sight in the world.

So now the people in Westminster can continue their work, free from the sight of those of us who, from time to time, disagree with what they are doing.

That's a victory for the government, but it's not a victory for democracy.

Colin Barrow, leader of Westminster city council, said he was "relieved this dreadful blight of Parliament Square has finally come to an end". He looked forward "to it being restored to its previous condition, so all Londoners can visit and enjoy it".

Yes, let's pretend that this is just like any other tourist area in London. Let's ignore the fact that decisions made in this place can result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people in other areas of the world.

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Tags: Parliament Square, protest, UK politics

Boris bumbles on....

He's such a buffoon that this is actually very, very funny.

He's already in trouble for saying the Tories should have a referendum even if the Lisbon treaty has been ratified. And now he tries to avoid falling into the same hole again.

I still shudder at the fact that this man is our Mayor. Boris simply comes across as an upper class twat. Which is no surprise as that is what he is.

Tags: Boris Johnson, Lisbon treaty, Paxman, Newsnight, Tory Conference

"Compassionate" Conservatism.

Here is the new face of the "compassionate" Conservative Party:

Cameron:

Within three years of being elected, the Tories want all 2.6 million people on incapacity benefit to be assessed to see what work they could do and offered training or other help in getting work.

They expect about 500,000 claimants to be found jobs or transferred to jobseeker's allowance, which pays £25 a week less.

Of course, Cameron is only able to get away with this crap because Brown - in a pointless attempt to win back the long gone Daily Mail reader - is also talking about targeting incapacity benefit. But Brown should know that when it comes to depriving the poor, the Tories leave Labour in the shade as the amateurs that they are. The Tories actually enjoy this work much more than Labour ever could. They see themselves as walking in Thatcher's shadow at moment's like this.

But what do the Tories still defend whilst they attack people on incapacity benefit? Well, let's leave that to Boris... They still want to defend the bankers and deregulation:

"I know how unpopular these bankers are," he said. "I know how far out I am on this limb in sticking up for these pariahs.

"But never forget, all you would-be banker bashers that the leper colony in the City of London produces 9% of UK GDP, 13% of value added and taxes that pay for roads and schools and hospitals across this country.

"And that is why I am willing to take the fight to our friends and partners in Brussels against ill thought-out regulation."

Ah, so regulation is the enemy, because a lack of regulation hasn't caused us any harm so far has it? But those bloody scroungers on incapacity benefit? Scum of the Earth.

This is the new, "compassionate" Conservative party showing it's face.

They attack some of the poorest members of society - because some of them are on the fiddle - whilst defending the richest members of society and their methods, despite the fact that the rich bankers have cost this country billions more over the past few months than the combined number of people currently receiving incapacity benefit could ever dream of taking from the tax payer.

Those are their priorities.

Compassionate conservatism? My arse. It sounds exactly the same as any conservative team ever before assembled. Apologise and defend the privileged always, whilst attacking and depriving the poor whenever possible.

And, whilst attacking the poor, take care to remind everyone just how hard done by you are.

Conservative MP Alan Duncan on how hard it is to survive on an MP's wages in today's Commons:

"No one who has done anything in the outside world, or is capable of doing such a thing, will ever come into this place ever again, the way we are going," he said.

"Basically, it's being nationalised, you have to live on rations and are treated like s**t," he added.

"Those bastards on incapacity benefit are the ones taking all the dough. It's the poor city bankers and MP's wot are getting screwed!"

Tags: Tory Conference, Cameron, Boris Johnson, Alan Duncan, incapacity benefit, bankers, credit crunch

De Menezes family wants commanding officer sacked.

The fact that the family of Jean Charles de Menezes want someone fired over the death of their son is perfectly understandable and doesn't necessarily mean that they are right.

They seek some kind of closure over what they, rightly, view as a catastrophic waste of an innocent life.

And one can have sympathy for the officers who, acting on flawed information, wrongly gunned down an innocent man shortly after four terrorists attempted to blow themselves up on London's underground shortly after 7-7.

However, the police reaction - both to the threat posed by de Menezes and the subsequent cover up in which the police dissembled to an inquiry into the incident - left an awful lot to be desired.

However, the thing that has shocked me more than anything else about the police entering a tube train and, without warning, shooting seven bullets into the head and shoulders of an innocent man has been the utter lack of remorse and the insistence that, sorry as they are about this, it might very well happen again.

Cressida Dick, the woman who was in charge of the botched de Menezes operation, has said as much in public:

Facing cross-examination about the shooting for the first time, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick admitted: "I am afraid that I do believe that this or something like this could happen again".

It's hard to take the police apology seriously when there is this cavalier attitude to the fact that another member of the public might be similarly gunned down and the inference remains that we all better get used to it.

Had the police operation been properly handled, as yesterday's inquiry clearly stated, then there is no way Jean Charles de Menezes would ever have been shot. Rather he would have been stopped outside his apartment building and searched long before he ever entered a tube station, when his death became inevitable.

The family of de Menezes are now calling for Cressida Dick to be fired and are putting pressure on Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, to replace Dick.

Pressure mounted on Ms Dick when former Metropolitan police commander Brian Paddick revealed that the controversial police rules to deal with a suspected suicide bomber, known as Operation Kratos, were breached on the day of the shooting. His comments came after a jury returned an open verdict into the shooting and cast doubt on the police version of events and the Met's competency on the day.

"The policy says that if the firearms officers have any doubt that the suspect is a suicide bomber, they should shout a warning and react to how the suspect responds," he said. "But if there is no doubt, then you can fire a critical shot without warning. The evidence is that they didn't shout a warning. Yet we have a surveillance officer saying he didn't get a proper look at Jean Charles when he left the flat and surveillance officers with varying degrees of certainty as to whether it was [terror suspect] Hussain Osman or not. There was ambiguity and no code word."

In other words, there was so much confusion that the officers should not have been sure. So they should have shouted a warning. The case for unlawful killing would have been greatly strengthened by their failure to do so. The two officers who fired the fatal shots told the inquest that they did shout a warning, although none of the 17 civilian witnesses on the train heard them do so. On Friday, the De Menezes inquest said that it did not believe police had given Mr De Menezes the warning that would have saved his life. With doubt surrounding the identification of the suspect, the police would have been in breach of their own policy if no warning had been given, which the jury believes to be the case.

I fully accept that the atmosphere in London after the second failed attempt to kill Londoners on the tube was extremely tense, however one cannot admit that a dreadful mistake was made and then blithely say that such an incident may very well happen again and that we all better get used to it. It is impossible to hold such an attitude and to claim that lessons have been learned.

Miss Dick was in charge of a hideously botched operation in which an innocent man died. It is perfectly understandable that the family have identified her as the person who has to go. There has been much talk about charging the officers who fired the fatal shots but I would regard that as grossly unfair. By the time they entered the tube station they believed, because of failures made long before de Menezes ever arrived at that location, that a suicide bomber was about to detonate himself on the underground. Their options were extremely limited.

However, the catastrophic decisions made before the police arrived at that point were made under the command of Cressida Dick.

The family's lawyer, Gareth Peirce, said that the family had identified 25 "serious and catastrophic" errors committed by Ms Dick. Further doubt was cast on her role by senior Met sources. One said: "She is not commissioner material at all. Those who know her well describe her as indecisive."

The jury was specifically asked: "[Did] a failure to conclude, at the time, that surveillance officers should still be used to carry out the stop of Mr De Menezes at Stockwell station even after it was reported that specialist firearms officers could perform the stop [contribute to the death of Mr De Menezes]. They answered, "Yes."

From the minute de Menezes was shot the police have closed ranks and done everything in their power to deflect the blame away from themselves and towards others.

The way that one makes amends is by admitting error and doing all in one's power to make sure such an incident is never repeated. Cressida Dick not only made "catastrophic errors" but she is blithely stating that they might very well be repeated.

That hardly inspires public confidence in her, and the de Menezes family will have much support as they seek to make her pay, not simply for horrific set of circumstances which led to the death of Jean Charles, but for the attitude she has displayed since, which sounds about as far away from regret as one could imagine.

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Tags: Jean Charles de Menezes, Cressida Dick, Stockwell shooting

Boris at risk of investigation over Green raid.

Boris Johnson faces possible suspension or removal from the office of Mayor of London after he clumsily inserted himself into the recent controversial police raid on the Commons offices of Damien Green.

As chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority Johnson is supposed to keep himself above the fray of any police investigation but complaints about Johnson's behaviour allege that he is guilty of four 'clear and serious' code of conduct breaches by speaking to Green and by publicly prejudging the outcome of a police inquiry.

Len Duvall, leader of the Labour group on the London Assembly, says in a letter to the MPA's chief executive, Catherine Crawford, that Johnson had brought the mayor's office into 'disrepute'. The letter is understood to have been acknowledged by the MPA and the assembly's monitoring officer, who investigates allegations of misconduct in public office. An assembly source said: 'In effect, an investigation is already under way.'

Investigators will now have 10 days to decide whether the mayor should face a formal inquiry by the local government watchdog, the Standards Board for England, which could see Johnson banned from public office for up to five years if found guilty of misconduct.

In his letter, Duvall says Johnson should never have contacted his 'friend and ex-colleague' Green, adding: 'Mr Johnson has committed a serious breach of the codes of conduct and undermined the relationship between the chair of the MPA and the Metropolitan Police Service.'

Johnson also said that the Whitehall leak inquiry was unlikely to 'yield either a charge or a successful prosecution'. Duvall believes the mayor's prejudgment 'potentially corrupted' the high-profile inquiry.

It is not for the Mayor of London to phone people being investigated by the police and it is certainly not for him to come out publicly claiming the investigation will come to naught, especially when the person being investigated is a friend of his.

But this kind of buffoonery is the very thing which most of us feared would happen when London elected this man to be our Mayor. He is literally a walking gaffe machine and the only surprise is that it has taken him so long to actually cross the line.

When he was an MP making disgraceful racist comments people forgave him saying, "That's just Boris!", but the role of Mayor of London carries far more responsibility than the role Boris undertook looking after the denizens of Henley.

He now represents one of the world's major cities and heads that city's Police Authority. And it was as head of that Police Authority that he has publicly spoken out against one of his own police force's investigations.

Were this anyone else, one could expect action to be taken against them immediately. But, as happens so often, I wouldn't be surprised if people say, "Oh, that's just Boris!"

The fact that he is an utter buffoon is actually the greatest defence anyone in Boris's position has ever enjoyed.

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Tags: Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Damien Green, police investigation, inquiry

London mayor: Johnson forced to remove his deputy mayor after magistrate claim proves false

I said at the time of Boris Johnson's election as Mayor of London that I thought it might be something which David Cameron would come to regret. After all, Boris's team were now the only example of a Tory administration in power and a foretaste of what Cameron's new conservatism might look like.

I avoided commenting 12 days ago when James McGrath was forced to resign over some crass comments concerning African-Caribbean migrants and whether or not they should "go back to the Caribbean".

However, we have now had a second resignation in under a fortnight, and this time it's the deputy Mayor himself who is walking the plank.

This is beginning to look like Cameron's worst nightmare, especially when one considers that this Tory administration is merely two months old.

Last night Ken Livingstone was unforgiving about Johnson's difficulties. "In my entire eight years in office I suffered only one enforced resignation of any of my most senior officials, Lee Jasper - and that only after seven years - and this extreme contrast shows vividly the incompetence of Boris Johnson and his administration," he said.

"It is an equal crisis for David Cameron who, it should be remembered, chose to make his first photo opportunity as Tory leader with Ray Lewis."

The allegations against Lewis were originally of a financial nature, with claims that he borrowed money from his parishioners when he was a Church of England priest in the mid 90's, totalling around £45,000. However, the money is said to have been borrowed from, amongst others, an elderly woman and a man with learning difficulties.

However, the thing that appears to have brought him down is the fact that he is not actually a magistrate, despite his claim - backed by Johnson - that he was.

Johnson is now claiming that he was misled.

But Mr Johnson said his "confidence was shaken" when he was wrongly led to believe that Mr Lewis was a magistrate.

Nor is Lewis showing any regret over this mistake:

In a press conference at City Hall to announce his resignation, Mr Lewis said: "There was some talk in the press of me being or not being a magistrate.

"If you are fully paid-up members of the 'hair splitters' convention it will have made a difference to you whether or not I was appointed or recommended for appointment.

"I've passed all the interviews for it. I've had a letter confirming that I have been recommended for appointment to the board."

As Johnson has stated that his loss of confidence in Lewis was brought about purely on the grounds that Lewis is not actually a magistrate as he claimed, then one can only presume that the Deputy Mayor has just called the Mayor of London a "fully paid-up member of the 'hair splitters' convention".

For Cameron - and for Johnson - this couldn't look any worse than it presently does. At a time when the Tories are supposed to be relishing in the unpopularity of Gordon Brown, we have newspapers filled with story after story about Johnson's collapsing Tory administration.

The Mayor of London's office comes under incredible press scrutiny. Ken Livingstone was continually placed under the spotlight and made it look easy to swat away press accusations. Boris is showing that Ken's skill is not one that he possesses.

Two resignations in the first two months.

As I said at the time, I think David Cameron is one day going to regard Boris' victory as a Pyrrhic one. And nothing that has unfolded so far has made me feel likely to change my mind.

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Tags: Boris Johnson, London Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Ray Lewis

London Mayor bans alcohol on Tube

Boris has taken his first decisive action as London's Mayor: He has banned alcohol on the tube.

The first posters warning travellers not to crack open a beer – or anything stronger – on London public transport network have already been put up.

Tickets will be rewritten from 1 June to bar passengers from carrying open bottles or cans of alcohol on buses, the Tube, the DLR or trams as part of the new Mayor Boris Johnson's drive to crack down on petty crime. Anyone caught drinking alcohol can be asked to stop or even thrown off if they refuse.

Only someone who never uses the tube could see this as a bloody priority. I regularly use the tube and honestly couldn't state that the use of alcohol amongst passengers is something which I have even noticed.

There is the odd drunk on the underground, just as there is the odd drunk anywhere, but the fact that he has chosen this as his first priority says a lot about how he is going to operate from a middle class perception of how things are rather than from any actual understanding of London.

Ken gave free bus and underground travel to all children and OAP's and opened all of London's museum's free of charge to the public. Boris has started by challenging a non-existent problem.

I suppose his next ban will be on gambling on the underground or nudity on London's buses.

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Tags: Boris Johnson, London Mayor, alcohol ban, London underground

Cameron fears 'loose cannon' Johnson will hit his hopes of winning the next election

I said yesterday that it had occurred to me that the election of Boris Johnson might come to be something which David Cameron regrets and, already, stories are appearing the broadsheets saying that Cameron has realised the danger which Boris represents to him and to the newly re-branded Conservative party.

The last thing which Cameron needs is for the Tories to be seen as bumbling, incoherent and class driven; all of the qualities which define Boris. But, it now appears that Cameron is only just coming to terms with the differences between what Boris promised in order to win the election, and what Cameron is promising if the public elect a new Tory government.

Mr Johnson's performance as the most powerful elected Conservative in Britain since John Major's 1992 victory could decide the outcome of the next election and shape the course of politics for the coming decade.

And his pledge to water down the capital's congestion charge scheme and protect drivers of high-polluting cars threatens to clash with the central theme of Mr Cameron's blueprint for power: the environment. Other areas of contention include immigration.

David Cameron is running for office on a pledge to make the environment central to his campaign in order to prove that this really is a different kind of Conservative party. Much has been made of the fact that Cameron himself lives in a "green" house and cycles to work every day.

It is hard to reconcile that with Boris' pledge to reduce the congestion charge and protect drivers of high-polluting cars. Indeed, as I quoted recently, Boris has been known to say:

"Tee hee, I said to myself ... out of my way, small car driven by ordinary person on modest income. Make way for the Nissan Murano."

Boris has almost made an issue out of his lack of political correctness and is, in many ways, the antithesis to Cameron's carefully constructed caring Conservative. It is typical of Boris, for example, that on election day his supporters had been drinking champagne and eating oysters on the top floor of Millbank, above Tory party headquarters, since 5pm – more than six hours before the result was announced. That is not the kind of behaviour one expects from people soon to be charged with running a city of 7.5 million people.

And yet, until the next election, Boris will be as much the face of Cameron's Conservative party as Cameron himself. That must be a daunting prospect for Cameron as the gaffe prone new Mayor will have every opportunity to seriously undermine him.

It is even being said in today's papers that Cameron never actually expected Boris to win.

But there is distinct unease at what lies in store from the Johnson mayoralty. Friends say Mr Cameron regards his fellow Old Etonian as an "amusing liability" and a few months ago never believed he would win the race.

A liability he certainly is, although I think he was only considered an "amusing liability" as long as he held no actual power. Yesterday, all of that changed.

He is now charged with running one of the most important cities in the world and, whilst he will undoubtedly enjoy a honeymoon period, there will come a day when Londoners seriously ask him to discharge his civic duty. If he fails to come up to the task it will be remembered that it was Cameron who proposed him for the job and that it was Cameron who talked him into running.

One friend said the lack of other contenders for the Tory ticket last year had contributed to Mr Johnson becoming the "accidental Mayor". Another said last night: "No one really believed this would happen. He [Cameron] didn't exactly have an embarras de candidats last year."

One of those present when the candidates were told the result, just before it was announced publicly, said of Mr Johnson: "I have never seen anyone look so shell-shocked. He looked awful, a real 'Oh my God' look. He looked as if he'd really lost it. He really never expected to win."

Even Boris didn't think Londoners would be stupid enough to elect him. But now they have. And both they - and David Cameron's Tory party - will have to live with the consequences of that.

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Tags: Boris Johnson, David Cameron, London Mayor, Conservative party, Tories

Boris becomes the face of Cameron's "new" Conservative Party. Oops!

I'm left wondering if David Cameron might not come to regret the victory of Boris over Ken Livingstone as, for the next few months, Boris Johnson is going to be the public face of what Britain might expect from a new Tory government.

His ability to commit staggering gaffes has obviously not been lost on Cameron who has taken action almost immediately.

Now the Tory high command will be keen to ensure Mr Johnson does not make embarrassing mistakes as Mayor, which could put a cloud over Mr Cameron's attempts to portray the Tories as a government-in-waiting. A strong team of experienced advisers is expected to be appointed by the incoming Mayor.

The problem isn't whether or not Boris is being properly advised, the problem is that Boris is an old Etonian toff who has views which quite frankly belong in another century.

Cameron has done a very good job of reinventing "the nasty party" into something which, for the first time in a decade, is beginning to look electable. The problem with having Boris as London's Mayor is that the gaffe prone racist homophobic is going to give the press an open season to mock him and this supposedly reborn Tory party.

Imagine these words being issued by the Mayor of London:

His line on Africa he gave out in 2002, when Blair visited Congo: "No doubt," he said, "the AK47s will fall silent and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."

This was offensive enough when he was simply a laughing stock Tory MP, but he is now London's official representative. He is our face to the world. And, more worryingly for Cameron, he is now very much part of the face of his new Conservative party.

As Zoe Williams argued in a brilliant article in the Guardian the other day, part of the myth surrounding Boris is that he is nice if a bit dim. However, the truth is that Boris is not very nice at all.

Two mistakes we make about Boris: the first is that, because he says "unacceptable" things, then he must be honest; he must be outside the airless bubble of PC. This is bilge. He is no more honest than any other philanderer before him. He has lied flagrantly, flamboyantly, to save his marriage, and given how little else he's prepared to do for it, one must conclude that he doesn't put a very great premium on telling the truth. So if he gives out these apparently harsh truths about gay people or Liverpudlians or the people of Congo, it is not because the fire of truth burns so brightly within him that he can't snuff it out. It is because he genuinely despises these people. He despises gays and he despises provincials (you are all right with Boris if you come from Liverpool but don't sound like a Liverpudlian. Once you've been to public school, then you are from postcode POSH), and he despises Africans. He despises them, and he despises those of us who would hold such judgments to be bigoted and inhuman. [...]

The second mistake, by the way, is to think he singles out any one group for his casual bile. It's not just gay people or Muslims or Africans, it's not just people from Portsmouth or indeed anywhere else on the south coast. He despises people who are not of his class because he is a snob. That, pretty much, means all of us. A snob's London is a Monday-to-Thursday kind of affair, behind fusty doors, in clubs that only just let women in, let alone plebs, in restaurants that don't have prices on the menus, in the Regency offices of magazines whose only distinction is that all the staff are shagging each other. They disappear to the country at weekends, then come back muttering on Monday about how the poor generate litter.

Ever since he became Tory leader David Cameron has been doing his best to make us believe that his party has changed and that it is no longer simply the party of the privileged. Perhaps he has been fooled by Boris' appearances on programmes like Have I Got News For You into thinking that Boris is popular. He's not. His appearances on such programmes were such a joy because Boris was allowed to play the role of class clown, the class in this case being upper class values and the notion that people who think the way Boris does still exist.

It is quite a different thing for such a person to be put into the role of representing a city of such historical and economic importance as London.

So the class clown has been made Mayor. Cameron may well come to rue that day.

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Tags: Boris Johnson, London mayor, Conservative party, David Cameron