Boris Johnson, the eccentric Conservative incumbent Mayor of London, was sworn in for a second four-year term Saturday following his narrow victory in the 2012 London Mayoral Election beating his main rival, Labour's Ken Livingstone in a closely-fought contest. The defeat left a demoralized Ken Livingstone, who served as the City's inaugural Mayor when he won the first such election in 2004, declaring that he was retiring from frontline politics. Many Labor supporters indeed abandoned the party in this particular poll because they disagreed with the choice of Livingstone as the party's official candidate. While Johnson exudes the character of a lovable buffoon sometimes, albeit disguising the fact that he like Prime Minister David Canmeron is Old Etonians and he is a brilliant classicist, Livingstone has come across as a Champagne Socialist and as ‘Yesterday's Man', and has been mired in allegations of tax irregularities. Mayor Johnson's triumph, however, is in stark contrast to the fortunes of the Conservative Party and its coalition government partner, the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems), who both suffered heavy losses in local elections in various parts of the United Kingdom and in mayoral elections in Liverpool and Salford, near Manchester. While Mayor Johnson carried the day with 51.5 percent of the vote compared to Ken Livingstone's 48.5 percent with a 65,000 majority in the London mayoral election, the Conservative Party and the Lib Dems in the local elections nationally lost 405 and 336 Council seats respectively. The Opposition Labor Party gained 823 Council seats and control of 32 Councils while the Conservative Tories lost control of 12 Councils and the Liberal Democrats of one Council. Labor now control 75 Councils nationally, compared with 42 by the Tories and six by the Liberal Democrats. Labor got 38 percent of the vote followed by the Conservatives with 31 percent and the Lib Dems with 16 percent. In the London Assembly election, the voting pattern was repeated with Labor gaining four seats and the Tories losing two. Labor now have 12 seats in the Assembly just a single seat from an overall majority. However, with the support of the Greens, Labor is bound to give Mayor Johnson a rougher ride this time round especially in approving his budget against a background of an economy that in April officially went into a double-dip recession and which is beset by a range of cuts, rising unemployment, high inflation of about 5 percent and a flatline economic growth that is struggling even to reach 0.5 percent. “I think the mayoral election is genuinely an election between two candidates who are, as you can see, for one reason or another, thought to be distinct from their parties in some senses – you saw that with both Livingstone and to an extent me. But my program is absolutely, avowedly conservative with a big C or a small c,” he said after been sworn in at City Hall. His immediate priorities are to use the 83 days to the official launch of the London Olympics to prepare the “greatest city in the world to stage the greatest ever Olympics”, to cut unnecessary expenditure and to create apprenticeships and jobs especially for the young. Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron, who is also the leader of the Tories, could not resist taking the short ride to City Hall by the River Thames to personally congratulate the Mayor, who salvaged some Tory pride after their miserable performance in the local elections. “I am delighted with the result,” emphasized Cameron. “I think it was a very strong campaign. It was based on his record, on the excellent things he has done as Mayor. It was a campaign the whole Conservative Party got behind. I enjoyed campaigning with Boris. But now what matters is working together for the good of London as Prime Minister, as Mayor, and that's exactly what we're going to do.” Speaking alongside Cameron at City Hall, Mayor Johnson stressed that “people were listening to what we had to say about cutting taxes, getting rid of all sorts of unnecessary expenditure, putting it where people want to see it. It was a very hard-fought, long campaign. I am grateful to the Conservative Party. They did turn out in large numbers to help me, but I think we were able to reach people across the city with a message that resonated with them in tough times.” The Mayor pledged to get the city through tough times, which is about creating jobs and going for economic growth. “I hope very much to continue working with the government to get the funding, get the investment that London needs,” he declared. Labor leader Ed Milliband, whose own leadership was coming under criticism only a few weeks ago, claimed that Labor was back after its humiliating defeat at the general election two years ago and that the party was beginning to win back the trust of the British electorate although there was still much work to be done in this respect. For Milliband thos could be turning point in his leadership. However, with the unpopularity of the coalition government so high, Labor should have widen the gap of voting share beyond the 38 percent to the early or mid 40 percent. This suggests that both Labor and Milliband still have much work to do before the next general election in 2015 and that there is no room for complacency or inertia. For the Tory/Lib Dem coalition, it would be foolhardy to dismiss this woeful performance as purely mid-term blues when ruling governments usually suffer at the hands of the electorate as a protest vote, only going on to win the next general election. However, the lesson of history is that in the past there have been governments who lost in mid-term local elections and who went on to lose the general election. The coalition is sticking to its mantra of austerity, budget cuts, benefits cuts and balancing the national books. In its near obsession to get the deficit down almost at all any cost, it has miscalculated badly hoping that it would be the private sector (including the very bankers that precipitate the global financial crisis with their greed and hubris) that would step in and create the jobs and precipitate growth. The one thing about the private sector that market politicians in democracies have to learn is that the private sector almost always is fair weather friends, often hiding behind self-interested concepts such as shareholder value and profit maximization and the bonus culture. As the current banking crisis and bailouts have shown, many of them still refuse to acknowledge any blame for the crisis; the credit crunch remains and the bonus culture is alive and kicking. The challenge for the coalition is to come up with a realistic growth strategy for the economy which includes generating employment and controlling inflation, but at the same having a measured approach to deficit reduction. The irony of democratic politics in Europe is center-left and center-right parties tainted by the crisis and forced austerity imposed by the Eurozone hierarchy in Brussels are both being punished by their respective electorate. In the UK, the Tories were given a bloodied nose in Thursday's local elections. In France the socialist candidate Francois Hollande is ahead in the polls against right wing incumbent President Nikolas Sarkozy. In Greece both the leftist PASOK and the right wing New Democracy have been discredited which may pave the way for parties on the extremes and to a coalition against austerity. Democracies have never had it so bad. __
