The essence of a new strategy is to remove cars from the town centre, inevitably impacting existing and potential economic growth.
We must protect the ‘fabric’ of our City. Whether that’s the Roman or the cobbled streets that help create our community’s spirit.
This is not to mention closing the roads in the city centre, a legacy of trying to enforce pedestrianisation.
A timely report – from Ed Balls, no less – suggests that a lack of graduates is not the reason for our productivity deficit. Rather, our productivity deficit explains the lack of graduate-level jobs.
It represents just a tenth of that price tag of Crossrail, yet will improve the economic prospects of huge swathes of the UK.
Basic services – the NHS, policing, schools, road maintenance, refuse collection, you name it – have gone to rack and ruin. Life expectancy has fallen sharply. We still have, to our shame, by far the worst drug death levels in Europe.
Assembly members, council leaders, and MPs have noted the strength of feeling in their inboxes and on the doorstep. The issue stands out amidst a general climate of apathy.
The next Mayor has to stop running cap-in-hand to Government for transport funding. The only way to escape is to cut costs at Transport for London and find new sources of income.
We also need to be a safer city. It is a scandal that London’s roads are the least safe of any major European city, with Transport for London buses involved in 24,000 collisions each year.
Rename the whole project to reflect its truly unifying nature and let more of Britain, Scotland and Northern England be connected by the “steel threads”.
The Conservative platform must promise the core Conservative voter a return to competent government, and promise the progressive voter, strategic future-looking policy innovation.
In Liverpool or Slough the commissioners are sent in. Why does Khan get a special dispensation for financial bailouts, and to carry on as he pleases?
Commentators focus their attention on the Red or Blue walls, but the Conservatives shouldn’t turn their backs on the green bridge of voters in both camps, especially when we have a strong record on climate and the environment.
Rather than a gimmicky new layer of Government it would have been better to adopt a more localist approach of handing powers to existing local authorities.
As conservatives, we need to be the voice of common sense when it comes to local transport.