Johnson v Johnson for London Mayor 2012

When London Mayor Boris Johnson drew up his plans to paint the streets of London - well, the cycle lanes, at least - a fetching Conservative blue, he was probably anticipating that it would add to the gaiety of the capital as his Tory party swept to power in the General Election.
 
In the event the Tories failed to capture many of the London marginals they had targeted. Indeed, their failure in the capital was one of the key reasons why they fell short of an overall majority in the Commons and had to form a pact with the Liberal Democrats..
 
It says something about the ingrained optimism of Labour party members that they are already looking forward to the next Mayoral election even though it is two years away. The argument goes that Boris will be vulnerable as voters look for a scapegoat for the inevitable cuts in public spending between now and then.
 
The full impact of the cuts and resultant job losses probably won't be felt by next year's electoral test of the coalition - the Scottish and Welsh elections - although the Liberal Democrats could face a backlash for getting into bed with the despised Tories.
 
But by May 2012 the cuts will be biting hard and the Cameron-Clegg coalition will be entering the mid-term, a time when governments are prone to be pitched into unpopularity.

The battle inside the Lib Dems over their choice of candidate for the London mayoralty will be intriguing. Will there be open conflict between pro- and anti-coalition candidates?
 
But the main battleground will be the selection of a Labour party candidate, with former Mayor Ken Livingstone visibly itching to get the chance to take on Boris again. Critics suspect he is motivated by vanity and the desire to play a central role in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games which he helped to secure for London.
 
As I have argued before on The First Post, Livingstone would be a shoo-in if Boris Johnson were unbeatable. But with the predictions of tough times to come, and with the desire of Labour to use a mayoral victory in May 2012 as a springboard for a national revival, a heavyweight Labour candidate is now essential. And because Labour's National Executive Committee has decided there should be a candidate in place before the end of this year, the jostling must begin soon.

The early favourite looks like being former Home Secretary Alan Johnson, a man newly freed of the burden of government and five years younger than Ken Livingstone (who turns 65 next month). Although he shares a surname with Boris, his politics and background could hardly be more different.

A former postman, he is a Londoner born and bred. His father, a painter and decorator, abandoned the family when Alan was eight. When his mother died, his 15-year-old sister so impressed the local authority that she was allowed to look after her brother in a council flat they were allocated in Battersea.

Johnson left school at 15 - Sloane Grammar in Chelsea - without qualifications. He stacked shelves at Tesco before walking out because he was not allowed a lunch break. When he eventually became a postman, he quickly became an active member of the postal workers' union, the UCW. When he was elected general secretary in 1992, he was the youngest man ever to have held the post.

Today it is his media skills and credentials as a "100 per cent" Londoner that make him a strong candidate to take on Boris in 2012. That's if Boris hasn't stepped down to rejoin Parliament in order to make his bid to be the next Tory leader after David Cameron, but that's another story. ·