Wouldn't It Be Nice If All London MPs Would Work Together?

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 106 months ago
Wouldn't It Be Nice If All London MPs Would Work Together?

Photo by William Goodwin from the Londonist Flickr pool

The election results are in, and once again London is off on its own politically. We're much more strongly Labour than the rest of the south, but we're also mixed between Labour and Conservative, unlike the solid Labour blocs in south Wales and former industrial heartlands of the north. So Centre for London is proposing that London MPs forget their party colours and come together to fight as one for London's concerns.

What the think tank suggests is an all party parliamentary group just for London. These are groups at Westminster where MPs and peers from any party can discuss issues that particularly concern them. London tends to care more about housing and inequality and less about immigration, and we have very specific devolution and infrastructure requests/demands (depending on how shouty we want to get).

Ben Rogers, Director of Centre for London, said

"When MPs work together for the good of their city they can achieve great things — Manchester’s politicians have had a coordinated approach to national politics, and the city is reaping the rewards. The capital is bigger, more politically diverse and the challenge of coordinating its larger number of MPs is far greater. But the capital’s MPs must better work together for the good of its people. Creating an all-party group for London is a vital step forward."

We could argue that City Hall and the Mayor is supposed to do that job but we also accept that Manchester is doing much better on devolution than we are (can we have control over our health budget too, please?). Perhaps now Boris Johnson has a place in Cabinet, but no ministerial brief, he can make a start on some of those arguments. However, it would be nice — seeing how we've just re-sent all these people back to Westminster — if they could set partisanship aside and work for the good of all of us.

Last Updated 12 May 2015