Naturally, “London’s Quality Paper” highlighted the bits that could be used to vindicate its dismal conduct during the election campaign and ignored any that didn’t. Predictably, the chief offenders seized on the report as an opportunity to attack Ken Livingstone again rather the face the fact that even this profoundly partial “audit” acknowledged that in many respects the LDA has done good work.

Never let reality get in the way of a good persecution, especially when you’ve invested so much of your collapsing credibility in it.

For the record, I’ve long been perfectly persuaded that the relationship between mayoral advisers and the LDA needs to be clarified. Indeed, it was the Standard that persuaded me. I’m also quite satisfied that Lee Jasper displayed poor judgment over some LDA grants and in one case hid from the consequences. He wouldn’t be my choice for equalities adviser either (though even his enemies applaud his work with the police.) But these were never grounds for a hard-right newspaper to smear the individual and an entire Labour administration, which is what the Standard and its political assassins did.

Mayor Johnson’s Tory panel was only ever going to provide an opportunity for it and others to spit on the victim. Moreover, its report has had the unintended consequence of spreading alarm both within City Hall and beyond. Why else did the mayor give it such a carefully-qualified welcome at MQT yesterday? Why else might Tim Parker have sent out that memo the previous day after reading the report himself? Might he be among those disquieted by the Wheatcroft prescription for the future size and scope of GLA activity?

The real problem with the FAP report is not that sets out a Tory vision of how to proceed – that is mayor Johnson’s prerogative – but that it and its apologists have tried to foster the impression that it is politically unbiased or that its Tory-ness is of no consequence.

Yesterday, I posted a comment beneath the Standard’s leader on the report, pointing out that three of the panel’s five members were declared members of the Conservative Party and a fourth chaired a Conservative business organisation. At the time the leader had said that only two of the panel were Tories.

My comment has survived – just as well, because I’d be so fed up if it disappeared – but the leader has been re-written, and now makes no mention at all of the panel’s deep blue political complexion. All journalists have biases, but we should at least try to report the world with 20/20 vision. That’s rather tricky when you’ve only got one eye.

I see the FAP has its own spin doctor now. Some kind of “lefty” apparently. How strange.

About the author
Dave Hill is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He is a novelist, blogger, journalist, married resident of Hackney in east London and father of six children. His novels are about family life. Also at: Comment is free.
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