Surely the Conservatives have to ‘withdraw the whip’ or whatever the GLA equivalent is and make Coleman sit as an independent and make clear he can’t stand for them next time.

Shouldn’t there be a push to call on them to do that?

So will Boris have the guts to fire Brian Coleman?

Ummm, just how does the Mayor fire an elected politician?

Brian Coleman’s are stupid and asinine – but then again, so is your demand that the Mayor should sack an elected politician. That lies with the electorate, not the Mayor.

@2, he’s chair of Boris’s Fire & Emergency Planning Authority. Hence, Boris could sack him. Asinine indeed.

If there’s anyone posting here with any knowledge of how Tory party internal discipline works, it’d be interesting to hear whether Boris / Dave / anyone else would be able to withdraw the whip.

Tar and feather the tosser.

There’s a slightly wider point here, which is that ‘cronyism’, as in ‘appointing people you know and trust to jobs in your power’ isn’t actually that big a problem – the structure of the GLA and Mayoralty actually means you can’t run it efficiently any other way. What’s the alternative? Open recruitment, as for any other public sector job? The structure is explicitly designed not to replicate the failures of the civil service, and to act essentially as a way for the Mayor to do things – that’s been both the criticism and the strength of an elected Mayor, after all – he has all the power and thus all the responsibilty. There’s no room for a Cabinet, despite the election promise.

Boris’s problems don’t, therefore, come from cronyism, but from him repeatedly appointing people recommended by others and finding that they either don’t listen to him or came with their own agendas. It’s not particularly surprising that he’s reducing back to basically putting his journo mates into jobs. The burnt child fears the fire, or at least fears Francis Maude and Nick Boles and their bright ideas.

What does matter, and where Coleman, Clement etc. fall right into a hole, is that you have to have transparency, particularly in the disbursement of money, making meetings available online, webcasts etc., to try and reduce the temptation to corruption and favouritism. Here Boris is in danger of finding himself in the astonishing position of being outflanked by Labour on one of his core commitments (for instance Navin Shah’s attempts to put the LFEPA’s expenses on a more transparent footing, which incidentally has a strong probability of rendering Coleman’s position untenable, and the rest of the Assembly volunteering to publish itemised expenses before the vote to make it compulsory from 15/7/2009). What with Coleman’s shenanigans, the publishing of all Mayoral advisor expenses is rather lost, despite being, on the face of it, a progressive move.

Who owns the content (data) in an expenses claim? The London Assembly or the Member?