We are to have a new Deputy Mayor for Transport in the Greater London Authority (GLA), Heidi Alexander. The Labour MP for Lewisham East since 2010, she’s standing down from this role to take up her new responsibilities, replacing the long-serving Val Shawcross (she served the GLA for 18 years) who is standing down in the summer.
Heidi Alexander, an outspoken anti-Brexit campaigner, was a shadow health secretary until she resigned from the front bench soon after Jeremy Corbyn took over as Labour leader. She wrote in newspapers that she hated being in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, which she described as “entirely dysfunctional” and “inept, unprofessional, shoddy”. Warm words indeed!
To my knowledge Heidi Alexander has no particular interest in transport although she did serve as shadow Minister for London for a while from December 2013 so will be familiar with London’s transport issues.
In recent times she has come under pressure from the far left, pro-Corbyn, campaign group Momentum and it’s hard not to conclude that she has become so disenchanted with Labour under Jeremy Corbyn and the massive internal rivalries between the various far left and centrist factions that she decided to quit parliament.
She had a majority of 21,000 so she certainly can’t be leaving out of fear of losing her seat. She is the fourth Labour MP to resign since January last year, following Jamie Reed, Tristram Hunt and Andy Burnham. Political commentators across Westminster will be watching eagerly for signs of other moderate Labour MPs getting ready to quit as the hard-left continues to take a grip on the party.
The coach and bus industry will doubtless get to meet Heidi Alexander in due course. I’m not sure what her own transport priorities and views are, although since her appointment she has said she wants London’s transport “to be the envy of the world”.
I hope she will make it her number one priority to address London’s chronic traffic congestion. As a London MP she will be familiar with just how bad congestion has become.
There’s no easy solution, unless you are willing to significantly increase the congestion charge and extend its geographical boundaries, but something tells me that particular option won’t be high on her priority list. And I’m going to resist the temptation of commenting on the cycle superhighway and the vast amount of empty road space outside of peak hours that this has created.
The truth of the matter is that there is probably not a great deal she can do to make much of a difference, as she will doubtless find out pretty quickly. There are no magic wands or silver bullets. Still, Heidi Alexander was a highly respected MP and I wish her well in her new role at City Hall.
