Tessa Jowell
Tessa Jowell, the former cabinet minister, has launched her campaign to become Labour’s candidate for London mayor.
The one-time Olympics minister placed housing at the centre of her campaign, promising to build thousands of affordable homes.
She said that on her first day at City Hall she would create a new body, Homes for Londoners, which would be led by a homes commissioner and have a remit to use public subsidies and unused public sector land to build homes.
Ms Jowell pitched herself as the “One London” candidate and said it was vital that her party reached out beyond its core voters to win the race to succeed Boris Johnson next year.
“I’ve heard people say London is a Labour city ,” said Ms Jowell. “Well, London hasn’t voted for a Labour mayor since 2004. There have been four mayoral elections – and Labour has won just one of them.
“We have to look outward to all of London. Ken (Livingstone) won with Tory votes and Boris won with Labour votes – you can’t do it any other way. If we can’t win over Tory voters, we can’t win.”
Speaking at a Brixton community centre, she said: “The Labour Party hasn’t won a major election since 2005 – 10 years ago. Well, I’m tired of losing and if we lose again in 2016 we will help precisely no one.”
She said some 2,000 affordable homes could be built annually for the next 20 years on unused land totalling nine square miles owned by Transport for London alone.
She also said she would use a partnership model similar to that used during the 2012 Olympic Games to deliver the homes quickly.
“One London is a London where everyone shares in our city’s success – young and old; low and middle income as well as the better off; where we are intolerant of poverty, of injustice, of hopelessness,” she said.
“One London, not the two we see so often today – where some of the most severe poverty in the country is on the doorstep of some of the richest places in the world.”
Ms Jowell said London’s homes “crisis” was driven by “wealthy foreign investors treating London property as a place to store money rather than a place to live” as well as a situation where “we’re building more luxury flats than ever but fewer than half the homes we need for Londoners”.
She warned: “We have more billionaires than anywhere yet working in the very same buildings are hundreds of thousands not paid enough to live. That is why we are at risk of being two cities.”
Other Labour hopefuls in the race to become the party’s candidate include Streatham MP Sadiq Khan, Tottenham MP David Lammy, the transport expert Christian Wolmar and Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
