City Hall spy: Mayor prepares for battle in great in-or-out debate

 
17 June 2013

IS Boris Johnson attempting to steal a march on David Cameron?

  • Just days after the Prime Minister gave a speech declaring that EU membership is “not some national vanity; it is in our national interest” the Mayor has despatched his chief economic advisor Gerard Lyons to sound out senior City figures on how they really feel about Brussels. In a letter to the top team at City Hall, Lyons reveals he has been tasked with drawing up a financial report into the pros and cons of EU membership by the end of the year. Crucially, he will produce “an assessment based on possible future scenarios regarding UK membership”. Boris is clearly preparing for battle in an in/out debate. The question is, which side will the up-until-now robustly eurosceptic Mayor be on?

  • Stephen Greenhalgh was a little taken aback to be informed by journalists that hundreds of officers in riot gear were raiding a Soho squat by anti-G8 protestors. The blushing Deputy Mayor for Policing - at a City Hall event on Tuesday morning - mumbled something about having to check his overnight emails and shuffled off. Surely Scotland Yard is keeping him in the loop?

  • Transport for London’s annual report is imminent - and with it the big salaries of its top executives, including the eye-watering sums paid to those at Crossrail. It is also likely to reveal whether Sir Peter Hendy and his top team have decided to take bonuses after being roundly praised for the way London’s transport system coped during the Olympics. An added treat is the declaration of all posts where the employee earns £50,000 or more. Sadly, a paltry three per cent of this top tranche of TfL employees said they were happy for their names to be disclosed. A blow to transparency.

  • Spy has learned that the Mayor’s mysterious 24-hour tax-payer funded visit to San Francisco, revealed last week, was linked to finding a high profile sponsor for the Thomas Heatherwick designed garden bridge across the Thames. Perhaps the sponsor should write one condition into the contract: that the bridge doesn’t wobble.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in