By Shola Adenekan
Friday, September 05, 2014.
David Lammy, who represents London’s Tottenham in the
House of Parliament, has announced his intention to run for the prestigious
office of Mayor of London in the 2016 Mayoral election.
Lammy, the son of a
taxidermist, was born and raised in Tottenham, north London. He went on to
study at Harvard Law School in America and practiced law before joining politics.
He is seen as one of Black Britain’s rising stars and has been predicted in the past as a possible Britain’s
first Black Prime Minister.
If elected as Mayor, he
will not only be replacing Boris Johnson, the current controversial Mayor of
London, but he will also become the city’s first ethnic minority chief
executive with a wide-ranging power and he will be a running the biggest budget
outside of the Palace of Westminster.
Announcing his intention
today, the former universities minister said he would place affordable housing
at the heart of his campaign, with a pledge to introduce a “comprehensive
programme” of rent controls.
“I want to make ‘affordable
housing’ genuinely affordable by linking the definition of ‘affordable’ to
average earnings in each borough and capping the affordability threshold at
60%,” he said. “I plan to introduce a comprehensive programme of rent controls
to protect tenants, including limits on rent rises and the creation of a
compulsory London Landlords Register.”
Lammy said as a Mayor, he will
launch a government-loan scheme for developers to build shared ownership
properties in order to significantly increase the number of such properties
available.
He said: “A significant lack of homes is now a critical issue for the
future of London and a problem that requires a bold solution.
We are facing some complex and contentious issues, which require a grown
up and serious debate – issues like how we reclassify greenbelt land that
doesn’t live up to its name and changing how we define affordability.
It’s big issues like this that will define the future of London and
working on this has led me to declare my intention to run for Mayor of London.”
But Lammy is expected to face a strong opposition for Labour party
nomination in a contest that many expected to be the first open primary
election in the party’s history. Other possible candidates include another London’s
Black British MP and former shadow public health minister, Dianne Abbott. The
possible list of candidates also includes political heavyweights such as current
shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan MP, Tessa Jowell MP and Margaret Hodge MP.
Some have criticized Lammy for being too close to the politics of former
Prime Minister Tony Blair and his New Labour ideologies while others praised
his pragmatism and for the way he helped resolve the 2011 London riot, after
the killing of a Black man by the London police.
Lammy is 42 years old and he is married with two sons. He was elected
Member of Parliament for Tottenham at a by-election in June 2000, following the
death of the popular politician Bernie Grant. Following his re-election in
2001, David became the first Tottenham MP to hold a Government position since
1945.
David Lammy wants to Replace Boris Johnson as London Mayor
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