London Mayor 2016: Tessa Jowell focuses on housing for Labour bid

Mayoral bids are like London buses. You wait for five years (or so it feels) and then two come along at once. 

 

Yesterday was the somewhat unorthodox launch of entrepreneur-turned-Tory candidate Ivan Massow, who opted for the “disarmingly honest” approach with his bid. 

 

Today it was the turn of Tessa Jowell, who stood down as Labour's MP for Dulwich and West Norword at the General Election. 

 

Her bid is rather more traditional, but includes a potentially powerful tagline of building “One London”. 

 

Launched at a community hall in Brixton, the former Olympics minister stuck to the core Labour territory of inclusivism with a focus on housing, transport and opportunity. 

 

She said: “My ambition – our ambition – is to make London greater still.  To build One London, where every Londoner has the opportunity and security to succeed, where Londoners have a quality of life to rival anywhere in the world, where no Londoner is left behind.

 

“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.”

 

Key policies include creating a body called Homes for Londoners, which she described as “a housing equivalent of Transport for London”, which will be led by a Homes Commissioner. 

 

City Hall will build homes on public sector land, including the 5,700 acres in TfL's property portfolio. There was no word on how that might affect the transport body's own ambitions, which are expected to bring in between £1.1bn and £3.4bn.