{"id":2462,"date":"2017-08-15T13:14:28","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T12:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=2462"},"modified":"2017-08-15T13:14:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T12:14:28","slug":"the-failure-of-the-garden-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/the-failure-of-the-garden-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"The failure of the Garden Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Stafford explains why Sadiq Khan\u2019s decision to scrap the controversial Garden Bridge project is more than cheap political point-scoring.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s announcement that London\u2019s Garden Bridge project had been cancelled did not come as a major shock. It had been controversial right from its conception in 2013 (when actress Joanna Lumley suggested it to then-mayor Boris Johnson). The termination of the project was attributed to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan\u2019s, earlier decision to remove his support for it. However, though its abandonment was not a huge surprise, its political repercussions are no less notable.<\/p>\n

The predicted total cost of building the bridge was \u00a3200m, with additional annual running costs of \u00a33m. The financial sources proposed in order to meet the \u00a3200m capital spend broke down to \u00a3140m from private donations (half of which had already been raised) and \u00a360m joint funding from both the Government and Transport for London (TfL).<\/p>\n

In April, a review by Dame Margaret Hodge (a former chair of Parliament\u2019s Public Accounts Committee) recommended that the project be scrapped. Her report<\/a>, commissioned by Khan in September 2016, concluded that \u2018It would be better for the taxpayer to accept the financial loss of cancelling the project than to risk the potential uncertain additional costs to the public purse if the project proceeds.\u2019 Khan used this, along with Hodge\u2019s criticism of the bridge\u2019s procurement process, in order to issue a public statement removing the mayoral guarantee to underwrite the annual running costs.<\/p>\n

It is against this troubled background that yesterday\u2019s announcement must be set. Indeed, this was the focus of the London Evening Standard<\/em>\u2019s scathing editorial<\/a> yesterday (criticising Khan for \u2018\u2026cheap political point-scoring\u2026\u2019 in his removal of the mayoral guarantee). In mitigation, one must consider Khan\u2019s position. Khan had already inherited an existing and successful environment policy (in operation since 2007) aimed at retrofitting all public buildings in London in order to reduce their carbon footprint. The Garden Bridge\u2019s contended environmental benefits could not hope to emulate this policy\u2019s potential. In an age where public spending is increasingly scrutinised by those such as Hodge, Khan\u2019s decision not to embark on a costly and environmentally-questionable development, which many have criticised as a Johnson vanity project, seems much more logical than the editorial was willing to admit. Considered alongside the recent Grenfell Tower disaster, which will surely lead to even greater criticism of contentious public expenditure (especially when that spending is publicly labelled an opulent frivolity by large parts of the electorate), it becomes hard to see any other fate for the Garden Bridge than the one it succumbed to yesterday.<\/p>\n

Previous mayors have been criticised for building contentious architecture. Boris Johnson, for instance, was very critical of Ken Livingstone for building skyscrapers that the Conservative labelled \u2018phallocratic\u2019. Khan has become the first Mayor of London to make an architectural mark by not<\/em> building something. This is, however, far more than a footnote in London\u2019s architectural history. It is a test case which has made demonstrably clear that if you want something done in London you have to work with, and not against, the mayor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Max Stafford is a PhD candidate in Politics and International Relations<\/a> at Canterbury Christ Church University. His doctoral research is funded by a University scholarship and looks at the leadership of mayors in London, New York City and Amsterdam.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Max Stafford explains why Sadiq Khan\u2019s decision to scrap the controversial Garden Bridge project is more than cheap political point-scoring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":2469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1989,594,1993,598],"class_list":["post-2462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-garden-bridge","tag-london-mayor","tag-public-spending","tag-sadiq-khan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Jeanette Earl","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2017\/08\/Garden-bridge.jpg","postExcerpt":"Max Stafford explains why Sadiq Khan\u2019s decision to scrap the controversial Garden Bridge project is more than cheap political point-scoring.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2473,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions\/2473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}