Sir Robin Wales ‘would like to be London Mayor’

The Mayor of Newham said that he believes he would make a good Mayor of London this week.

Sir Robin Wales revealed he would not rule out standing as a Labour candidate against current Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson when asked whether he would like the top job at City Hall by Express correspondent and former East London Advertiser reporter Ted Jeory.

The reporter, who runs a politics blog called Trial by Jeory named after his old column in the Advertiser, was interviewing Sir Robin at the launch of a book by David Goodhart exploring immigration, called The British Dream.

Sir Robin spoke about his no-nonsense approach to integration in the borough, including removing non-English language newspapers from libraries and refusing to fund interpreters for people wishing to make an appointment in this surgery, outlined in a document called “Resilience” which is available to read on the council’s website.

Sir Robin told Jeory: “We think we’ve a very interesting offer. Now my argument would be when the general election is over, we should pick the best candidate but the key issue should be ‘what are our policies?’

“And I think our policies are the right ones for London and we will be pushing that and saying this is what we want.

“So the answer is to, ‘Would I like to be Mayor of London’, is of course I would, but the issue is what are you standing for, what is Labour going to stand for.

“I believe it should be based on resilience, based on the things we’re doing here and if we can get a good candidate who does that, I’ll be the first to support them.”

To read the full interview, visit www.trialbyjeory.wordpress.com.