On Oct 22, 12:58*pm, Walter Briscoe
wrote:
The people of London didn't want Boris as their mayor. The people of
various unsavoury outposts that the Tories gerrymandered into Greater
London in the first place to end Labour's dominance of the County of
London wanted Boris as their mayor; the people of actual London voted
for Ken.

Your memory of history differs from mine.
ISTR Mrs Thatcher's government eliminated the GLC and ILEA. At the time,
I thought that adding another ring of buroughs to London could have
served her purpose, permanently gerrymandered London and be justified
from a transport perspective.

I was referring to the creation of the GLC, which most commentators
suggest was carried out by the Conservative government of the time at
least partly to end Labour's dominance of the LCC.

The fact that Mrs T's government was /so/ unpopular in the mid-80s
that Labour managed to control the GLC as well, and that she was so
incapable of tolerating dissent that she abolished it as a result, is
fairly irrelevant.

....and as someone has mentioned below, the Watford-type-places that
would have permanently gerrymandered London for the Tories were
themselves strongly opposed to integration, otherwise there's a good
chance it'd've happened either in the creation of the original GLC or
during the 1980s.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org