London needs a Labour Mayor ...

In less than three weeks we'll know the line-up in the race to be Labour's candidate for Mayor. There is no question that Labour should run a candidate. Though it's sometimes hard to tell the difference, we are still a political party, not a fan club. Our job is to offer choice to the voter, not to be mesmerised by what Tony Benn calls "personalities".

Look at the rudderless, drifting Tories. More than a decade after Mrs Thatcher's departure, Conservatives still measure their leaders by her discredited yardstick. Labour should not make the error of trying to revive past glories.

During the summer, many party activists, particularly those from ethnic minorities and the young, urged me to run. Amongst the 20 or so MPs who said they would support my nomination, there are, surprisingly, some who backed moves to readmit the current Mayor to the Labour Party. I would cheerfully have lived with that decision, but those MPs know that my personal instinct was against making a special case of someone who has publicly trashed the party.

So such calls were an encouragingly broad display of support; but every potential mayoral candidate has to ask himself or herself three questions. What is best for themselves and their family? What is best for their party? And, above all, what is best for Londoners?

Having carefully considered my own situation, I will be writing to the London Labour Party Chair to let him know that, on this occasion, my name will not be on the list of candidates for mayoral selection, though I will be seeking re-election to the London Assembly.

ONE reason is personal. In competing for the intensely high- pro f i l e position of Mayor, no candidate can expect to be a private person. Everyone associated with the candidate will, as far as the media are concerned, be fair game. Unlike most of the other Labour names in the frame, I have a young family, with children passing through a particularly vulnerable phase of their lives. I would never knowingly vote for a man or woman who put ambition ahead of family. The moment will arrive when politics can come first - but that moment is not now.

However, there are other, more obviously political considerations. As Chair of the London Assembly, my priority must be to help win more seats for Labour. There is a tough job to do of turning the Assembly into a truly representative voice. For a start, in a city which is nearly one third black or brown, it is absurd to have just two black representatives out of 25, and none from among three quarters of a million Asian Londoners.

The mayoral candidate has a different task: to make the case, uncompromisingly, for a Labour Mayor. No candidate can be half-hearted about their bid. For example, can someone say they want to be Mayor, but also seek a seat on the London Assembly? Voters might conclude that the candidate is not serious about one or the other. Can the Deputy Mayor, for example, expect to be the Mayor's critic on Newsnight, yet still report to City Hall the following morning to take his orders?

But the most important issue is what is best for Londoners. Labour has to come up with policies that speak to today's Londoners. Let me take just one example - the Mayor's ? 5 congestion charge. I ' m already impressed by Londoners' strength of feeling on the issue. As I lay on a surgeon's table recently, the nurse made it abundantly clear where she would have been wielding the scalpel had the Mayor or his transport boss, Bob Kiley, been at her mercy. The Labour Party is rightly committed to congestion charging. But what will be introduced next year is not a congestion charge - it is a road tax. Instead of hitting the most comfortably off at times when they most pollute our roads, the £5 charge will bear most heavily on the less well off, whether they travel at peak hours or not. Women taking their mothers to pensioners' lunch clubs will pay exactly the same as the executives in their Jaguars. If there is to be a reduction in traffic levels, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see who will be forced off the roads and on to overcrowded Tubes.

A Labour candidate won't agree with the RMT's leader Bob Crow about everything, not least his use of the strike weapon. But Crow makes sense when he argues that a congestion charge should not be introduced until the public transport train is ready to take the strain. Bob Kiley responds by boasting that bus ridership has risen by eight per cent over the past year. What he neglects to mention is that this has been achieved by tripling the subsidy to buses - a price paid largely by the taxpayer. That can't go on forever.

What is most odd is to rush into congestion charging when there is an alternative. Every day, some 120,000 Londoners drive into town and park their cars in their workplaces. Generally, it is not the most needy employees, but the most senior, and therefore best paid, who benefit from this privilege. Even the crudest calculation shows that the projected £130 million yield from congestion charging could be more than matched by taxing these spaces at just £4.50 a day - less than the Mayor's proposed tax.

The Mayor's men tell him that business would scream. I don't think so. In a few cases, companies would cough up the charge for their most highly valued employees. In many, I think they would simply put an end to the parking perk. And that would be a result. Many who drive because they have free parking would leave the motor at home.

FINALLY, London Labour has to throw off the shackles of central government - even if it is a Labour government. In this, we aren't at odds with the current Mayor. For example, I agree that the mayoralty and the Assembly need new powers to make the GLA all that Tony Blair promised. A mayoralty which cannot prevent extremists from gathering in Trafalgar Square is impotent; and an Assembly which cannot veto the Mayor's policies is inexplicable. London needs substance rather than shadow. Whoever Labour's candidate is, part of their task will be to help make sure that the mayoralty becomes a job worth doing, with the power to deliver Labour's programme.