Politicians determined to destroy London

A tacky sign hangs limp over Trafalgar Square. Its meaningless message is, "The Mayor Welcomes". In front of it, the historic square has become a desolation of inert roadworks and fuming, stationary traffic.

As I stood there yesterday I could hear faint cheering from the Strand as the High Court found in favour of the Mayor's forthcoming congestion charge. Ahead down Whitehall, Gordon Brown was still toasting his own courtroom victory over the same Mayor in his bid to privatise the Tube.

Beyond was the House of Lords, howling about "traffic chaos" like a bunch of blimps. Outside these same peers had just closed Millbank, which they claim to own, so a private car park can be built for them while they are on holiday. These hypocrites care not for the inconvenience of others.

In all my time reporting London, I have never known its streets in such a mess and its government such a shambles. Six ministers now claim to be operating "executive targets" for London, quite apart from the Mayor and the boroughs. The Cabinet has given away the city's Underground system for 30 years.

The Mayor has produced a transport plan which Whitehall will neither fund nor permit Londoners to fund themselves. In six months, the West End is to see a fantastic experiment in road pricing that relies on two giant computers talking to each other a million times a day.

The full enormity of the latest legal judgments on London is now apparent. The Mayor, Ken Livingstone, lost on Tube privatisation and won on congestion charging. Yet the latter must now be devoted to paying for the former.

Mr Livingstone seriously mishandled his bid to stop the Government's Public-Private Partnership. He had a reasonable cause and a not unsympathetic judge. By using a technical ruse to stage an assault on the plan as a whole, he found himself forced into a humiliating surrender. The bungle will cost London £4 million and is rightly to be investigated by auditors.

The Mayor calculates that the gap between the £1 billion that the Treasury will give the Tube contractors each year and what is needed to maintain services is roughly £150 million. That money must come from somewhere. It cannot come from adding 15 per cent to London fares, already the highest in Europe. The money must come from taxes. It so happens that the necessary £150 million is almost what it is estimated the congestion charge will raise. On a crude calculation, London drivers will thus find themselves paying, not for a better Tube, but for the contractors' profit on the existing Tube. It is that daft.

The congestion charge will now happen - or blow up. The objections presented to it in court by Westminster Council and the Kennington Association, with the backing of Kensington and Chelsea council, were absurd. For them to complain that the Mayor was driving traffic off some London streets onto others reflects what they have been doing for years.

Westminster has long had a policy of clearing streets of through traffic, with one-way systems, blocked side streets and enclaves. That council must have removed traffic from half its roadspace to "congest and pollute" the rest. And as for charges themselves, what else are parking meters at £4 an hour? If west London's Nimbys want to keep the traffic moving they can reopen side streets and ban parking. They will not do that. They are like the House of Lords.

Charging for any public service at the point of delivery is a sound principle. Charging for road space is just that. It has nothing to do with congestion-and should not have been referred to as such. It will not reduce congestion and after a year will probably show no difference at all. It will just clutter the streets with ugly cameras.

If the Mayor wanted to raise this extra money, he should have achieved the same objective by introducing a low-tech supplementary licence, as on the Continent. He should not have been dazzled by science.

I had sympathy with the original decision of the Mayor and his commissioner, Bob Kiley, to fight Tube privatisation and devote congestion- charge revenue to improving the Tube. It is badly needed for Crossrail and a North-South line, neither of which are now likely to be built.

At one point, they had Tony Blair, John Prescott and Stephen Byers on their side. But Mr Livingstone and Mr Kiley failed to realise early on that none of these had power. Gordon Brown, who has never accounted for his Tube stance in public, has the power. When he dies he should be condemned to ride the Circle Line for ever.

Those who have attended Whitehall meetings on London return reeling from the Treasury's hostility to the capital. Mr Brown's attitude is that London is rich and successful. Privatisation serves it right after cheekily electing Mr Livingstone as Mayor. Who cares if private bankers make a killing from the citizenry? The rest of the country needs the Chancellor's attention. London can look after itself.

But that is the trouble. Mr Brown will not let London look after itself. He will not let it raise bonds to build a better Tube. He will not leave it to behave like cities abroad and raise taxes to fund its infrastructure. He will not let it slip from his control. The only tax he will allow Mr Livingstone to levy is one that he knows will be unpopular. That is a tax on car drivers, a congestion tax, a tax from hell. It has been a good week for Mr Brown. Was there ever such political cunning?

Mr Brown, of course, does not use London's transport system. He has a limousine. I can hear him sneer like a Bourbon, "Why don't they all have limousines?"

London is a Treasury joke.