Um, the Tories have always seen so-called ‘cronyism’ as a feature, not a bug. The defining feature of Conservatism is an inability to generalise, after all.

(1) Have a society that is outraged by cronyism. Swedes get outraged. Italians just shrug their shoulders. I’m not sure where Britain stands.

(2) Greater transparency. The internet is wonderful in this regards.

(3) Reduce the scope for temptation by minimising the scope of the state. Why we need state funding for the Arts Council, which is little more than a jobs for the boys scheme for the good and the great, is really beyond me.

Patrician Boris has failed to shrink the role of the state. If Cameron takes the same path at the national level then Tory politicians will also ultimately indulge in cronyism.

Because the London Mayoralty is overblown to the point of parody. Because there is a massive oversupply of media that needs to manufacture non-news to fill time. Because Ken and Dave owe a favour to someone at the Arts Council. Who knows.

But this is a nonsense of a ‘story.’

They did talk though about the (now cancelled) plans for another (sorely needed) bridge over the Thames in in East London, and the also cancelled plans for a new Camden to South London tram.

They chatted about lots of stuff (including Anton Du Beke), but nothing about Veronica Wadley that I remember.

If it was a non-story, then why would Ken and Dave both had written about it?

They also talked about whether Boris had taken the train to Manchester last week or had (OMG) flown there, as an image on Boris’ twitter page showed him working on his conference speech on his way to Manchester, in what looked like an airline seat.
But it turned out the picture was of Boris flying to New York the week before (after twitters with too much time on their hands had been sending Dave Hill images of airline seats compared to rail carriage seats.)

This story never came up in conversation. Why not?

Maybe it’s a non-story like MaidMarian says.

No, I’m saying that even if people make decisions locally – they have to go through due process and make decisions based on merit and criteria. According to the letter published above, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Agreed, but it means that if a locallly elected person wants to make their own appointments they they should be free to do so. If you don’t like the criteria they use, well it is a local decision.

Looking at the e-mail there was a very good national process in place overruled by localism.

What you seem to be saying is that localism is OK, provided that the localist actors do things your way?

I’m a big localist – but favouring someone when others are more qualified doesn’t automatically translate even if you are a localist.

I personally think that localism is just an open invitation to dilute standards and promote inequality. As this shows.

But Boris is well within his rights on a localist premise. Cronyism? Perhaps, but if he has not broken the law then this is localism in action.