Last night’s landslide victory for President Barack Hussein Obama was not only a victory for people of colour but also for people with foreign-sounding names.

Obama had faced ugly innuendos from some Republican campaigners who used his middle name to associate him with Islam – as if that automatically disqualified him from the presidency. It was indeed this very whispering campaign by senior Republicans – “Well, you know that Obama is a Muslim” – which led Colin Powell to intervene during the election. While some answered factually by stating that Obama is actually a Christian, for Colin Powell the response should have been – what if he is a Muslim? And thank god for such principled interventions.

We should applaud the American people for seeing through all that, and coming out in their millions to vote for Obama and for change in the USA. It has restored my faith in the human race and, although I’m not generally an admirer of the Sun, today’s front-page headline – “one giant leap for mankind” – summed it up exactly. Maybe it’s time for me to go back to NYC for the first time since the 11th of September 2001.

While all the focus in recent times has been on financial markets and bailing them out, at City Hall on the 23rd of October I chaired a meeting of the London Markets Symposium, looking at the future for London’s street and wholesale markets. We had over 200 attendees and the newly appointed Chair of London Food, Rosie Boycott, on the platform, stimulating a very thorough discussion of the issues.

Rosie Boycott kicked off the morning with the keynote speech, giving us plenty of “food for thought” at the start of her reign as the Chair of London Food. The next speaker, Krys Zasada, gave us the national market perspective, suggesting there was a lack of leadership and not enough market champions. Mike McGill illustrated how Islington was regenerating its streets through its markets. Mike Brook from Wandsworth then gave us some market fundamentals and even some historical references to Adam Smith. And finally we had a stallholder’s perspective from Gary Marshall of the Covent Garden Tenants Association, bringing us back down to earth in our discussions by embracing markets with a direct ”touching, smelling and bartering” relationship with their customers.

All this prompted many questions from the floor, ranging from security concerns and the issue of deregulation of street markets to whether we could have a London-wide street license permit system for stallholders.   

It all highlighted the vital role our markets play in the provision of London’s food, with an ever increasing and more diverse population. Indeed these markets have a significant role in relation to health, the environment and sustainability issues and are an economically and socially important part of London’s culture.

While the financial markets are understandably the centre of attention, we should not neglect our actual street markets which are often the hub of our urban communities. The re-launching of the Association of London Markets (AOLM) at the meeting will hopefully go some way to raise the profile of this often neglected but genuine retail choice. With our supermarket chains engaged in price wars over the credit crunch, wholesale and street markets may well come into their own during this uncertain time.

You can also join in the discussion at China Dialogue.

Having leafleted against the British National Party with Unite Against Fascism during the recent by-election campaign in Hampstead Town, I was pleased to see that the BNP candidate received a derisory 29 votes, a mere 1% of the poll. You might have thought that after this humiliation the BNP would have got the message that they are not welcome in north London, yet they are contesting the Kentish Town by-election on October 30 in another attempt to gain a foothold there.

Since the election of Richard Barnbrook last May we have had direct experience of the BNP on the London Assembly. It would be easy to dismiss Barnbrook as a joke figure, and his rambling, incoherent contributions at Mayor’s Question Time have certainly reduced him to an object of ridicule. However, London Assembly members have also witnessed the poisonous, divisive politics of the BNP at first hand.

In a recent intervention, for example, Barnbrook called for the abolition of the Notting Hill Carnival, one of the most popular annual events in London, which attracted an estimated 2.5 million people this year from across our city’s diverse communities. But what else can you expect from a party whose constitution states that it is “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples”?

In recent years the BNP has tried to hide its fascist politics from voters and fool them into thinking it is now a more moderate, mainstream party. The skinhead bootboys have been kept out of public view, to be replaced by “respectable” figures in suits. However, the adoption of a more voter-friendly image hasn’t changed the BNP’s fundamental character. In terms of its leadership, core membership, political ideology and ultimate objectives, the BNP remains the racist, fascist organisation it has always been.

One of the leaflets the BNP has been distributing in north London illustrates this point. It features a photograph of a wholesome-looking white family accompanied by the slogan “People like you voting BNP”. The smiling couple in the picture are unlikely to be voting in the Kentish Town by-election as they live in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. But if they were on the electoral register in London NW5 they would undoubtedly give their support to the BNP, because they are two of the party’s longstanding activists – Nick and Suzy Cass.

Both of the Casses appeared earlier this year in the television documentary BNP Wives. In one revealing scene Suzy Cass argued that in order to restore racial purity white people should have more children, while a “birth limit” should be imposed on non-white families. How the latter policy was to be implemented – forcible sterilisation? infanticide? – she didn’t say.

In another scene Nick Cass proudly revealed a “tree of life” tattoo prominently displayed on his right arm. The anti-fascist magazine Searchlight commented:

“This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with ‘Aryan’ mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the ‘white race’. “

Nothing could better demonstrate the BNP’s cynical political methods than this fraudulent attempt to pass off two of its own hardline members as a normal family who just happen to vote BNP.

Resistance to the BNP transcends party politics. Supporters of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party and the Greens, whatever our other political differences, are at one in rejecting the racist ideology of the far right. It is crucial that this anti-fascist majority turns out to vote in Kentish Town on October 30, in order to ensure that the BNP once again receives a percentage of the vote that accurately represents their minuscule support in Camden.

The infliction of another humiliating defeat on the BNP will hopefully discourage them from making any further attempts to import their vile politics into the borough.

Johnson repeated his ludicrous claim that Sir Ian had voluntarily decided to stand down rather than being forced out – an assertion reportedly dismissed by Blair himself in the succinct phrase “absolute s***”. The reality, to further quote Sir Ian’s reported remarks, is that Johnson “made it absolutely clear that he was determined to bring about a change of leadership, and in the circumstances I had no choice but to comply”.

At least in the Politics Show interview Boris spared us the equally bogus claim that he consulted widely before his final meeting with the commissioner that resulted in the latter’s resignation. In fact, there is no evidence that the mayor’s “consultation” extended very much beyond Tory Assembly member Kit Malthouse, his deputy mayor for policing – and now earning an additional salary as “full-time” vice-chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

Indeed, if the Daily Mail is to be believed (see “Cameron kept in the dark on Boris’s one-man coup to oust Met chief Blair”, 4 October), Johnson didn’t even see fit to discuss this highly controversial and potentially politically damaging decision with the leader of his own party.

Moreover, the timing of Sir Ian’s dismissal – a matter of days before Johnson was due to chair his first meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority – was clearly intended to present the MPA with a fait accompli and pre-empt any debate by its members over Sir Ian’s future. As Len Duvall, Johnson’s predecessor as MPA chair, observed, it seems that Boris “simply appointed himself judge, jury and executioner”.

Despite being repeatedly asked for an explanation by Politics Show interviewer Jon Sopel, Johnson refused to offer any justification for ousting Sir Ian. In his speech to the Tory party conference, however, he gave us an insight into his reasoning. Echoing the language of Melanie Phillips and other hard-right commentators who have long campaigned for the removal of a man who represents the “political correctness” (i.e. support for anti-racist initiatives and multiculturalism) they so despise, Boris condemned the development of a so-called “grievance culture” among members of minority communities in the Met on Sir Ian’s watch.

One particularly revealing moment in the Sopel interview was when Johnson was confronted with the central charge that by forcing Sir Ian from his post he is guilty of politicising the job of Metropolitan police commissioner. Hasn’t a precedent been set, he was asked, whereby future commissioners will be hired and fired dependent on their political acceptability to whichever party occupies the office of mayor?

“Balderdash, codswallop, tripe, codswallop, absolute codswallop”, was Boris’s blustering response to a charge he described as “on the wilder shores of fantasy”. Presented with a statement by the chief constable of West Yorkshire, Sir Norman Bettison, that he has decided not to apply for the post of Met commissioner because he will not accept “political interference” from the mayor, Johnson was left shifting uncomfortably in his seat and clearly fuming that anyone should have the nerve to question his judgement.

The accuracy of the charge of political interference has only been underlined by Johnson’s proposal that the appointment of a permanent replacement for Sir Ian should be delayed until after the next general election – in the optimistic expectation of a victory for his own party – so as to ensure that the new Metropolitan police commissioner will be someone who meets with the political approval of an incoming Tory home secretary.

Along with other members of the Labour Group on the London Assembly I hold the view that the Met cannot be allowed to drift without clear leadership until May 2010, or whenever the general election takes place, and that the appointment of Sir Ian’s successor must, as with previous appointments to the post, be made exclusively on merit, not on the basis of party politics. I am confident that Jacqui Smith – and it is the home secretary, not the mayor of London, who has the constitutional authority to appoint the Metropolitan police commissioner – will reject Boris’s irresponsible and politically-motivated delaying tactics.

During the mayoral election campaign Johnson’s right-wing cheerleaders at the Evening Standard portrayed Ken Livingstone as an arrogant individual, corrupted by power, out of control, and unaccountable to anyone but a small group of overpaid political cronies. This malicious caricature of his predecessor’s administration increasingly appears to be an uncannily accurate description of the regime over which Boris himself now presides at City Hall. The role of Labour’s London Assembly members in reining in the mayor and his advisors, and making them accountable to the people of London, will clearly be vital over the next few years.