Published: 9 August, 2012
by RICHARD OSLEY

BRIAN Coleman, the Tory politician who promised to walk naked in the street if the Olympics were delivered on budget, will expose all.

But the former Camden and Barnet London Assembly member said he will do it in a new book lifting the lid on his life at City Hall, rather than by taking off his clothes.

Mr Coleman, who was unseated after a 12-year spell on the Assembly in an election defeat to Labour’s Andrew Dismore in May, has warned politicians that he will leave nothing on the cutting room floor in a book that could be published as early as Christmas.

He plans to explain how London Mayor Boris Johnson has “marginalised” all other members of the Assembly and has devoted a chapter to the London Olympics, which he views as excessively expensive.

Mr Coleman said he stood by every word of an article he wrote for the Barnet Press newspaper after the Beijing Olympics in which he said London should make do with a “computer simulation” for an opening ceremony rather than ploughing public money into it.

In the same article, he criticised British athletes for not boycotting China, claiming they had “left their consciences at passport control”. He added: “If the 2012 Games come in at the budget of £9.3billion, I will happily walk naked down Ballards Lane (in Finchley).”

This comment has been recalled after Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Mr Coleman’s Conservative colleague, claimed weeks before the Olympics began that the Games had actually come in nearly £500million under budget.

“They can say that,” said Mr Coleman. “But the fact is they are millions, tens of millions over budget.

“They didn’t keep to the budget, so I’m keeping my clothes on. There was never any danger of that. There are millions of extra pounds spent in government departmental budgets. Look at the Ministry of Defence. It has had to spend on sending in the Army for security. Look at the police budget. Virtually every police officer has been taken off normal duties to do something with the Olympics. These extras are not included in the final budget over what it has cost tax-payers.”

Mr Coleman said Mr Johnson had failed London over the Games.

“Where is the economic bounce we were promised from these Games, where is it?,” he said. “Go to central London and there is nobody there. There is nobody there.

“Another missed opportunity is the fact that so many of the venues will be used for these two weeks and then taken down again.”

On the opening ceremony, Mr Coleman said: “They say everybody watched it. Twenty million watched it. The population is three times that and lots of people had something better to do with their time.

“The BBC has gone completely over the top. So have the newspapers, as if everybody is obsessed with sport. It is misjudged. Some people are just not interested in sport, but it’s on all the time.”

Mr Coleman said he had watched “some of the tennis and a bit of showjumping” but insisted he was not interested in the rest.

“We just don’t need it constantly rammed down our throats, all of the time,” he said.

And he remains convinced that the Beijing Olympics should have been boycotted.

“If it had been in Burma we wouldn't have gone on human rights grounds,” said Mr Coleman. “There’s a history of boycotts. Some athletes boycotted Moscow in 1980. They all should have done. I know Seb Coe very well but it was a disgrace that he went there to compete. Even Mrs Thatcher said so.

“The Olympics in London are just bread and circuses. In three months, it’ll be forgotten, apart from the fact we’ll still be paying for it.”

Mr Coleman, is known for his controversial views and his uncompromising style was blamed by some Conservatives for the loss of his seat.

“On the Assembly, I was head of the fire service which meant I was doing a proper job there,” he said.

“We also had an important job in (former Mayor, Ken) Livingstone’s second term, scrutinising what he was doing.

“The Assembly members who do not have a role, like being head of the fire authority or head of the police, are completely marginalised.

“That’s something Boris has done very well. He has marginalised them, so it is all about him.”

He added: “The Assembly now is just full of people asking sucky questions. In fact, the joke at City Hall is that a sucky question is known as the ‘Murad Qureshi Memorium Question’, in honour of dear old Murad.

“When Ken was Mayor, he’d always ask Ken to talk about how brilliant Ken was, inviting him to go on and on by something he saw as an achievement.”

Murad Qureshi is a Labour member at the Assembly. Mr Coleman said: “I won't be standing again. I wouldn’t go back now, but I have an agent for the book and I’ve already written a chapter on the riots.”