Berlin: the gay left-winger whose city is cool, but broke
by Roger Boyes
Klaus Wowereit is famous for two phrases. The first - “and that's the way it
should be” (und das ist auch gut so) - was his public admission of
homosexuality.
The second was his description of Berlin as “poor but sexy”, as if sexiness
were a compensation prize for an all but bankrupt city.
In the German capital, the 54-year-old Mayor leads a left-leaning Social
Democrat-Left alliance positioning his city as open to the world and himself
as someone to fight the corner of the urban poor. On this rather thin basis,
he is also positioning himself to become the next-but-one Social Democrat
candidate for the leadership of Germany.
But Wowereit's credibility as a future German leader - following in the
footsteps of Willy Brandt, a West Berlin-Mayor-turned-Chancellor - hinges on
his performance as a city administrator. And that is not good at all: under
his leadership, Berlin is not so much “poor but sexy” as “poor and
impotent”.
The reason why Berlin is so cool for the young of Europe is its cheapness. It
is a depopulated metropolis, with cheap rents and disused factories making
for ample gallery space and throbbing, packed-to-the-gills clubs.
But art needs patrons and the Mayor has done his level best to scare away
serious investors with serious money.
The city has two huge problems. The first is a debt of more than €60 billion
(£48 billion). Wowereit's solution for this is to give the only truly
competent member of his Senate, Thilo Sarrazin, the finance minister, a free
hand to make cutbacks and reduce new borrowing. The result is that Wowereit
has developed an entirely random policy on what should be financially
encouraged and what should not.
Secondly, Berlin is the least successful state in Germany, the least capable
of benefiting from the economic recovery. Its unemployment rate of 15.9 per
cent is worse than almost every other state.
The answer is to develop an industrial policy. But the factories have
disappeared, driven out by the Cold War. Berlin, the classic proletarian
city, no longer has a proletariat.
Why should that be? Because Wowereit is the most business-hostile politician
in Germany. The way that US businessman Ronald S. Lauder was shooed out of
town was typical. He lodged a bid to buy the Hitler-era Tempelhof airport
and convert it into a medical clinic. Wowereit had no better concept, but
wanted to close it down anyway. So he dismissed Lauder as a “rich uncle from
America”.
Lauder did not like that; he was after all offering to create jobs. “Perhaps
he is crazy enough to think that the bigger unemployment is in Berlin, the
more powerful he becomes.” A more likely explanation is that Wowereit
believes that re-industrialisation is somehow alien to Social Democracy.
Wowereit does not have the intellectual breadth of Willy Brandt, nor is he a
visionary. Until recently he was at least hailed as Germany's top partygoer,
drinking champagne at one ball or another. Now, anxious to convince voters
of his working-class credentials he prefers to stay home watching television
with his partner.
New York: the multibillionaire art collector who keeps changing parties
by James Bone
There are some things even billionaires can't buy. Even billionaires with
“can-do” reputations. And thus New York's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has
failed to attain two goals achieved by London: the congestion charge and the
2012 Olympics.
The founder of the Bloomberg financial news empire, who is worth over $11
billion, (£5.5 billion) narrowly won the election in 2001 in the chaotic
aftermath of the World Trade Centre terror attacks when his predecessor,
Rudolph Giuliani, endorsed him.
Though a lifelong Democrat, Bloomberg ran as a Republican to circumvent the
Democratic Party machinery. After winning a second four-year term by a
landslide, he recently switched sides again and left the Republican Party to
become an independent. Barred from seeking a third term, Bloomberg is now
tipped as a possible New York Governor or even a vice-presidential running
mate for Barack Obama.
Obama recently asked Bloomberg to vet a major economic speech and to introduce
him at the event. It was the second time the two had met during the
campaign. The presidential hopeful bought “Mr Mayor” an eggs-and-potatoes
breakfast at a Manhattan diner back in December. “The reason that I bought
breakfast is because I expect payback of something more expensive,” Obama
quipped. “I'm no dummy.”
Bloomberg was not always so popular. When he was first elected, many wondered
whether a billionaire with a second home in Bermuda could really understand
the concerns of working folk. When subway workers threatened to strike,
Bloomberg bought himself a $540 mountain bike and declared that he would
cycle from his Upper East Side mansion to City Hall.
But the former Wall Streeter has won plaudits for turning a $6 billion deficit
in the city budget into a $3 billion surplus and slashing crime to historic
lows. Unlike in London, the New York Mayor controls the police department.
Bloomberg brought back former police commissioner Ray Kelly, who cut the
murder rate to 494 as of last year, the lowest since record-keeping began in
1963.
Bloomberg also battled New York State to gain control over the city's failing
schools. New York now issues a report card for each school, and those with a
failing grade risk being shut down. An avid art collector, Bloomberg added
his own flair to the city by approving installation of Christo's saffron
fabric Gates over Central Park in 2005 - a project that had been blocked
since 1979.
But Bloomberg was defeated on two initiatives that topped his wish list.
Opposition from the powerful Democratic leader of the state legislature
killed the Mayor's ambitious plan to build a stadium on the west side of
Manhattan to attract the 2012 Olympics. The same politician blocked his
proposal to impose a congestion charge on all motorists entering Manhattan
south of 60th Street.
Paris: the gay socialist who built a beach along the Seine
by Charles Bremner
Bertrand Delanoe must be the world's most flattered mayor judging by the way
that other cities are imitating the winning schemes that he has brought to
Paris since 2001.
From Manila to Mexico City, capital cities have rushed to copy the ideas that
the austere 57-year-old leftist has adopted to give Paris a dose of fun. Top
among them are: the summertime plage along the Seine; the winter Nuit
Blanche arts happening and the vélibs, the 20,000 “free” bicycles that have
transformed the streets since last July.
These are the most eye-catching of the ways that France's first openly gay
political leader has made Paris more pleasant for its 2.1 million residents.
With his €9 billion (£7.2 billion) budget, Delanoe, a pragmatic,
authoritarian manager, has also multiplied pedestrian space, built public
housing and day-care centres and tried to prevent Paris turning into what he
calls an elegant museum.
The first Socialist Mayor has done so well livening up the city - and taming
its traffic - that its traditionally conservative voters re-elected him
easily last month. He is now governing free of the alliance with the
turbulent Green party that hobbled his first term.
The Mayor, who was born in Tunis and had an Engish grandmother, denies that he
wants the Socialist leadership, which is to be decided in October. “My
devotion is to Paris, the city I love,” he says. But it is assumed that he
will attempt to follow the model of Chirac, the city's first executive
mayor, who used his 18 years in the job as a launchpad for the presidency in
1995.
All this is a turnaround for the man who back in 2001 was written off as a
hot-tempered apparatchik. He won then largely because Paris was tired of the
sleaze-soaked years of Chirac and Jean Tiberi, his successor. But Delanoe's
rigorous methods and sense of imagination clicked with a mood, especially
among “les bobos”. These bourgeois-bohemians are the left-thinking
professionals who are setting the tone of a city that has been deserted by
its working class.
The Mayor won sympathy soon after the election, when he was stabbed in a
homophobic knife attack as he celebrated the first Nuit Blanche party. A
private man who lives in his own flat on the Left Bank, he plays down his
homosexuality but he has attacked what he calls continuing hypocrisy.
Among his bêtes noires is Sarkozy, who he deems to be unfavourable towards gay
rights. Sarkozy, however, is said to favour Delanoe taking over the
Socialists and becoming his opponent - because he believes that France is
not ready for a gay president.
