Political class

There's a good article by Steve Richards in the Independent about the way that our leading politicians have concluded that the state should intervene in other countries but stay out of domestic policy. And he rightly identifies this as part of the new consensus that unites Tony Blair and David Cameron and their followers.

Amongst those followers, he refers to a number of journalists: 'The writer Julian Glover gave up a column to work for Cameron. The former Blair adviser Philip Collins became a columnist. Daniel Finkelstein entered the world of commentary from the Conservative Party.' His point is that they all share much the same positions.

But there's another conclusion one might draw. One that would also find room to mention others who have moved between politics and journalism: the likes of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Daniel Hannan, Ed Vaizey... Or, behind the scenes, Steve Hilton (ex-Guardian) and Andy Coulson (ex-News of the World), who used to be so important to Cameron, or Tom Baldwin (ex-Times) and Bob Roberts (ex-Daily Mirror), who are key members of Ed Miliband's inner circle.

In all the media analysis of the political class, the growing covergence between Westminster and Fleet Street tends not to get mentioned as much as perhaps it should be.

Here Comes the Mayor

So there we are then. The race to become London mayor was closer than some predicted, and longer than anyone wanted. But before anyone takes too much encouragement from their results, it's worth bearing in mind just how low the turnout is.

These are the first preference votes recorded by the candidates of the three main parties in the four mayoral elections, expressed as percentages of the registered electorate:

(Incidentally, I do know that Ken Livingstone was an independent in 2000, but let's be kind and look over the sad case of Frank Dobson.)

None of it is much of a ringing endorsement. It's also worth bearing in mind that there are a huge number of people living in London who aren't registered to vote in the first place.

Perhaps it's not too surprising that - with the exception of Bristol - all the other cities who were asked yesterday whether they too wanted a mayor decided that, no, on balance, they'd rather not bother.