Losing Tim O'Toole shows that things are going badly wrong

By Simon Fletcher

Losing Tim O’Toole, the highly respected Managing Director of the London Underground, is the most serious disintegration of the top management of London to date.

There are now some difficult questions for the mayor to answer about the circumstances that led him to lose such a well-liked and effective senior figure. Tim O’Toole’s departure in April will be little more than a month after the announcement of his resignation, yet contracts on this level specify a minimum three months' notice. This alone suggests that something has gone badly awry.

I would actually say that, in addition to his exemplary record over many years, it is an indication of Tim O’Toole’s dedication to serve London that he stayed as long as he did in the regime of incompetence which surrounds the new London Mayor.

Take the snow debacle. In the aftermath of the terrorist atrocities on 7 July 2005 Tim O’Toole was unrelenting in securing the earliest possible resumption of transport services. Contrast this to Boris Johnson becoming the first leader of the city to voluntarily withdraw virtually the entire public transport service due to bad weather. Johnson told Londoners: "I think we have done pretty well." In fact, the authorities in London were given a full five days' warning of the heavy snowfall to come - a lot longer than on previous occasions. But the city's public transport system was still told to shut down.

It is reported that the real cause of Tim O’Toole’s departure is a funding shortfall for the Tube, and how this may be affected by Crossrail. But questions about the funding of the tube’s upgrade have always existed. That is the way the Treasury works. In the past this had been managed by effective political leadership from the mayor. The new factor in the situation is not the finances of Crossrail or the tube upgrades but no strategy from Johnson to deal with these matters; and disunity caused by a lack of elementary trust necessary to bind senior managers into a cohesive City Hall administration capable of negotiating effectively with government.

It is an open secret that Boris Johnson’s administration is instead characterised by back-biting and internal division, and functions at the level of fiefdoms and rivalries. This has affected his own appointees as much as anyone else. The much-heralded ‘GLA-group chief executive’ Tim Parker went after just a couple of months. Johnson, in his handling of Sir Ian Blair, then gave the signal to Metropolitan Police Service that they now have a Mayor prepared to undermine them for short-term political gain.

Transport is the Mayor's largest budget and the tube is the country’s busiest railway and now the highly-regarded manager of the largest part of the public transport system - the Underground - is to go.

There is no substitute for the culture of global excellence and competence which drew world-class experts to London for eight years. London is going from the city which won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics, to a regime of decline and second-ratism.