“I ask her a gloomy question. She answers with an upbeat reply” – Caroline Pidgeon in The Guardian

Dave Hill has been interviewing Liberal Democrat London Mayor candidate Caroline Pidgeon and doing his customary excellent job:

I ask her a gloomy question. She answers with an upbeat reply. “Morale is actually very, very good in the party,” said Caroline Pidgeon, who has the possibly onerous honour of being Liberal Democrat candidate for London mayor. “We’ve got tons of new members in London, who are excited and energetic, and that’s fantastic.” Her party says there are now 10,000 of them in the capital, the highest number for decades. Plus, council by-election results have perked up since last year’s general election gloom: wins in Sutton and Richmond, improved performances elsewhere…

As an AM she’s made her mark, particularly on transport issues. She’s already been seeking to do the same in the mayoral election campaign. Pidgeon opened the New Year by announcing her “half price by half-seven” policy, which would see a 50% cut in the price of Underground, rail, Docklands Light Railway and tram journeys that begin before 07:30. She says this would cost about £30m, partly financed by dropping Transport for London’s financial commitments to the controversial Garden Bridge project. She’d also want to introduce a one-hour bus ticket, a long-standing Liberal Democrat policy which Khan has judged worthy of half-inching…

On policy, she’s offering goodies under five broad headings. The first of these, unsurprisngly, is housing. Pidgeon is promising “an Olympic effort” to get 200,000 new homes built over a four-year term including 50,000 directly delivered by the mayor, which would be a major departure from Johnson’s regimes…

“I came to London after I graduated, full of hope, full of excitement. Within a few years I was able to buy my first flat, above shops on Walworth Road. That was in 1998. I was lucky enough to get my foot on the ladder with a tiny bit of help from my parents – nothing like the amount of help children often need today. I want other people to have that hope as well. Too many things about London don’t work for Londoners. I’ve got the policies and the experience to put that right.”

You can read the piece in full here, which includes more detail on that housing policy and how it would be delivered.

UPDATE: You can now read Caroline Pidgeon’s manifesto here.