London mayor race: why Zac Goldsmith claims the green belt is in danger

The Conservative candidate's allegation that his main rival threatens the green belt in the capital is thin and contrived but forms part of a larger strategy

Conservative green policies usually speak first and foremost to peoples' worries about their own back yards. Zac Goldsmith's are no exception. The Tory candidate for London mayor has just published his Living Environment Manifesto, a document with many pledges to preserve all that is leafy against the concreting forces of the city's blooming growth. Top of his list is protecting the green belt, a land use restriction that took its present shape in London some 60 years ago to prevent urban sprawl. Other candidates, including Goldsmith's chief rival Labour's Sadiq Khan, say they will to do the same. But coming from Goldsmith this promise carries its own heavy meaning and significance. It seeks to stir some of the deepest and most visceral fears of the Outer London Tory supporters on whom he is pinning his hopes of victory in May.

Throughout his campaign so far Goldsmith has been eager to associate himself with his fellow Tory Boris Johnson, whose two mayoral election wins owed much to the backing of Outer Londoners. But he appears to think that Johnson's lock on green belt security could have been tighter. In his manifesto, Goldsmith notes that the current London Plan, the master blueprint for the city's spatial development, states that "the strongest protection" should be given to the 22% of land within Greater London's boundary that is designated green belt but that in "very special circumstances" building on it might be allowed. "As mayor, I will issue new planning guidance, making it unambiguously clear that protected means protected," Goldsmith writes.