Silence is golden.

Am I the only one, or do other Newham residents find the comedy mayor’s silence over the collapse of his bid for the Olympic Stadium very much out of character?

There was no talking head interview on either the BBC London News nor ITV’s London Tonight, no contribution to any of the capital’s radio talk shows and, most surprisingly, nothing in the front and back page coverage in the Newham Recorder.

From the little information that has been made public regarding the collapse of the Newham Council/West Ham bid, it is possible to extrapolate any number of theories as to what went wrong. I think the truth (and a truth that makes sense of the comedy mayor’s reticence) lies somewhere in-between two extremes.

At one end of the realm of possibilities is the likelihood that this new twist is a clever device for neutralising Tottenham Hotspur’s and Leyton Orient’s judicial reviews while still giving WHUFC access to the stadium.

By overturning the decision that made Newham/WHU the successful bidders the OPLC has, to the minds of many people, negated the need for Spurs and Orient to continue with a costly and time consuming legal process.

The more I saw of this strange event unfolding in the media, the more I started to think that a new deal had been done between the OPLC, the Mayor of London and the government and the Newham/WHU partnership; after all, how could Boris and Ed Warner (Chairman of UK Athletics) claim with certainty that West Ham will be the tenant of the publicly owned stadium? I was even more convinced when I saw Hugh Robertson, The Minister for Sport & the Olympics, state on the BBC London News that “there is no reason whatsoever, now we’re doing a public-to-public deal, why the local authority should not come in in just the same way they were planning to come in before and, indeed, I think they’ve already said they’re interested in doing that”. The BBC reporter responded by saying that Newham Council had denied this, poor old Hugh looked like he’d been punched in the stomach.

A joint statement by Karren Brady, West Ham vice-chairman, and Kim Bromley-Derry, Newham chief executive, included the following: “If the speculation is true, West Ham will look to become a tenant of the stadium while Newham will aim to help deliver the legacy.” My immediate thought was that Newham Council will still be ploughing money into the stadium. It may not be the proposed £40 million but, if the Council is considering making a financial contribution, the question is why? The stadium will be London’s stadium (if not the nation’s), so one would rightly expect the other London boroughs and the GLA (at the very least) to make equal contributions to Newham’s.

At the other extreme, the mysterious anonymous complaint to the European Commission may be the real spanner in the works. The OPLC, the government and Newham Council have all stated that the uncertainty of continuing legal complications had prompted the latest decision. If that were true, the plug would have been pulled weeks ago. I think the OPLC, government and Newham had, until the EC complaint, been fairly confident that the judicial reviews were not going to be a problem. However, a European tribunal looking at the details of Newham’s loan may well come to the conclusion that it is state aid. I have a hunch that Newham’s new Executive Director for Resources, Chris Pope, has come to the same conclusion. That, and the fact that, should the stadium be used for the World Athletics Championships in 2017, Newham Council wouldn’t have seen any funds covering the repayments for the projected £40 million loan until well after 2018. Hence Newham’s letter to the OPLC stating that it could not maintain a commitment to achieving conversion of the stadium by the Summer of 2014.

If I were the comedy mayor, I’d go and hide in a hole too.