News From The Big Tent
Open season on Ken
It looks like the London Mayoral election could get interesting, and not just because of Richard Barnbrook's amazing background. No, what's setting it alight is the apparent readiness of the, shall we say, progressive media to have a pop at Ken Livingstone.
The catalyst is Martin Bright's documentary Dispatches, which is to be broadcast on the 21st. In fact, his blog post on the New Statesman site is arguably more damaging to Ken than any of the Andrew Gilligan ravings the Standard has been publishing recently. You expect the Standard to despise Livingstone, but when the political editor of the New Statesman writes this, you know something's up:
We simply examine allegations that he has been seen drinking whisky on three occasions at public meetings, including his monthly Mayor's Questions, where he faces scrutiny from assembly members. This takes place at ten o'clock in the morning, and it would be a disci plinary matter for his staff (unless authorised by the mayor himself or other senior City Hall staff).
He should know that these claims did not come from the Tories. In fact, they were confirmed by several members of the assembly. Indeed, the mayor himself said openly in a lift in City Hall, within the hearing of one of our researchers, that he needed a whisky to get him through Mayor's Questions. He added that this was because of a cough.
I also witnessed him with my own eyes drinking from a tumbler of whisky at People's Questions at Ilford Town Hall, a public platform where he faced questions from London voters. Although it was an evening event, I felt this showed a degree of disrespect for the audience. No member of the assembly on the platform was drinking anything other than water. There is no question that the substance in the glass was alcohol. We have conclusive scientific evidence on that.
This is particularly interesting because the Labour Party, and left-leaning Londoners generally, have been prepared to overlook Ken's more esoteric activities in favour of a good news success story: congestion charge delivered! London Olympic Games! More buses! Free travel for teenagers! Now, that cosy consensus looks like it might be coming to pieces. The Indy, in a dashed-off pros and cons piece by Andy McSmith this morning, can only come up with three reasons to vote for Ken: he's cut crime, he brought in the congestion charge, he's a lifelong Londoner. On the negative side: he's old, he's got weird Muslim friends, and Londoners don't believe crime has gone down. If a left-wing paper is saying that, he could be in real trouble.
Of course, on the other hand he's up against BoJo, and if the blonde one doesn't win, Westmonster for one will be asking questions of David Cameron, along the lines of "why did you pick a media buffoon to run against a discredited, ageing mayor who has lost media support?" PoliticalBetting's recommending a bet on BoJo, whose odds are described as "great value," and he's turned a few things around. But the shambolic way in which BoJo announced he would scrap the western extension to the congestion charge zone - live, in a TV interview - suggests he's still shooting from the hip. We still can't see any reference to this major policy announcement on BoJo's shiny new website.
But then again perhaps there's something about the Mayor's office, and its constitutional establishment, that makes the selection of mavericks with odd proclivities inevitable. In that light, maybe BoJo is the ideal yin to Livingstone's yang, and City Hall is always going to be inhabited by a loose cannon. But there is a part of Westmonster that yearns for some ordinariness in London. Is it too late to call John Major?
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2 Comments
Sorry not to see any mention of Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick, the most straightforward and upright of the candidates on offer (notwithstanding the comely Sian Berry of the Greens). The point about Brian is that he was a highly successful and popular senior policeman. If one believes Andrew Gilligan's persuasively presented and pretty well documented claims in the Evening Standard, the mayoral election could be a sharp one along traditional lines: policeman versus thief.
Paddick's problem is that he is a Lib Dem, he is therefore consigned to being a loser!
He is pretty woolly anyway and interested more in image than policy