Will Londoners Send Their Mayor Packing?

This article appears on the US site "Pajamas Media".

Londoners go to the polls to elect a Mayor on Thursday. The Labour candidate and incumbent, Ken Livingstone, is seeking election for the third time. Against expectations, he is in difficulty against a revived Conservative Party. If he loses, it will mark a coda in one of the more high-profile if low-achieving political careers of modern British politics. A Labour supporter myself, I shall be glad if Livingstone departs public life.

For a generation, Livingstone has been the most successful figure on the far-left of British politics. He came to prominence as a municipal politician in London in the early 1980s. Labour was then a party of extreme policies such as unilateral nuclear disarmament and a siege economy. Unsurprisingly, it proved unelectable at national level. In municipal government, its representatives were typically fiscally profligate and politically doctrinaire. Nowhere were these characteristics more in evidence than in the city-wide authority for London, the Greater London Council (GLC), of which Livingstone was leader.

What few now recall is that Livingstone became leader of the GLC without any reference to the people of London. Labour’s municipal campaign of 1981 was headed by an articulate moderate, Andrew McIntosh. Immediately after that election, McIntosh was deposed as leader of the Labour group in a palace coup by members of his own party caucus. Livingstone became leader in McIntosh’s place, and thereby leader of the GLC as well. It was a move that evinced contempt for London’s voters.

The GLC was later abolished by Margaret Thatcher’s government in an imprudent fit of irritation at Livingstone’s antics. This ill-considered move allowed Livingstone to develop a populist persona as the defender of local democracy against central government. His political reputation as a maverick and a bit of a card derives from that confrontation.

Tony Blair’s government reintroduced a city-wide authority for London, the Greater London Assembly, and also established the post of a directly elected Mayor. It was a good idea on constitutional grounds, but it did Labour no good at all. Livingstone, by this time a Labour Member of Parliament, sought the party’s candidature for the first Mayoral election in 2000. Blair, recalling, the electoral damage that Livingstone and his associates had inflicted on the party in the 1980s, rightly demurred but went the wrong way about it. Instead of expelling Livingstone from the party, Blair organised a procedural manoeuvre to select an alternative Labour candidate, a dull and ineffective machine politician, Frank Dobson. Livingstone ran as an independent, and won handsomely.

In 2004, in one of the more cynical acts of Tony Blair’s otherwise principled premierships, Labour made up with Livingstone in a desperate wish to secure a victory in London amid electoral setbacks in other parts of the country. Livingstone ran as the party’s candidate and won again. This time, he is electoral trouble. It is of his own devising.

Livingstone has accomplished one important reform as Mayor, a charging scheme for traffic in central London (the ‘congestion charge’). Beyond that, he has been a substantial liability for London’s governance, reputation and - owing to his curious predilection for property development - skyline.

It is his judgement on foreign affairs - absolutely nothing to with his municipal remit - that is the greatest wound on London’s civic life under Livingstone, however. The Mayor has welcomed to London Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim cleric who praises suicide attacks in Israel. Livingstone defended these comments with the preposterous and inflammatory claim that Palestinians have only their bodies with which to “fight back”.

This sort of intervention matters because a London mayor represents a huge, cosmopolitan capital city. Many of the contentious international and communal issues on which Livingstone comments are replicated in tensions within London. A civic leader, especially in London of all places, ought to exemplify the principle that there is a single category of citizenship that transcends national and religious divisions. Livingstone does not do that. His is a face of left-wing politics that stands for communalism, populism and administrative incompetence. By rights, his time should be past.

Comments

[peter]

"Nowhere were these characteristics more in evidence than in the city-wide authority for London, the Greater London Council (GLC), of which Livingstone was leader."

I demurr. I believe Liverpool under Militant displayed these characteristics more.

[David Duff]

"Tony Blair’s otherwise principled premierships"

Honestly, Oliver, it's the way you tell 'em!

[antrastan]

Repetition of 'against' in 1 graf inelegant. 'nothing to do' in 8 graf.

[Michael Cross]

Ancient history of course, but as the 1981 coup appears so often on the charge sheet I wonder if there is much evidence to show Londoners really thought they were voting for McIntosh? As I recall, GLC politicians - except, possibly, the incumbent Cutler - were scarcely household names. I suspect we voted Labour in 81 to get him out and give Maggie a slap, not to get any particular candidate in.

m

[PJD]

On what grounds could have Blair expelled Livingstone from the Labour Party before he ran as an independent?

[Oliver Kamm]

Michael, the issue you raise was very much a campaign issue in 1981. It was a mainstay of the Tory campaign, led by the flamboyant self-publicist Horace Cutler, that if Labour won then the hard Left would control the GLC. McIntosh specifically denied that there was a serious prospect of a challenge to his leadership. To the misfortune of Londoners, McIntosh was mistaken. Within 24 hours of the election, Livingstone and his caucus had confirmed Tory propaganda.

The reason Livingstone ought to have been expelled long before the 2000 election was his "bringing the Labour Party into disrepute by behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the party".

[Glyn]

Michael Cross: "Ancient history of course, but as the 1981 coup appears so often on the charge sheet I wonder if there is much evidence to show Londoners really thought they were voting for McIntosh?"

Well, I'm a Londoner who voted in that election for Labour, and Labour again today, and I did so because I trusted McIntosh who was a decent man. If Livingstone had staged his coup d'etat a few days before the election, rather than immediately after, it would have been more honest of him. At the time, I personally felt tricked out of the chance to vote for him or not - that it happened only a couple of days after the vote made it seem even more deliberately mocking of the voters - they were determined not to give McIntosh a chance.

Next time, my memories of the siege of Mafeking.

[PJD]

"bringing the Labour Party into disrepute by behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the party"

You just copied and pasted that from news reports of Galloway's expulsion.

[Gregg]

On what grounds could have Blair expelled Livingstone from the Labour Party before he ran as an independent?

Oh, come on. Thatcherised Stalinists don't need grounds.

[Oliver Kamm]

Excuse me? That's part of Labour's rulebook - and I had understood you'd asked the question and wanted an answer.

[PJD]

Ok, but it is part of the rule book. The only place it is quoted anywhere is to do with the Galloway expulsion.

What did Ken Livingstone exactly do before he ran as an independent that could be construed as bringing the party into disrepute?

[Alan Ji]

I've just learned of the existence of Oliver Kamm by a link from Harry's place. I am concerned that this website stars a quote from the notorious anarchist Noam Chomsky.

Ken Livingstone certainly has his faults, which I would summarise as a reluctance to be a team player unless he is in charge, but he also has considerable achievements to his credit.

London today has record numbers of Police and buses and the most substantial public transport investment programme for two generations.

I have no idea whether the change of GLC Labour Group leader in 1981 (27 years ago!) was a coup. I do know that Labour Groups of Councillors have an AGM after an election, and that election of Group Leader is an item on the agenda!

In the 1980s several London Boroughs were much worse managed than the GLC.

I also have better things to do than to worry about Yusuf Qaradawi. The important international matters that Ken Livingstone has worked on have been inward investment and applying technology to combat climate change.

We wait to find out whether these will continue.

[Michael]

I've just learned of the existence of Oliver Kamm by a link from Harry's place. I am concerned that this website stars a quote from the notorious anarchist Noam Chomsky.

Not half as concerned as Oliver will be about the way you're interpreting this as a signal of support for Chomsky!

To say you're wide of the mark is a bit like calling the Pacific Ocean a mass of water - essentially true, but hopelessly inadequate when it comes to conveying sheer magnitude.

Still, it could be worse - you could have got the David Irving quote.