On Tuesday, March 18, London Mayor Ken Livingstone formally launched his bid for re-election. Much has changed since the man they call ‘Red Ken’ first swept to power in May 2000, having cast off the shackles of New Labour and won the hearts of the capital’s voters as an independent candidate; the intervening eight years have brought both good news for Livingstone (e.g. his triumphant return to Tony Blair’s party in 2004, his successful re-election campaign later that year and the following summer’s announcement that London had won the right to host the 2012 Olympic Games), but there have been plenty of trying, not to mention tragic, times as well.

Most notably among the latter group were the suicide-bomb attacks on the Underground of July 7 and 21, 2005, and the related shooting of an innocent Brazilian electrician named Jean Charles de Menezes. Where the slaying of de Menezes is concerned, Ken’s ongoing support for the embattled Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has drawn criticism from all quarters, while miscellaneous controversy has never strayed too far from the Mayor’s side since he took office, as we shall soon see.

Nevertheless, Livingstone is in a buoyant and pugilistic frame of mind as we approach the May 1 ballot. His campaign has been given a boost by the recent announcement on the part of Sian Berry, the Green Party’s candidate, that she wants her supporters to give him their second preference votes; antithetical to the notion of democracy it may well be, but Berry’s quasi-alliance with the Brownite candidate may well help to keep Ken’s personal belongings in situ at City Hall. (It should be noted that the arrangement is ostensibly reciprocal, but Berry’s championing of Livingstone is likely to have a notably more significant impact upon the election’s outcome than the vice-versa arrangement.)

The incumbent’s chief rival is Boris Johnson, the bumbling-yet-charismatic Tory MP whose semi-regular appearances on BBC One’s Have I Got News for You quiz-show have served to cement his place in the nation’s affections. Part diehard Conservative, part Hugh Grant-esque fop, part blond buffoon and part improbable Casanova, Johnson’s media profile is even higher than that of his mayoral opponent and received wisdom will make it known that, if anyone is capable of upsetting Livingstone’s applecart, it’s the man known to British voters as simply ‘Boris’.

The stage, then, is set for a battle royale of truly epic proportions. In the red corner, we have the old-school Labour scrapper, a savvy politician who was once described by The Sun as “the most odious man in Britain”, with almost a decade’s worth of experience in the contested post; in the blue corner, we have the tousle-haired bumbler, MP for Henley-on-Thames and a man whose marital infidelities have been largely forgiven by the public due to his overabundance of self-deprecating charm. But who is likely to emerge victorious?

(For the purposes of this article, I intend to assess the mayoral race as though it contains only two horses of any real note. It may not be particularly PC of me to take such a stance – ignoring, if only for a moment, the fact that that the ‘C’ part of most ‘PC’ pronouncements is rarely, if ever, applicable – but let’s be realistic. Although many other political groups, from the Lib Dems to the BNP, have put forward candidates for the mayoral election, we live under a Two-Party System and as such it’s a virtual guarantee that the victor will hail from either New Labour or the Conservative Party. Accordingly, to analyse the other nominees’ chances of victory would be little more than a colossal waste of everyone’s time. Democracy? Well, yes, Jim, but not as we’d like to know it…)

To begin with, let’s look at Livingstone’s prognosis. He may have eight years’ worth of experience in the job, but has an ever-growing list of public snafus fatally compromised his chances of winning a third stint in office?

On the one hand, experience is far from the only thing Red Ken has to offer the people of London. Two full terms as Mayor would count for little more than sweet f.a. if he hadn’t amassed a few success stories along the way, and even his harshest detractors wouldn’t try to claim that his tenure at the top has failed to yield some genuinely impressive results.

Take the (then-controversial) centrepiece of his 2000 campaign, for instance: the much-vaunted ‘Congestion Charge’. In a nutshell, Livingstone announced plans to decrease vehicular overcrowding in the capital – thereby reducing both air and noise pollution at the same time – by charging a fee for the privilege of driving around the city centre. His political opponents immediately cried foul, criticising the scheme as unfair, unworkable and unrealistic, but the independent candidate soon had the last laugh.

For the most part, the Congestion Charge has proven to be a vast success, alleviating London’s notorious traffic jams while also improving air quality, shortening journey times and providing the GLA with a ready source of income which they’re legally-required to reinvest in the city’s public transport system. The wily Livingstone was quick to point out that one of the system’s less-obvious benefits was a dramatic (approximately 43%) increase in cycling within the charging zone, the obvious implication being that his brainchild was proving to be good for the citizens’ health: not only was their air cleaner, but the impetus to save money by riding bikes to and from work also provided Londoners with an invaluable exercise regime!

Nor is the Congestion Charge the only feather in Red Ken’s cap after all those years at the top. His return to New Labour in early 2004, just in time to contest the second mayoral election under the rosy-red banner of the government, was a PR triumph which remains unsurpassed in recent British political history; he had taken on the Prime Minister and won, before being allowed to rejoin the fold (albeit begrudgingly) in a tacit endorsement that Blair’s pre-2000 comments, most of which ascribed the appellation “disastrous” to Livingstone’s mooted mayoral bid, were wrong. He was credited in some circles as a major architect of London’s successful quest to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, having spoken eloquently and passionately about the “opportunity for change” represented by the Games (The Observer, January 12, 2003), while his willingness to speak frankly about contentious issues such as racism, homophobia and the 2005 kamikaze bombings have won him much admiration both within the capital and without.

On the other hand, of course, it would be a grievous oversight indeed to ignore the plethora of controversial incidents with which Livingstone has been involved during his time in the spotlight. Even if we restrict our analysis to his post-2000 misdeeds, there are more than enough instances thereof to merit consideration and loan credence to the notion that the contentious leader’s third successive term is far from a done deal.

Some of Red Ken’s alleged ‘transgressions’ amount to little more than PC – there’s that term again! – scaremongering and overreaction, such as his frequent anti-Bush remarks which, it must be noted, have also been voiced by a great many people across the globe; nevertheless, some of his other public pronouncements have been rather more insidious and run the gamut from ill-advised to just plain stupid.

A prime example of the former group can be found in his February 2005 tiff with journalist Oliver Finegold, of the Evening Standard, during which the Mayor compared the unfortunate hack to “a German war criminal” and “a concentration camp guard”, causing some offence to Finegold in the process. It’s not known whether Livingstone was aware of his foil’s Jewish heritage at the time, but it does seem in hindsight as though a rather innocuous and poorly-thought-out epithet was blown out of all proportion by the politician’s multitudinous enemies. Amid all the hoo-hah, Ken’s original point – that Finegold’s techniques of journalistic harassment waylaid personal accountability in favour of the age-old ‘Nuremburg Defence’ – was somehow lost, with the media instead choosing to paint the intransigent MP as an anti-Semitic brute. Predictably enough, Livingstone refused to apologise and was very nearly suspended from office for four weeks as a result, only to be granted an 11th-hour reprieve by the High Court.

Not all of Leninspart’s gaffes have been over-emphasised by the sensationalist British media, however. His half-baked remarks about Islamic suicide bombers in Palestine, during an interview for BBC News Online on July 20, 2005, when he appeared to express some form of understanding of their cause and blamed Western foreign policies for the perpetual upheaval within the Arab world, seemed to represent a ham-fisted attempt to reconcile his old-school ‘liberal’ leanings with his strong condemnation of the 7/7 attacks, while the warm welcome he extended to Islamic hardliner Yusuf al-Qaradawi in July 2004 drew fire from former ally Peter Tatchell as well as other parties opposed to the bigoted, fundamentalist zealot’s presence in the UK.

Furthermore, despite his highly-publicised split from New Labour in 2000 after he’d failed to secure the Party’s nomination for the first mayoral ballot – courtesy of a dubious selection process which pinned the red rosette to the chest of then-Health Secretary Frank Dobson – Livingstone displayed a decidedly Blairite knack for cronyism during his first term in office, and the £70,000 or so of public money he spent on installing a cabal of special advisers at City Hall certainly looked like an attempt to undermine the (democratically-elected) London Assembly.

Red Ken’s case for re-election is far from airtight, then, but Boris’s own prospects are hardly rock-solid, either. Let’s turn our attention to the Johnson campaign and assess the Tory man’s chances of sweeping to power in little over a month’s time.

On the plus side, Boris’s media-friendly nature and loveable buffoonery stand in stark contrast to Livingstone’s bullish, no-nonsense approach. In an era which increasingly emphasises personality over politics, this can only help the Tory candidate in his bid to unseat Ken; furthermore, despite his relative inexperience when it comes to out-and-out leadership roles, Johnson himself is no spring chicken. He has seven years’ service to the people of Henley-on-Thames to his name, having been elected as the constituency’s MP in June 2001, and spent six years as editor of The Spectator between 1999 and 2005. Other titles he has held include Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts and Shadow Minister for Higher Education, while his academic credentials include spells at both Eton College and Oxford University. An ungainly oaf he may occasionally be, then, but New Labour bigwigs will dismiss his intelligence and aptitude at their peril.

It’s true that inexperience is the most significant chink in Boris’s armour – after all, impressive though his résumé is, being an MP and a shadow minister is hardly analogous to being Mayor of London – but everyone has to start somewhere and it would be unrealistic for the capital’s voters to expect all their candidates to have direct familiarity with the running of their city. Besides, he has already promised to leave Parliament if he is elected, leaving him free to focus solely upon learning the proverbial ropes at City Hall.

Every coin has a flipside, though, and in many ways Johnson’s is as tarnished as those belonging to the rest of his parliamentary peer-group. Marital infidelity? Check! Dubious public pronouncements, leading to widespread chastisement and feet-in-mouth apologies? You bet! Occasionally-crass behaviour which would make most schizophrenics blush with embarrassment? Why, yes!

As with Livingstone’s experiences, several of the incidents for which Boris is best-known were, in hindsight grossly over-exaggerated by pious and egocentric individuals with their own axes to grind. The infamous Kenneth Bigley/Spectator farrago is one such example.

In October 2004, soon after British hostage Kenneth Bigley was brutally executed by his captors in Iraq, The Spectator published an editorial comment which excoriated the mawkish over-sentimentality to which the British are undeniably prone. Although the piece was somewhat insensitive and ill-timed, the ensuing furore swiftly surpassed any semblance of rhyme or reason. As editor of the journal – although not, it must be noted, the author of the article in question – Johnson was promptly sent on a ‘tour of contrition’ to Bigley’s hometown of Liverpool, which had been singled out for particular criticism by the writer; the man responsible for this PR showpiece was then-Tory leader Michael Howard, a master of superficial political opportunism if ever there was one, and his selfish agenda-driven actions kept the story on the front pages for far longer than reality necessitated.

Somewhat more legitimate examples of Boris’s loose lips sinking ships, so to speak, include his casual use of the racial epithet “piccaninnies”, during the course of a Daily Telegraph column in early 2002, and his apparent involvement in an inchoate assault case involving his former Oxford schoolmate – not to mention convicted fraudster – Darius Guppy. (A telephone conversation between Johnson and Guppy was recorded by security expert Peter Risdon, during which the MP agreed to provide his friend with the address of a News of the World journalist; the poor scribe was due to be beaten up by another of Guppy’s associates, apparently for the heinous sin of knowing too much about the conman’s affairs.)

There we have it: one election and two (genuine) candidates, each bearing a handful of ‘pros’ and roughly the same number of ‘cons’.

In terms of the campaign itself, a crucial battleground at the time of writing seems to be that of environmentalism. Boris’s alleged lack of environmental credentials appear to be the reason behind Sian Berry’s endorsement of Red Ken, with both candidates decrying Johnson’s dearth of eco-friendly ideas; for his part, Johnson has dismissed these comments and promised to “launch [his] environment manifesto shortly, which will include a number of fresh and innovative ideas for making the capital cleaner and greener.”

Negative politics aside, Ken’s electoral strategy includes hiring 1,000 more police officers and building 50,000 affordable homes, as well as improving bus, rail and Tube transportation “while holding down fares”. (Speaking as a former resident of London, the last part seems somewhat disingenuous to me: Tube fares, at least, have risen dramatically under his two regimes to date.) He wants to bring 20mph speed-limits to residential areas and increase the Congestion Charge to £25 per day for those who drive the most ecologically-offensive conveyances, while he is also looking to purloin the Parisian policy of cheap bicycle hire for Londoners.

Boris, in turn, has been busy trumpeting his own initiatives. These encompass anti-crime measures, starting with low-level disorder such as fare evasion and unruly behaviour on public transport; scrapping the widely-loathed ‘bendy buses’ in favour of the old Routemaster vehicles, which can then be run on environmentally-friendly fuel as well as being made more accessible to disabled commuters; easing the inconvenient impact of frequent Tube strikes upon the general population by coming to a mutually-acceptable deal with union leaders; and scrapping Ken’s self-indulgent £1m p.a. newsletter, The Londoner, before using the saved funds to plant 10,000 extra trees throughout the city.

Meanwhile, finance-related accusations against Livingstone, which initially threatened to derail his campaign, have been investigated by the Electoral Commission following complaints by Tory MP Greg Hands. After looking into the matter, the Commission found that there was no case to answer on the Mayor’s part, although it did recommend that New Labour “change its fundraising terminology to… avoid any misunderstanding” about the purpose for which Red Ken’s solicited donations would be used.

The final question, then, is this: were I a gambling man, upon whom would I place my hard-earned money? Although the playing-field seems to be almost incredibly even at the moment, I’d probably have a flutter on Big Blond Boris; after eight years of Red Ken, Londoners must surely be happy for a change and recent opinion polls suggest that even the Green Party/New Labour juggernaut will have a hard time beating Johnson to the coveted mayoralty come May 1. Assuming, that is, the charismatic klutz can keep his mouth closed in the meantime…

 

PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY ADRIAN PINGSTONE AND RELEASED INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.