Originally Posted by
The Economist
The chancer
Jan 11th 2007
From The Economist print edition
London's mayor, Ken Livingstone is a serial risk-taker. He may have taken one too many
Steve O'Brien
IS THERE a more enduringly interesting politician in Britain than Ken Livingstone, London's mayor? Tony Blair has his moments, but in comparison with Mr Livingstone, he and Gordon Brown seem straightforward to the point of dullness. As for David Cameron, it is absurd to think of putting him in the same category as a man who first ran London when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and the Tory leader was a teenager.
Unusually for a city mayor, Mr Livingstone conducts his own foreign policy. This weekend he will host a conference entitled “A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations”. It will ponder such issues as “counter-terrorism and torture”, “democratic solutions for the Middle East” (Mr Livingstone looks forward to seeing the Saudi royal family “swinging from lamp posts”) and whether there is such a thing as “progressive colonialism”.
This comes a few weeks after Mr Livingstone's announcement that London will mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution with street parties and a celebration of Fidel Castro's life in Trafalgar Square, all funded by the mayor's office. Meanwhile, Mr Livingstone's officials are hammering out a deal with a more recent Latin American hero, Hugo Chávez, to secure Venezuelan oil for London's buses in exchange for “consultancy services”. Mr Chávez recognised a kindred spirit following Mr Livingstone's remark a little while ago that there was no greater threat to humanity on the planet than President George Bush.
If that were all there was to Mr Livingstone, he would not twice have been elected London's mayor. But he has the ability to combine the views of a bedsit revolutionary with pragmatism, guile and rare political boldness.
In introducing the congestion charge to central London in 2003, he demonstrated all three qualities. Intensely controversial at the time, it was implemented flawlessly and appeared to achieve its aims of reducing traffic and generating funds for more buses. Even this newspaper, which dislikes most of Mr Livingstone's views, endorsed him for a second term in 2004.
Although The Economist was less enthusiastic about London's winning bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, nobody could deny that it too was a triumph for the mayor. Swallowing his hatred of competitive sport, Mr Livingstone seized upon the opportunity to use the games to regenerate a large swathe of east London. He was also partly responsible for talking up what may have been the biggest single reason for the victory over Paris—London's cultural diversity. And cleverly, Mr Livingstone looks to have succeeded in limiting the cost for Londoners to a 38p-a- week “precept” on their council tax, dumping the rest of the escalating expense in the lap of central government.
Once a pariah in New Labour circles, Mr Livingstone, for all his embarrassing eccentricities and the hatreds he still inspires (not least in the unforgiving breast of Gordon Brown), is now seen as a success. So much so that the government is pushing through Parliament a bill that will greatly increase the mayor's powers over planning and housing at the expense of London's boroughs. In effect, Mr Livingstone will become a virtually unaccountable one-man planning committee for London—a “municipal Bonaparte” according to appalled Tories, who point to the mayor's cosy relationships with property developers.
But as Mr Livingstone prepares to campaign for a third term next year, he may be losing his touch. This month 33% fare rises on London's buses and tubes were announced by Transport for London (TFL), a body controlled by Mr Livingstone, making them the most expensive capital-city fares in the world. The money is to pay interest on the bonds sold by TFL to finance what some consider to be a reckless expansion of bus services.
Next month Mr Livingstone will more than double the congestion-charge zone by extending it westwards. He has pushed this through in the face of local opposition and the warnings of his advisers that the revenues raised by the extension will not cover the costs of running it. There is also confusion about what it's for. Congestion is a problem on only 5% of the new zone's roads. So cutting environmental pollution has become a major objective of the scheme, with charges based on engine size due to be introduced in 2009—which raises the question of why poorer, more polluted east London is not to be similarly blessed.
There is disillusion too about increasing journey times in the original zone even though the charge was raised to £8 ($15.50). The reason is that Mr Livingstone has grabbed road space for pedestrians by paving over Trafalgar Square, artificially restricting road widths and re-sequencing traffic lights across the capital. Even the mayor's buses travel at little more than walking speed.
Over the rainbow
Mr Livingstone may feel he can ignore the mainly Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters of west London, but he has recently taken an even bigger risk with his “rainbow” electoral coalition of gays, feminists, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and secularists by sucking up to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim theologian.
Mr Qaradawi, whom Mr Livingstone lauds as the “leader of a great world religion”, supports the murder of Israeli children by Palestinian terrorists, praises female genital mutilation and thinks that homosexuals deserve to die. However, Mr Livingstone is convinced that, just as he was right to want to engage with an IRA that was bombing London in the 1980s, he is right now to seek an accommodation with radical Islam.
For all his political gifts and (to some) charm, Mr Livingstone should be beatable next year. It is by no means all his fault, but since he became mayor, booming London has become a less pleasant and more stressful place to live. Such is his reputation, however, that the Tories are struggling to find a credible candidate to field against him. Repulsive and brilliant in equal measure, he is the great survivor of British politics.
Ken Livingstone Plans 'massive festival' in celebration of Castro!
i would expect nothing less from the traitor red ken.
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