Dave Hill's Big Britain

Ten Reasons Why I Want Ken Livingstone To Win

Hello, dear reader. Are you an undecided London voter? Are you a Green Party or Liberal Democrat supporter but can't decide how to cast your all-important "second preference" vote for London mayor today? If you are such a person, I urge you to give your first or your second preference vote to the Labour candidate Ken Livingstone and neither of them to the Conservative Boris Johnson. I've set my reasons out below.

During the weeks of the election campaign that's eaten my life I’ve striven to be fair to Boris Johnson. There was, though, never much chance I’d vote for him. That said, I’ve also been testing my loyalty to Ken Livingstone. I believe his various critics, including those with roots on the Left, have over-spun or overstated their cases against him, but that isn’t to say they lack all force. There’s also the question of how much difference a change of mayor would really make.

On the day campaigning officially began I argued that the job description and moderate content of Johnson’s stated polices meant that many of the differences were less of Big Ideas than emphasis. This wasn’t what Team Ken wanted to hear, as it made clear in a letter The Guardian published the following day: its job from the off has been to sharpen the contrast in substance – of both policy and pedigree – between the two men; Johnson’s, in keeping with David Cameron’s approach, has been to position himself just enough to the blue side of the incumbent to mobilise Tory support without confirming suspicions that he’s daft and extreme.

But though the choice between the two was not as stark as their media images suggested, there was no doubt they were there. The thing was to clarify and quantify them. I’ve done my best and now feel I can vote for Livingstone with conviction. Here are ten reasons why.

One: Livingstone Has Better Policies

Brian Paddick has made the best arguments about policing, but that’s not the comparison that counts. And while Johnson has made the most noise about crime and antisocial behaviour and Livingstone has sometimes looked complacent about it, The Blond isn’t offering more than the Labour man. He’s spoken of “zero tolerance” but its virtues are contested, and his support for ending police accountability with regard to stop-and-search and references to “political correctness” are worrying.

On housing, there is evidence that Livingstone’s determination to force London’s boroughs into line – Tory ones especially - over increasing the numbers of affordable homes can be counter-productive. By contrast, Johnson says that by “working with” the boroughs he can achieve the same total. But if Tory boroughs declined to build their share, would Mayor Johnson use his powers to persuade them? He hasn’t said. And while it might be alarmist to claim that his policies would result in the further concentration of the poorest Londoners in the poorest parts of town, such a trend can’t be ruled out. What’s more, to take advantage of his First Steps home ownership scheme would need an income of £60,000 a year. Four fifths of London households need not apply.

Johnson’s policies on the environment are tailored to parochial, suburban interests. There’s nothing wrong with that if those interests are virtuous, but a world city like London should be leading the fight against climate change. Livingstone’s larger schemes have been damned as costly gestures for limited returns, but Johnson’s plans don’t promise greater ones. And on transport, where the mayor’s powers are greatest, it’s been no contest: Livingstone has beaten Johnson hands down.

In conclusion, Livingstone is decisively better than Johnson in some key policy areas and where isn’t, he is safer. And if you think my general conclusion betrays a blind pro-Ken bias, check the Ken-hating Evening Standard’s assessments. Even it doesn't favour Boris over Ken on the whole.

Two: Livingstone Has Made The Best Joke

It happened last Friday morning. A caller to Vanessa Feltz’s Radio London show asked the three main candidates which Shakespeare character they most resembled. Livingstone, self-mocking, chose Julius Caesar. Johnson said Pericles. Much has been made of Johnson’s admiration for the great Athenian leader of that name. Embarrassingly for the classicist, Shakespeare wrote about a different Pericles. Livingstone, often derided as an unBritish philistine, spotted this. Johnson, graciously, acknowledged his mistake. Talk then turned to the Sun’s endorsement of the Tory candidate. Johnson expressed his gratitude for this. “Oh Boris,” quipped Ken, “that was before they heard your mistake about Pericles.”

Three: Brian Paddick & His Partner

The Liberal Democrat, as we all know, is gay. His partner has sometimes accompanied him on the campaign, though being careful to avoid photographers. A charming man, he linked up with Paddick on the day I joined him on the trail for votes. Some images stay with you: the pair of them shuffling onto a tube carriage together at Southwark station and later walking, heads together, through the streets of Marylebone at dusk. Gay men feel less fear on the streets of London than they did 25 years ago. As leader of the GLC, Livingstone fought for gay and other minority rights in the teeth of often vicious opposition. Such things shouldn’t be forgotten.

Four: Livingstone Is A Better Politician

Politics is about winning arguments. Livingstone has yet to lose one with an electorate and has won big ones against Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. London needs a good arguer. Could Mayor Johnson outmanoeuvre such enemies as effectively? Could he arrive at settlements with others who are not natural allies? He has his charms, but I have my doubts.

Five: London Needs To Be Bossed From The Centre

People say Livingstone’s a megalomaniac whose regime is too centralised and lacks accountability. The Lee Jasper affair is cited as proof. But though Jasper’s behaviour reflects badly – just how badly, we’ve yet to learn – on Livingstone’s administration if take a step back you find an institutional problem. It’s not the only one with the GLA arrangement and agencies under mayoral influence. Would a Mayor Johnson correct this? His accountability manifesto makes promises and contains some good ideas, but there’s nothing very definite in there. He also talks about devolving power to the boroughs, but would that improve the capital’s governance? Tristam Hunt says history suggests otherwise. A renewed Livingstone mayoralty on its best behaviour is a safer bet than a Johnson one whose key personnel he has yet to reveal.

Six: Livingstone Is A Better Leader

Think about it.

Seven: The Evening Standard Will Be Gutted If Livingstone Wins

Not every aspect of the Standard’s mayoral coverage has been shamelessly, sometimes hilariously, anti-Ken, but the highest profile stuff has. How much difference has this made? Judging that is as difficult as predicting the result, but Londoners have deserved better from the capital’s sole paid-for title. There’s a media studies course in the worst of it: selective reporting, misleading headlines, photographs chosen to send damning signals, the works. Johnson has criticised Livingstone’s free paper The Londoner as Pyongyang style propaganda. But at times, the Standard has resembled Pravda.

Eight: The Tories Don’t Really Deserve To Win

Boris Johnson has gone up in my estimation during the campaign (and no doubt he is weak with gratitude for this). He’s worked hard to master his brief, engaged with people and problems he’s never bothered with before and been obliged to recognise that opinions that amuse the readerships of the Telegraph and Spectator can cause deep hurt and damage elsewhere. He’s an intelligent and approachable man. But we all know he wouldn’t be in the race at all were he not famous from the telly. Livingstone, of course, is a celebrity too, but his fame is rooted in what he has achieved in politics. By comparison, Johnson is famous for being well known. Whatever his virtues, a victory for Johnson will be a victory for the politics of personality. He has no record in the politics of London. By contrast...

Nine: Livingstone Knows More Of London And Londoners

Experience matters. So does empathy. While it is true that a fresh face can bring fresh energy and ideas, I’ve been moved by some of Livingstone’s engagements with people on the streets, especially in the inner boroughs: there’s a depth of connection there and a store of knowledge – about neighbourhoods, about people, about the nuts-and-bolts of local government – that it’s hard to imagine Johnson ever matching. You feel you could put Livingstone in most London living rooms and he’d be able to hold a proper conversation. With Johnson, for all his affability, that’s much more difficult.

Ten: We Can’t Be Sure What A Mayor Johnson Would Do

I sympathise to some extent with Team Boris’s close policing of their boy. Hacks love a gaffe and Boris says things that hacks think qualify when quite often they don’t. Also, I haven’t been convinced by claims that behind the clown’s mask, a Bullingdon Beast or swivel-eyed Thatcherite waits to emerge – for one thing, I don’t think Dave would be too pleased. Yet Thatcher’s winning 1979 campaign contained little hint of the reckless arrogance that followed. And the problem with Johnson is that it’s hard to know exactly how he would behave if installed in City Hall. A model of visionary delegation or of muddle and drift, with a team of aides whose identities he feels unable to reveal going about their business much as they pleased?

At best, a Johnson mayoralty could be energetic, innovative and exemplify in different ways the urban liberalism that Livingstone has fostered and that Cameronian Conservatism has sought to accommodate. At worst, it could be sloppy, stingy, neglectful of London’s ground-in inequality and indulgent of the worst suburban suspicions and snobberies. Many Londoners have yet to decide which way they will vote. With Livingstone, they know what they’ll be getting and they’ve been grateful for most of it before. Johnson is a risk I'd prefer they didn't take.

Also at Comment is Free and Liberal Conspiracy.

An Encounter With Boris Johnson

Read - and hear - all about it here.

London Mayoral Campaign

The reasons I've not posted here for several days - unusual for me - are that readers have been having such fun discussing the teaching of - or teaching about - patriotism and that I've been totally preoccupied with London matters, both on my local blog and with the London mayoralty campaign.

Last Thursday I went inside City Hall, headquarters of the Greater London Authority, for the first time and watched a bruising two-and-a-half hour encounter between the present mayor and opposition members of the London Assembly. The latter were questioning him over allegations of cronyism, corruption and inefficiency made in the Evening Standard. It was fiery, funny, fascinating and confirmed if nothing else that Livingstone is far cleverer than his elected tormentors, dominating the proceedings so completely I wondered if the GLA ought to be renamed the Greater Livingstone Authority.

As for the Standard, I've long since renamed it elsewhere the Evening Boris so frantic is it to unseat "Red Ken". Whatever the true substance of their allegations, their reporting of them and all else regarding Livingstone is so poisonously biased it makes me laugh out loud. And whatever Livingstone's failings I confess to finding his readiness - his eagerness, indeed - to give the Standard the finger exhilarating, given the routine willingness of Labour's national leadership to appease the right-wing press. Read my account of Thursday dust-up and reading of its deeper meaning below. My previous Guardian pieces on the mayoralty are here and here, and I've also a separate blog dedicated to tracking the campaign.

"Last night I went to City Hall on the banks of the Thames to watch Ken Livingstone and his critics at war. Next time this happens, try to be there. For passion and persistence, furious attack and subtle defence, it made Fabio's boys efforts look very tame. The occasion was an Extraordinary Meeting of the London Assembly, the elected body charged with holding London's mayor to account. Its powers are puny, the roles of its members performed, in many cases, when they aren't doing their proper jobs. For its non-Labour majority, emptying bins in Catford would be a more rewarding civic service. They say the Mayor routinely wipes the floor with them. Yesterday was their chance to even the score.

Dispatches & The War On Ken

My latest for The Guardian:

"After much trailing and leaking, Martin Bright's investigation of the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, went out on Channel 4 last night in defiance of its subject's futile demand that it be shelved on grounds of partiality. 'The Court Of Ken' was the latest in a long line of attacks on Livingstone and his regime, most of them launched by the Evening Standard, whose reporting of the 2008 mayoral campaign so far has, predictably, been so skewed it almost defies parody.

The Dispatches programme had more going for it than that, as I'd hoped. I've no reason to doubt that Martin - New Statesman's political editor and one of my Facebook friends - is still the good guy and diligent journalist he was when he worked for the Guardian. Yet parts of it displayed the same faults daily exemplified by the capital's one-eyed tabloid: much digging for not much gold and an undue interest in personalities at the expense of perspective and even-handed coverage of the issues Londoners and others need to better understand before the election on May 1.

Crime In London: What The Candidates Claim

My piece for The Guardian yesterday:

Crime is the politician's most flexible friend - or foe. No issue is more conducive to the stirring of mob feeling, to the converting of bleak emotions into votes. No statistics are more amenable to distortion by scuffling office-seekers as those compiled on villainy. With law and order topping Londoners' list of anxieties, a repertoire of evasions and misrepresentations has already been deployed in the dust-up over who'll be the capital's mayor. Leading candidates have been up to no good. Should you buy a crime policy from any of them?

My London Blog

It's still extremely basic, but it's got lots of stuff about the campaign for London Mayor. My latest post starts as follows:

Lovely item posted yesterday by Evening Boris City Hall editor Ross Lydall on his blog. Let's savour it, line-by-line:

"Taking the Tube to City Hall this morning, I finally found time to read the 'official' report into the investigation by Andrew Gilligan about the misuse of public funds by organisations linked to mayoral aide Lee Jasper."
Note those insinuating quotation marks around the word "official".

Trying to tell us something, are we Ross?

Now read on.

The Ken & Boris Show

My latest for The Guardian:

There came the first TV debate, resounding with cheap shots in a cheap set. Then came the debate about the debate, filling the vacancy where – I hope – vision and policy will be. Ken himself wielded the first knife, shanking Boris in the BBC London corridor and posting the assault on YouTube within hours. His message: The Blond is an airhead, acting fun but fighting dirty. He has a point. Boris recited the One Love/One London platitude he’s learned, and the plethora of black and brown blue rosette-wearers in the activist audience confirmed he’s recognised the need for urgent surgery to that part of his persona. But mostly he heckled and jibed and played Lynton Crosby’s cards, dog whistling on teen homicides and public transport assaults while avoiding the bigger picture about crime – currently Londoners’ top concern.

Boris v Ken v Brian

Apparently...

"One candidate had the passion, the charisma and the jokes. One had the style. The third at times appeared an angry old man whose references to Margaret Thatcher marked him from a bygone era."

That's Boris Johnson who was brilliant. That's Ken Livingstone who's yesterday's man. Not a surprising verdict on last night's London mayoralty debate in ITV London coming from the London Evening Standard, which might as well relaunch itself as the Evening Boris. It's a dying newspaper. What's to lose?

I've just watched my recording of the debate. To be fair to the ES, Brian ("the style") Paddick was polished and will have won new friends. Johnson, though, demonstrated his weaknesses as clearly as his assets. His "passion" was often bonkers bluster, his jokes will have pleased his fans but they were cheap ones. True, Livingstone looked riled at times, but it was clear Johnson had come to rough him up, egged on by studio supporters who looked hand-picked to protest their candidate's comfort with London's ethnic diversity - bit of damage-limitation needed there.

Livingstone & Olympic Legacy

Ken Livingstone has published five legacy commitments by which he will judge the success of 2012. They are:

1. Increasing opportunities for Londoners to become involved in sport. 2. Ensuring Londoners benefit from new jobs, business and volunteering opportunities. 3. Transforming the heart of East London. 4. Delivering a sustainable Games and developing sustainable communities. 5. Showcasing London as a diverse, creative and welcoming city.

Now read on. I know I will be.

Sir Ian Blair

London's police chief faces a no confidence vote at the Metropolitan Police Authority meeting today. The odds are that he'll survive, though Paul Linford thinks he should go.

"To base one’s view of this matter on the internal political ramifications for the Met, or even on the ramifications for policing in London, is to lose sight of a much more important issue of principle - the fact that restoring trust in public life requires that those at the top start taking responsiblity for their actions. Sir Ian Blair’s removal - and in my view it’s a matter of when, not if - may well result in him being replaced by a more conservative figure - a 'copper’s copper' as they are known in the shorthand. But if that helps restore a culture of accountability to our public life, it will ultimately be a larger victory for the liberal-left."

I respect Paul's view. But as Peter Wilby points out:

"Blair has tried to bring a degree of social and racial justice to London's policing. This, according to the press, is 'political'. Police chiefs who are unusually keen to stop reckless motorists endangering life are also 'political' and even 'fanatical' and, therefore, fit to be compared with the Taliban. Conventional demands for tougher laws and longer sentences against yobs and burglars, on the other hand, are non-political. Hence, Blair, unlike other police chiefs who make mistakes (or preside over mistakes by their officers), is fair game."

Of course, there are other, less progressive, aspects to Blair's leadership - supporting longer detention-without-charge, for instance. I'm still torn on the issue. What I am clear about is that if he survives I'll enjoy watching his hard right opponents seethe.

P.S. What a hoot to see Telegraph thread seethers heaping scorn on William Bratton for saying Blair should stay. Bratton, of course, was New York's police chief under Giuliani's vaunted "zero tolerance" policy and has become a poster boy for Telegraph columnist Janet Daley, she who is forever chortling at "liberal" law and order remedies. Tee hee.