My fellow Blogger has posted his thoughts on yesterday's Local Elections in the UK, and has unsurprisingly focused on the London Mayoral Elections, which seem to be the single bright spot in an otherwise fairly dismal picture for the Coalition. More on the wider ramifications, which are a direct result of the questionable Budget on which I posted what seems like an eon ago, later in the week, but it's perhaps worth considering the scale of the Johnson achievement, which comes in the shadow of A:/ A pretty dire performance by the Conservatives within London even in the 2010 Elections where they were the largest party and B:/ In the face of National polling data which has seen even the much-maligned Ed Miliband presiding over a 13 point (at maximum) poll Lead, which has led even Erstwhile and somewhat tiresome Former Statesman blogger Dan Hodges to damn him with faint praise. ( 9.30pm London time: Warning - Lest I speak too soon - It appears the result is considerably tighter than predicted - it looks like it will go right to the wire. However, the basic critique remains valid although were Livingstone to win the ramifications for those unfortunate enough to live in London would require a separate post)
As my colleague has pointed out, anyone wanting to see the scale of Ken's achievement in managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of what would have seemed certain victory need only follow Andrew Gilligan's blog in the Telegraph which gives an almost daily dose of bile for those able to stomach it. This has been derided on the Left as a 'smear campaign' which given the outrageous calumnies against Boris seen almost Daily on Twitter suggests either a distinct lack of Irony or failure to take account of the phrase beloved of the late Peter Cook, 'Mote and Beam , sir, Mote and Beam' (Based on the Biblical quotation from Matthew 7:3)
'Why beholdest thou the mote that is in your brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye'
A quote the increasingly desperate bloggers such as Owen Jones and Sunny Hundal (who appear willing to forgive almost any outrage if it gets a Labour victory) would do well to bear in mind. One can only imagine the reaction had Johnson made some of the verbal gaffes that Ken had. Who can forget this classic piece from the Ultra Left Compass think tank which would have touched the heart of the Late Joseph Goebbels with its use of selective quotations, dissimulation, out of context quotations and innuendoes back when Johnson first became a mayoral candidate in 2007? Given the state of the election, I'm surprised this wasn't used as a Bible for journalists to attack him!
As Hal points out, Livingstone's failure will have almost zero ramifications for Ed Miliband - he's considered as much a maverick by many across the political spectrum as was George Galloway, and if anything, I think Miliband will benefit from having, as far as possible kept a discreet distance from his candidate's antics.
So, what is the secret to Johnson's success?:
1/ He has kept a relatively Low profile throughout the campaign - A Savvy campaigner who since an unsuccessful bid for Parliament back in 1997 has an excellent track record, I think he quickly evaluated that Ken would do himself enough damage that his best bet was to keep quiet and leave discussion until the debate, where the visceral mutual loathing would do as much damage to Ken's campaign as to his. This lack of gaffes (and he has a track record here in terms of putting his foot in his mouth as anyone from the Liverpool area will testify) served only to magnify Ken's errors.
2/ The Labour Party managed to hang itself with a singularly unsuccessful and arguably the weakest candidate they could possibly have put in the field. Anyone who has lived under Ken and who worked in the Private Sector would have had no difficulty remembering Ken's record, which was to introduce huge tax rises with almost nothing in return except for a regular diet of Political propaganda, and procure contracts for his political cronies at, again , great expense to the taxpayer. His much-vaunted congestion charge merely had the effect of shifting commuter traffic outside the zone and made private motor transport the preserve of the rich. It is very hard to conceive of a single positive aspect to his period as mayor and suffice it to say, although I had fled London to the West of England by that point, the celebrations which followed Johnson's victory led to a less than productive Friday. Had Oona King been selected as candidate, given here popularity with Ethnic minorities and women, it would have been a tall order for Boris, even with a considerable cult 'Personal' following to overcome her.
3/ Although Boris has arguably been less effective than many hoped, he does possess a certain charm that sets him apart from the Coalition - various appearances on Have I Got News for You combined with a carefully cultivated image as a shambling , quasi-cartoonish character has done much to negate the 'Tory contamination' that has affected almost the entire rest of the coalition and gives him a certain cachet amongst the apolitical voters especially. This, combined with his relatively calm persona in the face of quite vicious hatchet jobs from the Left has done a great deal to provide a personal bounce factor which has negated the otherwise dire Poll ratings for the Tories. By contrast, as I have pointed out to Hal, Ken's ruthless 'coalition-building' and effective use of Private Sector workers as cash cows for his political projects has led to an 'Anti-Ken' coalition (No prizes for guessing I was a member) of people who vote for anyone but Ken. Although many have left London for pastures new, I'd say only the BNP has a more polarising impact than that man.
(Update 10pm London Time - the last few thousand ballots are having to be counted by hand due to a failure of the counting machines, Don't you just love modern technology?)
Showing posts with label Ken Livingstone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ken Livingstone. Show all posts
04 May 2012
03 May 2012
Updated thoughts on today's elections
With many people going to the polls today for the local elections, I thought I'd update my previous advice on the London mayoral race, as well as offering a few predictions of what's going to happen on Friday.
It seems to me that Ken is probably going to lose - which has very little to do with his policy platform, but is rather a combination of two personality-based factors: (1) Boris Johnson appears to have a certain buffoonish appeal to a swathe of voters that disconnects him from national dislike of the Tories, and (2) a proportion of (people who would otherwise be) Labour voters are turned off by Ken to the extent that they won't vote for him.
The 'Boris factor' would probably give Boris a certain boost no matter who he was running against, while the 'Ken factor' would depress Ken's ratings no matter who he was running against. But it's the combination of the two that proves deadly to Ken's chances.
This suggests that Labour would be doing better with another candidate - one with less baggage - and I think that's the case. Oona King, for example, would probably have been in front at this stage, and Boris contemplating a return to Westminster.
The "tax avoider" slur, in particular, has hit Ken really hard. There is some truth in it - to the extent that everyone who sets up a company and pays themselves partially in dividends (which don't attract National Insurance liabilities in the way earnings do) is a tax avoider. In other words Ken is doing the same thing that millions of other people who are self-employed do - paying a lower tax rate than employed people. It's worth noting that even if he were registered as a self-employed sole trader rather than a company, he'd still be paying less tax than if he were an employee, because self-employed National Insurance is considerably lower than employee plus employer rates. In his current employment situation, the only way Ken could pay tax rates equal to what he'd pay as an employee is if he paid out all the income from his company (Silveta) as his earnings rather than dividends. But this logic would suggest that anyone who takes dividends rather than earnings is a tax avoider - so the Tories are left arguing the Marxist line that the return to capital from the production process should essentially be zero, and the return to labour should be 100%. It's a funny old world. Of course, if we had a system which was neutral between the taxation of earnings and dividends, then this issue wouldn't arise. But there you go.
My previous post indicated that if I were in London I wouldn't vote Ken. That's still true on first preferences, but on second preferences, with the race so close, I think I'd have to put him second, despite my misgivings. The guy is severely flawed, but at the end of the day, the priority is to keep Boris out. My first preference would be for Jenny Jones of the Greens.
My predictions overall are for Labour to get around 500 seats, for Ken to lose, and for Labour to lose Glasgow council to the SNP. The latter two will be treated as calamitous by the Blairites in the media (Wintour and Watt, Rentoul, Dan Hodges etc.) who have had thin pickings for their "Ed is crap" campaign of late; but the fallout from London and Glasgow is unlikely to damage Ed, simply because he's had little to do with either fiasco. Ken Livingstone was chosen as the London mayoral candidate before Ed even became Labour leader, and his poll slide is the result largely of unforced errors by Ken himself, coupled with a hugely hostile media - nothing to do with Ed. Similiarly, although I am no expert on Scottish local politics, as far as I can tell the Glasgow problem is also a result of serious problems in the local Glasgow Labour party which are very much below Ed's pay grade. I mean, if the loss to the SNP in the Scottish Parliamentary elections last year didn't result in a putsch against Ed - at a point where Labour was doing much worse in the polls than it is now - it's hardly likely that Glasgow council elections are going to precipitate some kind of uprising now, is it?
I also predict that any fillip to Cameron from a Johnson win will be short-lived - the Johnson/Livingstone duel is a one-off, with no real relevance to national politics except that it establishes Johnson as a formidable operator and campaigner who will move one step closer to being the next leader. But that factor could weaken Cameron in the long run a lot more than it helps him. If Dave looks like a surefire loser in 2015 we can expect to see Boris campaign for a parliamentary seat in the May 2015 election (amazingly, the Mayor is allowed to serve as an MP at the same time, as long as it's for no more than 6 months), get elected and then resign the mayoralty to stand for Tory leader. And given the collection of duffers currently jockeying for position in the Cabinet, it seems unlikely he won't get it, should he want it. Interesting times indeed.
It seems to me that Ken is probably going to lose - which has very little to do with his policy platform, but is rather a combination of two personality-based factors: (1) Boris Johnson appears to have a certain buffoonish appeal to a swathe of voters that disconnects him from national dislike of the Tories, and (2) a proportion of (people who would otherwise be) Labour voters are turned off by Ken to the extent that they won't vote for him.
The 'Boris factor' would probably give Boris a certain boost no matter who he was running against, while the 'Ken factor' would depress Ken's ratings no matter who he was running against. But it's the combination of the two that proves deadly to Ken's chances.
This suggests that Labour would be doing better with another candidate - one with less baggage - and I think that's the case. Oona King, for example, would probably have been in front at this stage, and Boris contemplating a return to Westminster.
The "tax avoider" slur, in particular, has hit Ken really hard. There is some truth in it - to the extent that everyone who sets up a company and pays themselves partially in dividends (which don't attract National Insurance liabilities in the way earnings do) is a tax avoider. In other words Ken is doing the same thing that millions of other people who are self-employed do - paying a lower tax rate than employed people. It's worth noting that even if he were registered as a self-employed sole trader rather than a company, he'd still be paying less tax than if he were an employee, because self-employed National Insurance is considerably lower than employee plus employer rates. In his current employment situation, the only way Ken could pay tax rates equal to what he'd pay as an employee is if he paid out all the income from his company (Silveta) as his earnings rather than dividends. But this logic would suggest that anyone who takes dividends rather than earnings is a tax avoider - so the Tories are left arguing the Marxist line that the return to capital from the production process should essentially be zero, and the return to labour should be 100%. It's a funny old world. Of course, if we had a system which was neutral between the taxation of earnings and dividends, then this issue wouldn't arise. But there you go.
My previous post indicated that if I were in London I wouldn't vote Ken. That's still true on first preferences, but on second preferences, with the race so close, I think I'd have to put him second, despite my misgivings. The guy is severely flawed, but at the end of the day, the priority is to keep Boris out. My first preference would be for Jenny Jones of the Greens.
My predictions overall are for Labour to get around 500 seats, for Ken to lose, and for Labour to lose Glasgow council to the SNP. The latter two will be treated as calamitous by the Blairites in the media (Wintour and Watt, Rentoul, Dan Hodges etc.) who have had thin pickings for their "Ed is crap" campaign of late; but the fallout from London and Glasgow is unlikely to damage Ed, simply because he's had little to do with either fiasco. Ken Livingstone was chosen as the London mayoral candidate before Ed even became Labour leader, and his poll slide is the result largely of unforced errors by Ken himself, coupled with a hugely hostile media - nothing to do with Ed. Similiarly, although I am no expert on Scottish local politics, as far as I can tell the Glasgow problem is also a result of serious problems in the local Glasgow Labour party which are very much below Ed's pay grade. I mean, if the loss to the SNP in the Scottish Parliamentary elections last year didn't result in a putsch against Ed - at a point where Labour was doing much worse in the polls than it is now - it's hardly likely that Glasgow council elections are going to precipitate some kind of uprising now, is it?
I also predict that any fillip to Cameron from a Johnson win will be short-lived - the Johnson/Livingstone duel is a one-off, with no real relevance to national politics except that it establishes Johnson as a formidable operator and campaigner who will move one step closer to being the next leader. But that factor could weaken Cameron in the long run a lot more than it helps him. If Dave looks like a surefire loser in 2015 we can expect to see Boris campaign for a parliamentary seat in the May 2015 election (amazingly, the Mayor is allowed to serve as an MP at the same time, as long as it's for no more than 6 months), get elected and then resign the mayoralty to stand for Tory leader. And given the collection of duffers currently jockeying for position in the Cabinet, it seems unlikely he won't get it, should he want it. Interesting times indeed.
13 April 2012
Ken Livingstone, dinosaur machine politics, and the case for change in London
I have spent rather too much time towards the back end of this week following an entertaining, but at the same time philosophically deep, Twitterspat between the erst-while uber-Blairite Telegraph (and ex-New Statesman) blogger Dan Hodges and various other Labour bloggers and Twitterati from the left, right and centre of the party (including Owen Jones, Eoin Clarke, Mehdi Hasan, Luke Akehurst and Hopi Sen) concerning the merits of Ken Livingstone's campaign to win back the London mayorality from Boris Johnson. And specifically, whether Ken should be supported just because he's the Labour party candidate even if you have serious misgivings about him as a candidate.
Unusually, I find myself in a certain measure of agreement with Dan Hodges on this issue... in that I don't think Ken deserves the automatic support of Labour members, let alone the wider left or centre of London politics, just because he's currently the main challenger to Johnson.
We need to get something straight about what Ken isn't, first of all (and I'm speaking as someone who voted for, and donated money to, Ken in his independent mayor bid of 2000 - the last time I was eligible to vote in a London election - and who was also an enthusiastic supporter of his re-election bids in 2004 and 2008). He is not a "hard-left" Labour candidate; if anything he is a maverick centrist, who enthusiastically endorsed most of the New Labour agenda while he was mayor. That's not to say his two terms as mayor were particularly bad; on the contrary, he made many good innovations, including congestion charging, low public transport fares (at least on Oyster cards), the Oyster card itself, and the rather nice red "ON" in the "MAYOR OF LONDON" posters. But this was back in the day when he was mainly focused on policy, rather than making an increasingly bizarre sequence of unforced errors, for example:
The sad thing is that Ken's policy platform is basically sound - on transport policy, reinstating EMA, and many other areas. But he's become an electoral liability to the Labour campaign. I've been arguing for several months now that Ken was going to win this election - albeit narrowly - because he only lost by 6 percentage points in 2008, and Labour was at least 10 points down in the national polls then. Logically, with Labour now 5 to 10 points ahead in the national polls, Ken should be in front of Johnson by at least 10. But instead he's around 5 points behind. I think if Labour had chosen Oona King to be selected as mayoral candidate in 2010 rather than Ken, she'd be kicking Boris Johnson's ass (and god knows, that bastard needs to have his ass kicked).
Unusually, I find myself in a certain measure of agreement with Dan Hodges on this issue... in that I don't think Ken deserves the automatic support of Labour members, let alone the wider left or centre of London politics, just because he's currently the main challenger to Johnson.
We need to get something straight about what Ken isn't, first of all (and I'm speaking as someone who voted for, and donated money to, Ken in his independent mayor bid of 2000 - the last time I was eligible to vote in a London election - and who was also an enthusiastic supporter of his re-election bids in 2004 and 2008). He is not a "hard-left" Labour candidate; if anything he is a maverick centrist, who enthusiastically endorsed most of the New Labour agenda while he was mayor. That's not to say his two terms as mayor were particularly bad; on the contrary, he made many good innovations, including congestion charging, low public transport fares (at least on Oyster cards), the Oyster card itself, and the rather nice red "ON" in the "MAYOR OF LONDON" posters. But this was back in the day when he was mainly focused on policy, rather than making an increasingly bizarre sequence of unforced errors, for example:
- making ludicrous, borderline anti-semitic allegations about London's Jewish voters (as Jonathan Freedland has pointed out in an excellent article in the Guardian).
- emulating George Galloway by hanging out with a selection of reactionary and homophobic religious leaders (as pointed out by Nick Cohen, for example).
- making unwise remarks about denying the vote to tax avoiders - unwise because on some definitions Ken is a tax avoider himself (I will be devoting a specific post to this as it is important to clear up confusion about what "tax avoidance" consists in, but suffice to say for now that the right-wing arguments that Ken is a tax avoider DO have some validity, and the issue is a time bomb which has exploded in his face at just the wrong time).
The sad thing is that Ken's policy platform is basically sound - on transport policy, reinstating EMA, and many other areas. But he's become an electoral liability to the Labour campaign. I've been arguing for several months now that Ken was going to win this election - albeit narrowly - because he only lost by 6 percentage points in 2008, and Labour was at least 10 points down in the national polls then. Logically, with Labour now 5 to 10 points ahead in the national polls, Ken should be in front of Johnson by at least 10. But instead he's around 5 points behind. I think if Labour had chosen Oona King to be selected as mayoral candidate in 2010 rather than Ken, she'd be kicking Boris Johnson's ass (and god knows, that bastard needs to have his ass kicked).
Some people - notably the brilliant left-wing Labour commentator Owen Jones - have argued that there is a right-wing media conspiracy against Ken. And yes there is, but the Tory press EXISTS to put the boot in to Labour candidates by means fair or foul. Labour's failure to reform the media to make it more balanced despite several opportunities to do so from 1945 onwards ensures that - at least until the next Labour Govt - Labour candidates are going to have to struggle against a tidal wave of lies, bullshit and smear operations. So, given that we know that, isn't it a hostage to fortune to put Ken Livingstone -a very articulate politician, but also a guy who is often the rhetorical equivalent of a cluster bomb - in the hot seat? Why not go for someone less gaffe-prone?
There's then the final line of defence, which is to say that Ken should be backed just *because* he's the Labour candidate. One of the reasons I'm not in the Labour party is this kind of dinosaur machine politics, which has in recent years been mainly been the preserve of the Blairite right, but which elements of the Labour left are now showing they can do just as well. My view on this is quite simple: supporting Labour candidates who aren't worthy of the role is a bad idea. It degrades, and in the end is likely to destroy, the Labour party. Tony Blair wasn't worthy of being PM by 2005 and no way would I have advised people in Sedgefield to vote for him then. I'd have backed Reg Keys. Likewise, I don't believe Ken Livingstone is worthy of being mayor in 2012. I don't have a vote so this matters not a jot to the election itself, but if I did, I would be voting Jenny Jones of the Green Party as 1st choice on the ballot.
And who knows? If Ken continues to disappoint in the next couple of weeks it's quite possible that Jones, the Lib Dem Brian Paddick or the indepedendent candidate Siobhan Benita could start to move up in the polls. And then things might start to get really interesting.
19 August 2011
Once more unto the breach, dear Friends....
Have been kept, somewhat embarrassingly away from the mundanities of blogging by having to take care of administration on my new abode on the other side of the Atlantic,so have been on 'silent running' for a couple of weeks. however, despite a backlog of about seven posts (events never stop in the real world) a story from the UK necessitates comment. Several months back I referred to Labour's mayoral candidate, Ken Livingstone as the Jason Voorhees/Freddy Krueger of British Politics for his tasteless comparison of opponent Boris johnson's Chief of Staff, Eddie Lister, to Bosnian Serb commander and suspected war criminal, Rlatko Mladic. In this stunningly hamfisted interview in Total Politics, he goes one better than that by equating the coming mayoral struggle with the fight between Churchill and Hitler in World War Two.
The blog entry by the controversist, Toby Young, author of How to lose Friends and alienate people posits that Livingstone, through a combination of frustration and possibly premature senility has become unhinged, and several commentators on the post take him to task for not realising that what was said was Ken 'being drole' or making an attempt at humour. Whilst I would also agree this could be an interpretation, the problem for him is that, of arguably any politician in the last 30 years, Livingstone is a master of taking vicarious offence on behalf of the many 'minorities' (women, non-caucasians, homosexuals, LGBT, even famously the Irish in the height of the troubles) that comprise his 'rainbow' coalition. To illustrate the point, can one imagine the reaction of the Labour Left, the Guardian, Independent and the BBC (funded by a £155 stipend on every TV watching household in the country) had Johnson made the quite accurate remark that the election were 'reminscent of Korea and Vietnam'? - a statement which given Livingstone's quite self -evident links with both the Northern parts of those two countries' proxy allies during the conflicts in question is really quite unobjectionable to anyone without a vested interest in this man's election.
The issue is ,when you take an innocent remark out of context and, even though not part of the 'minority' in question, call for people to resign or apologise, it is rank hypocrisy to expect others to turn the cheek to the most odious and outrageous calumnies,even if they are said in jest. Having fallen foul of this with a tactless comment comparing a Jewish Evening Standard reporter to a concentration camp guard, I'd have thought Livingstone would have known better.
The sadly departed from the Telegraph, Simon Heffer, summed up the position quite admirably following the furore over Cameron's rather crass remarks to Labour shadow Minister, Angela Eagle. The Left's very 'thin skin' and the basic paucity of many of their arguments mean that the reflex weapon of howling 'racist' or 'sexist' or 'homophobe' is often the only weapon in their armoury. however, unless one wishes to fall foul of Livingstone's rather curious 'sense of humour', I would strongly urge anyone reading this who is able to vote for Johnson next year, lest you find yourself tagged as a member of the Waffen SS and subject to 'denazification' or 'war crimes trials' (just joking on the latter of course, Christ, don't you people have a sense of humour?)
The blog entry by the controversist, Toby Young, author of How to lose Friends and alienate people posits that Livingstone, through a combination of frustration and possibly premature senility has become unhinged, and several commentators on the post take him to task for not realising that what was said was Ken 'being drole' or making an attempt at humour. Whilst I would also agree this could be an interpretation, the problem for him is that, of arguably any politician in the last 30 years, Livingstone is a master of taking vicarious offence on behalf of the many 'minorities' (women, non-caucasians, homosexuals, LGBT, even famously the Irish in the height of the troubles) that comprise his 'rainbow' coalition. To illustrate the point, can one imagine the reaction of the Labour Left, the Guardian, Independent and the BBC (funded by a £155 stipend on every TV watching household in the country) had Johnson made the quite accurate remark that the election were 'reminscent of Korea and Vietnam'? - a statement which given Livingstone's quite self -evident links with both the Northern parts of those two countries' proxy allies during the conflicts in question is really quite unobjectionable to anyone without a vested interest in this man's election.
The issue is ,when you take an innocent remark out of context and, even though not part of the 'minority' in question, call for people to resign or apologise, it is rank hypocrisy to expect others to turn the cheek to the most odious and outrageous calumnies,even if they are said in jest. Having fallen foul of this with a tactless comment comparing a Jewish Evening Standard reporter to a concentration camp guard, I'd have thought Livingstone would have known better.
The sadly departed from the Telegraph, Simon Heffer, summed up the position quite admirably following the furore over Cameron's rather crass remarks to Labour shadow Minister, Angela Eagle. The Left's very 'thin skin' and the basic paucity of many of their arguments mean that the reflex weapon of howling 'racist' or 'sexist' or 'homophobe' is often the only weapon in their armoury. however, unless one wishes to fall foul of Livingstone's rather curious 'sense of humour', I would strongly urge anyone reading this who is able to vote for Johnson next year, lest you find yourself tagged as a member of the Waffen SS and subject to 'denazification' or 'war crimes trials' (just joking on the latter of course, Christ, don't you people have a sense of humour?)
04 June 2011
The Jason Voorhees of British Politics
For those unfamiliar with the character of Jason Voorhees, he is the primary Antagonist of the Friday 13th series of films. Anyone famiilar with these will know the drill. Voorhees appears and wreaks havoc, usual involving multiple homicides only to seem as though he has finally perished. Then the film usually leaves a degree of ambiguity as to his fate. The franchise's original 1979 instalment spawned an enormous 10 sequels, some of which are some of the most wretched examples of horror cinema ever seen, but still Jason survives. The reason for mentioning him is that with the elections for the London assembly and mayoralty in prospect next year, perhaps its time to focus on the man most like him in terms of his longevity and arguably his likely impact on the London scene, for he has once more been up to his usual tricks.
Former mayor of the GLC, and two term London Mayor before his surprise defeat in 2008, Ken Livingstone has compared his mayoral rival's chief of staff, Eddie Lister to the Recently indicted Serbian General Ratko Mladic . It's not the first time the man has made a tastelessly crass remark. Who can forget his comparison of Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold (of Jewish descent) with a Nazi Concentration Camp guard?
The Voorhees analogy, no doubt distasteful to Livingstone's acolytes as his comparison of Lister (who has courted controversy for potentially charging children for access to public playgrounds) to a man accused of the genocide of 8000 people is however apt. Whatever else I think of him, following his defeat at the hands of Kenneth Baker in 1986, he bounced back in 2000 to defeat two candidates (including a rival from his former party) to win the mayoralty and held the position for 8 years. I hoped his defeat by current incumbent, Boris Johnson in 2008 had finally driven a metaphorical stake through his political heart, but terrifyingly the man has returned to once again cast his dark shadow over the London scene. As Giroscoper points out, chillingly, the London elections are not, as I erroneously thought conducted on an electoral college basis (ie borough by borough), thus the multiple defeats he suffered in 2008 in the outer London boroughs could be overcome by him piling up enough of a majority amongst the so-called 'Rainbow coalition' (composed of around 11 boroughs with heavy concentrations of ethnic minorities, students and public sector employees) which delivered him two election triumphs. Admittedly many more verbal gaffes such as this one, and the poll lead he has might start to look slimmer, but it is perhaps a reflection on the chaos wrought in the nation's capital between 1997 and 2010, that such a being can have the slightest chance of achieving high office after decisive rejection in 2008.
Former mayor of the GLC, and two term London Mayor before his surprise defeat in 2008, Ken Livingstone has compared his mayoral rival's chief of staff, Eddie Lister to the Recently indicted Serbian General Ratko Mladic . It's not the first time the man has made a tastelessly crass remark. Who can forget his comparison of Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold (of Jewish descent) with a Nazi Concentration Camp guard?
The Voorhees analogy, no doubt distasteful to Livingstone's acolytes as his comparison of Lister (who has courted controversy for potentially charging children for access to public playgrounds) to a man accused of the genocide of 8000 people is however apt. Whatever else I think of him, following his defeat at the hands of Kenneth Baker in 1986, he bounced back in 2000 to defeat two candidates (including a rival from his former party) to win the mayoralty and held the position for 8 years. I hoped his defeat by current incumbent, Boris Johnson in 2008 had finally driven a metaphorical stake through his political heart, but terrifyingly the man has returned to once again cast his dark shadow over the London scene. As Giroscoper points out, chillingly, the London elections are not, as I erroneously thought conducted on an electoral college basis (ie borough by borough), thus the multiple defeats he suffered in 2008 in the outer London boroughs could be overcome by him piling up enough of a majority amongst the so-called 'Rainbow coalition' (composed of around 11 boroughs with heavy concentrations of ethnic minorities, students and public sector employees) which delivered him two election triumphs. Admittedly many more verbal gaffes such as this one, and the poll lead he has might start to look slimmer, but it is perhaps a reflection on the chaos wrought in the nation's capital between 1997 and 2010, that such a being can have the slightest chance of achieving high office after decisive rejection in 2008.
02 May 2008
Local election disaster - Brown is lame, and it shows
Well, on current trends it looks very much like Gordon Brown is going to "do a John Major", but sadly, without emulating Major's teeth-pulling election victory of '92 first. Brown is going straight down, and taking the Labour party, all the way from the hard left to the Blairite crypto-Tories, with him.
For the first time since 1992 the Conservative party is getting a projected national vote share (44%) which would win an overall Tory majority if repeated at a general election, even given the biases in the electoral system. It's a savage prospect for sure, and Gordon is not in danger of overturning the nightmare any time soon. Indeed, his speciality is finding new holes to dig with one hand while his other hand digs the increasing number of existing holes deeper. And deeper.
Here's the condensed Gordon Brown guide to becoming Prime Minister:
The problem is that the worst predictions of the dreadful anti-Brown crypto-Tories who surrounded Blair - Matthew Taylor, Phil Collins (not the singer, sadly) etc. are coming true. John Hutton famously said that Brown would make "a f***ing awful Prime Minister", and whilst he's almost never right about anything, that statement seems to be an exception.
Some of this is due to the dire position which ten years of Blair/Brown dual control of UK plc has left us. With the UK economy pumped up by an unsustainable asset and debt boom, when the credit crunch hit, we were stuck up slack alley with no reverse gear... just waiting for the economic collapse. When you've spent ten years talking about stability, to see it suddenly whipped away like the most flimsy house of cards in history must be a tough gig to handle.
Equally, the lunacy of many of the Blair/Brown public sector reforms - which involve paying as much money to private sector consultants and infrastructure companies as possible, to deliver badly built, overpriced schools and hospitals, and management consultancy whose productivity impacts are, if anything, negative - has now swallowed up so many of our tax pounds that, when it's combined with rampant inflation in essential goods like food and fuel, people are feeling the pinch.
Notice I've said "Blair/Brown" rather than "Blair" above and that's very important. The current crisis is partly due to the idiocy of Blair, but Brown was a willing participant in all of this (and in some cases the initiator of these crazy policies - tube PPP, for instance). That's why it's very difficult for him to make a clean break with the failures of the Blair years.
It would mean having to undergo a Blues Brothers - like instant conversion to radical politics - this could perhaps be stage-managed at the next Labour conference. A shaft of light appearing say, a third of the way through another lumpen Gordon speech, and then suddenly, he's a changed man. Out goes that f***ing awful blue tie and back comes the red tie of the 2003 Conference speech ("we're best when we're labour" etc.) He needs to start by emulating Nikita Kruschev at the 1956 Soviet Party Congress. Kruschev's denunciation of Stalin set the tone for the Cold War's "detente" years and Brown could spark a similar new era by jettisoning the whole Blair legacy in one fell swoop. The speech needs to go something like this:
Only a total relaunch - in policy and people terms - can save the Nu-Lab project now. What is least likely to save it is yet more sanctimonious, dunderhead b.s. about "listen and lead" (Speak and Spell?) and "tough decisions in difficult times". I know we live in environmentally conscious times but please, someone change the f***ing record on Gordon. The public are sick to death of hearing a Budget speech that was stale as far back as 2000, with the nouns slightly changed each time according to the policy area being discussed. And can we ban any talk of "Britishness" please? The BNP performed spectacularly poorly. So that's enough of that, then.
I could turn the situation around so that in 18 months' time Labour would have a narrow poll lead or at least level pegging - starting with that conference speech. But I won't. Partly 'cos they'd never give me the job anyway, and partly 'cos I wouldn't take an adviser job even if it were on offer. So go on Gordon... lose big time. See if we care. RIP.
(By the way... my earlier prediction of a Ken victory looks to have been pretty damn wrong, so I'm sorry if I spread false hope. All hail Boris the blond bombshell. So glad I got the hell out of London in 2000 now. Around the time that Gordon speech started to grate... more on London soon when we have the actual results, god help us.)
For the first time since 1992 the Conservative party is getting a projected national vote share (44%) which would win an overall Tory majority if repeated at a general election, even given the biases in the electoral system. It's a savage prospect for sure, and Gordon is not in danger of overturning the nightmare any time soon. Indeed, his speciality is finding new holes to dig with one hand while his other hand digs the increasing number of existing holes deeper. And deeper.
Here's the condensed Gordon Brown guide to becoming Prime Minister:
- spend a few months tweaking round the edges of your predecessor's policies whilst wandering about on camera trying to look hard.
- when your poll rating inexplicably rises, toy with the idea of a general election (preferably for so long that even your best friends and advisers get bored).
- At the first signs of a political response from the Conservative party, run back to the red corner with your tail between your legs.
- Do an impression of the most tongue-tied, complacent moron possible.
- Repeat until dead.
The problem is that the worst predictions of the dreadful anti-Brown crypto-Tories who surrounded Blair - Matthew Taylor, Phil Collins (not the singer, sadly) etc. are coming true. John Hutton famously said that Brown would make "a f***ing awful Prime Minister", and whilst he's almost never right about anything, that statement seems to be an exception.
Some of this is due to the dire position which ten years of Blair/Brown dual control of UK plc has left us. With the UK economy pumped up by an unsustainable asset and debt boom, when the credit crunch hit, we were stuck up slack alley with no reverse gear... just waiting for the economic collapse. When you've spent ten years talking about stability, to see it suddenly whipped away like the most flimsy house of cards in history must be a tough gig to handle.
Equally, the lunacy of many of the Blair/Brown public sector reforms - which involve paying as much money to private sector consultants and infrastructure companies as possible, to deliver badly built, overpriced schools and hospitals, and management consultancy whose productivity impacts are, if anything, negative - has now swallowed up so many of our tax pounds that, when it's combined with rampant inflation in essential goods like food and fuel, people are feeling the pinch.
Notice I've said "Blair/Brown" rather than "Blair" above and that's very important. The current crisis is partly due to the idiocy of Blair, but Brown was a willing participant in all of this (and in some cases the initiator of these crazy policies - tube PPP, for instance). That's why it's very difficult for him to make a clean break with the failures of the Blair years.
It would mean having to undergo a Blues Brothers - like instant conversion to radical politics - this could perhaps be stage-managed at the next Labour conference. A shaft of light appearing say, a third of the way through another lumpen Gordon speech, and then suddenly, he's a changed man. Out goes that f***ing awful blue tie and back comes the red tie of the 2003 Conference speech ("we're best when we're labour" etc.) He needs to start by emulating Nikita Kruschev at the 1956 Soviet Party Congress. Kruschev's denunciation of Stalin set the tone for the Cold War's "detente" years and Brown could spark a similar new era by jettisoning the whole Blair legacy in one fell swoop. The speech needs to go something like this:
(pointing to picture of Blair forming the conference backdrop) "see this guy here? You remember him from a couple of years back? Well, he was WRONG! And so was I. WE WAS WRONG!!! (huge red cross is superimposed over backdrop, which fades into collage of many of the dictators of the past - Stalin, Mao, Maggie Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Bowker, etc.) From now on it's NEW New Labour! Let a thousand flowers bloom. PUBLIC SECTOR PENSIONS FOR ALL! AN END TO PFI! etc. etc. etc.Personnel changes would also be essential. The Blairite detritus currently clogging up the cabinet table would be summarily dismissed. Hutton, Blears, Purnell... all for the chop. And demotions for rubbishy Brownites like Ed Balls and Alastair Darling. Promotions for solid and trustworthy performers: Denham, Benn, Ed Miliband. Most importantly of all, a senior cabinet job for John Cruddas - I recommend Home Secretary. A replacement for Darling at No 11? It's got to be Alan Johnson. Trusted, respectable, comprehensible to people from the South.
Only a total relaunch - in policy and people terms - can save the Nu-Lab project now. What is least likely to save it is yet more sanctimonious, dunderhead b.s. about "listen and lead" (Speak and Spell?) and "tough decisions in difficult times". I know we live in environmentally conscious times but please, someone change the f***ing record on Gordon. The public are sick to death of hearing a Budget speech that was stale as far back as 2000, with the nouns slightly changed each time according to the policy area being discussed. And can we ban any talk of "Britishness" please? The BNP performed spectacularly poorly. So that's enough of that, then.
I could turn the situation around so that in 18 months' time Labour would have a narrow poll lead or at least level pegging - starting with that conference speech. But I won't. Partly 'cos they'd never give me the job anyway, and partly 'cos I wouldn't take an adviser job even if it were on offer. So go on Gordon... lose big time. See if we care. RIP.
(By the way... my earlier prediction of a Ken victory looks to have been pretty damn wrong, so I'm sorry if I spread false hope. All hail Boris the blond bombshell. So glad I got the hell out of London in 2000 now. Around the time that Gordon speech started to grate... more on London soon when we have the actual results, god help us.)
28 April 2008
Don't believe the ES BS - Ken can (and probably will) still win in London
I don't read the gutter tabloid press much, but the Evening Standard's assault on Ken Livingstone is real back-to-the-80s Tory vitriol of a kind that no-one since Neil Kinnock has had to face with such ferocity.
Almost every single Standard headline for the last two months at least has been rabid anti-Ken propaganda. Ken is being bankrolled by some nasty bunch or other - tube drivers, Islamofascists, Mothers for Peace, etc. Ken is pissed on the job. Ken's advisers are communists. Ken eats live newts for tea. Ken is ten to fifteen points behind Boris Johnson on whatever bogus poll YouGov have made up next. And the BS goes on. And on. And on.
Now, I'm no slavish Ken supporter. Yep, I gave £50 to the 'purple' Mayor campaign of 2000 when he ran as an independent and kicked Frank Dobson's cuddly ass back to Camden. But I thought his decision to revert to Labour was a shame as it immediately meant he didn't have full latitude to denounce the many bullshit policies which the Treasury have saddled London with - Tube PPPs, anyone? - and that he would be vulnerable to being tarred with the same brush as an unpopular Blair (or now, Brown) Labour Government.
I was doubly worried by certain features of the Dispatches documentary screened on Channel 4 back in February. It was appallingly biased rubbish for sure, but there were certain legitimate criticisms. It's by no means a good idea for Livingstone to be drinking on the job, for example. (I know loads of MPs do the same, but no-one outside the Guido Fawkes blog and the Oliver Reed appreciation society would seriously endorse this kind of behaviour.) And Livingstone's decision to grant a platform to homophobic Islamic preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi was, as Peter Tatchell has pointed out, a disgrace.
But, on balance, who would you really rather have? Ken, who has made several mistakes but who may be the last serious left-wing politician left in any kind of major office in this country? Or Boris Johnson, who is either a flaky buffoon, a right-wing extremist, or (likely) both? It's a no-brainer.
If I were based in London my vote would be (1) Sian Berry (2) Ken and I think that, despite the increased discontent over the national government, he will prevail on Thursday. Forget the YouGov polls showing a 10 point lead (or more) for Boris - they're codswallop. I'm a YouGov panelist and I just enter complete garbage to get my 50p a survey. Literally, I enter complete random nonsense in the surveys. Also it's a self-selected sample - you actively apply to join YouGov, you're not approached by pollsters. Additionally, by definition, no-one without internet access is on the YouGov panel. So how the hell can it be representative?
YouGov are being used by the Evening Standard as part of an out-and-out war against Ken Livingstone. This kind of one-sided coverage presents the greatest danger to our free society (such as it is) since the Thatcherite media fascism of the 1980s. Really, during the elections the papers should have to follow a special rule: whenever a negative story is run on one of the mayoral candidates, the paper should have to allow an equal amount of space for reply by the mayoral candidate who is attacked in the story. Conversely, whenever a positive story is run on one of the mayoral candidates, the other mayoral candidates should get a right of reply equal in size to the original story. This rule could also be extended for General Elections. One way or another, rampant political propaganda and bias in our national newspapers has to be stamped out - whether it's pro-Tory, New Labour, or anything else. As Billy Bragg put it,
Almost every single Standard headline for the last two months at least has been rabid anti-Ken propaganda. Ken is being bankrolled by some nasty bunch or other - tube drivers, Islamofascists, Mothers for Peace, etc. Ken is pissed on the job. Ken's advisers are communists. Ken eats live newts for tea. Ken is ten to fifteen points behind Boris Johnson on whatever bogus poll YouGov have made up next. And the BS goes on. And on. And on.
Now, I'm no slavish Ken supporter. Yep, I gave £50 to the 'purple' Mayor campaign of 2000 when he ran as an independent and kicked Frank Dobson's cuddly ass back to Camden. But I thought his decision to revert to Labour was a shame as it immediately meant he didn't have full latitude to denounce the many bullshit policies which the Treasury have saddled London with - Tube PPPs, anyone? - and that he would be vulnerable to being tarred with the same brush as an unpopular Blair (or now, Brown) Labour Government.
I was doubly worried by certain features of the Dispatches documentary screened on Channel 4 back in February. It was appallingly biased rubbish for sure, but there were certain legitimate criticisms. It's by no means a good idea for Livingstone to be drinking on the job, for example. (I know loads of MPs do the same, but no-one outside the Guido Fawkes blog and the Oliver Reed appreciation society would seriously endorse this kind of behaviour.) And Livingstone's decision to grant a platform to homophobic Islamic preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi was, as Peter Tatchell has pointed out, a disgrace.
But, on balance, who would you really rather have? Ken, who has made several mistakes but who may be the last serious left-wing politician left in any kind of major office in this country? Or Boris Johnson, who is either a flaky buffoon, a right-wing extremist, or (likely) both? It's a no-brainer.
If I were based in London my vote would be (1) Sian Berry (2) Ken and I think that, despite the increased discontent over the national government, he will prevail on Thursday. Forget the YouGov polls showing a 10 point lead (or more) for Boris - they're codswallop. I'm a YouGov panelist and I just enter complete garbage to get my 50p a survey. Literally, I enter complete random nonsense in the surveys. Also it's a self-selected sample - you actively apply to join YouGov, you're not approached by pollsters. Additionally, by definition, no-one without internet access is on the YouGov panel. So how the hell can it be representative?
YouGov are being used by the Evening Standard as part of an out-and-out war against Ken Livingstone. This kind of one-sided coverage presents the greatest danger to our free society (such as it is) since the Thatcherite media fascism of the 1980s. Really, during the elections the papers should have to follow a special rule: whenever a negative story is run on one of the mayoral candidates, the paper should have to allow an equal amount of space for reply by the mayoral candidate who is attacked in the story. Conversely, whenever a positive story is run on one of the mayoral candidates, the other mayoral candidates should get a right of reply equal in size to the original story. This rule could also be extended for General Elections. One way or another, rampant political propaganda and bias in our national newspapers has to be stamped out - whether it's pro-Tory, New Labour, or anything else. As Billy Bragg put it,
When you wake up to the fact that your paper is Tory
Just remember there are two sides to every story.
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