Ken Livingstone: 'This isn't a race to elect a chat-show host'
That was back last October. By the time we met again last week, coverage of the mayoral campaign was devoted almost exclusively to his own goals, Boris Johnson was six points ahead in the polls, and – like many people – I blamed Livingstone. How could a millionaire old Etonian, who considers a £250,000 salary "chickenfeed", and belongs to a party squeezing the poorest whilst cutting tax for the richest, be romping towards a second term? How had Livingstone ended up looking like the greedy, untrustworthy, prejudiced one? After all the needless gaffes of recent weeks, I thought, he's got some explaining to do.
I find the candidate sitting with Cocoa, his labrador, outside a west-London cafe in the sunshine, smiling broadly and looking more serene than I think I would after the past month's media onslaught. Campaign aides with mobile phones soldered to their ears flurry about, and passers-by stop to fuss over Cocoa until Livingstone's wife arrives to take her for a walk. The heavy gloom of exhaustion which hung over Livingstone's campaign last time round has certainly vanished – as has, it must be said, the sour-tempered belligerence. As we run through all his recent difficulties, I'm braced for him to get snappy and defensive – but the irritability never comes.
Why did he say that Jewish Londoners were too rich to vote for him? "I didn't say that. Someone posed the question to me, 'Why don't more Jewish people vote for you?' I started to say, 'No group votes as a whole. The main determining factor in how everybody votes – the overwhelming majority – is income levels.' Psephology," he points out mildly, "isn't a hate crime." But lots of people vote against economic self-interest – including him. "Yes, there are lots of individual exceptions," he agrees. "But no one has ever done a study about voting intention without ascertaining that the biggest determining factor is your income and your wealth."
This isn't the first time he's upset Jewish Londoners, however, and a recent Times editorial speculated that what might look like antisemitism could in fact be a tactic to court Muslim voters, who outnumber Jewish voters by four times in London. "If I was courting the Muslim vote," Livingstone reasons patiently, "I wouldn't have put establishing the partnership ceremony at the forefront of my first term, would I? I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights."
That's true, but only makes his infamous remark that the Tory party is now "riddled" with gay people all the more maddening. It's obvious he used the term ironically, mocking the party's traditional homophobes who would use the word to denote disgust. "I was making the point that not a single Tory MP spoke out in support when I introduced partnership ceremonies. But they only quoted half the sentence. Where's the bit that says: 'Isn't it wonderful?' I mean, it does actually change the context slightly." But why risk a joke that could translate into print so disastrously that no one would laugh? Livingstone used to answer questions like that with a rather pompous: "I refuse not to have a sense of humour." Today he just grins and spreads his hands. "OK, let Boris do what he does best – which is telling jokes – and let me do what I do best, which is running things."
Tears proved just as problematic for Livingstone as laughter, though, when a lot of people wondered why he wept watching an election broadcast by an advertising agency. "First off, we went out on the street and asked people if they were voting for me, and if so would they like to say a line in this advert?" he explains. "Those lines were scripted, and I'd seen them. What I didn't know they'd done was, they then asked people: What's the message you've got for Ken? The unscripted bit at the end was when they said to me: You gotta win, Ken. And that was very moving. I'm sorry, but it was."
The ding-dong over Livingstone's tax affairs damaged him more than all of the above put together, making this the first election I can recall where you need an accountant to work out what's going on – but even the accountants can't seem to agree. Livingstone and I go round and round the debate, but the logic his argument boils down to is ultimately quite simple. "There's nothing in there that is illegitimate, or by now the tax office would have done something about it."
The trouble is, I tell him, voters don't think he tells the truth; one poll found that just 19% believed he was honest, compared to 25% for Johnson. "I've always told the truth," he says simply. "I've often been wrong – but I've never knowingly lied. Not in public life. Because I don't see the need to. I came into politics because I wished to change things. You can't do that by lying to people; you have to educate, and persuade, and carry them with you – and it's often a long haul."
Livingstone's manifesto shouldn't really be too hard a sell. Along with increasing police numbers, providing childcare grants and loans, restoring the Education Maintenance Allowance, creating affordable housing, bulk buying electricity to sell at a discount to Londoners, and investing in transport infrastructure, he has promised to cut fares by 7%. But Johnson says it can't be done, and accuses Livingstone of breaking similar pledges while in office.
Livingstone reels off the charge sheet: the mayor has cut police numbers by 2,100 in a city about to host the Olympics; had 110 meetings with bankers, and only 74 with the police; claimed Guardian allegations about phone hacking was a bunch of "codswallop cooked up by the Labour party"; and had his own deputy, Kit Malthouse, complain three times to the Met that they were wasting resources by investigating the claims. Johnson says he'd "like to see fares lower than they are" but plans above-inflation increases; he hasn't invested in transport infrastructure, or come anywhere close to his 2008 pledge to cut crime by 20%. "He just doesn't do the day job."
All this we know, I agree. So how come Johnson is ahead in the polls?
"Media scrutiny has been minimal. We've had real scandals, like when two cyclists were killed at [east London's]Bow Junction roundabout, and that was after the mayor's office specifically removed the cycling safety measures. If the police investigation concludes that those cyclists died because of the removal of the safety measures, there's a corporate manslaughter thrown against the mayor's office. I say it in meeting after meeting. Have I read this in any paper?
"And if you look at air quality, we now know at least 4,000 people die every year prematurely by an average of 11 years; it's the worst air quality in Europe. The EU may fine Britain £300m because of that. When the fine is levied it will be paid for by the council tax payer in London. Have I read this anywhere in a paper? No. Why not? I just think either because the media don't have the resources for that sort of detailed work anymore, or because Boris has been friendly with a layer of key persons in the media for so long, and courted them. Either way, he has had an amazingly easy ride."
As he talks, I begin to reconsider my frustration at Livingstone's own approach to media relations. He may not be the most strategically self-disciplined operator – but in my personal experience he has never once refused to be interviewed, whereas Johnson has declined my every request throughout four years in office, save for one audience he granted to mark his first 100 days, which lasted precisely 20 minutes. He hasn't been much more forthcoming to the rest of fleet street either. It's hardly surprising that coverage of the campaign has focused on the challenger's words, when the incumbent is so reluctant to offer his own up for scrutiny. Johnson favours innocuous photo ops, while interviewers interrogate Livingstone about "gaffes".
"Why aren't the press screaming: 'Here we've got a candidate who does not subject himself to scrutiny'? And it's not just during this campaign. The strategy for the last three-and-a half years has been not to be interviewed. No one can get an interview with Boris when fares go up, year after year. I did a press conference every week; he has done six in his entire four years as mayor. And I think, frankly, that, by law, you shouldn't be allowed to seek public office if you don't submit yourself to a series of debates, and to journalists' interviews."
Of course Johnson is funny, Livingstone says. But that doesn't mean the media should treat him like a celebrity comic, when he is an elected public servant.
When we break for photographs, two things happen. First, the photographer notices red braces under Livingstone's jacket, and suggests he take it off so we can see them properly. Livingstone obligingly agrees and has one sleeve off before an aide intervenes in alarm, just in time to stop him looking like something out of Only Fools And Horses – a faux pas to which Livingstone had been gloriously oblivious.
Would it be fair to say, I ask him, that he makes a very good mayor but not a very cunning candidate? He thinks for a moment. "Yes."
Then a local businessman approaches. He says he hasn't yet decided who to vote for. Great, I think – let's see how Livingstone wins him over. "After 12 years of me and Boris," Livingstone marvels, "you still haven't made up your mind?" The incredulity is genuine, but I very much doubt it's going to win the man's vote.
One of the charges often levelled at both candidates is a presumption of entitlement – and I would say that this is probably fair. However, whereas Johnson's sense of entitlement to office appears to derive more from birthright than any history of commitment to serving Londoners, Livingstone would argue that decades of experience qualify him for the job – and he would be right. He despairs of his rival's cavalier approach to the tedious detail of long-term urban planning – "I want my kids to be able to carry on living in London, but unless you start planning, this is going to be a city that starts haemorrhaging people and talent" – and when he says he wouldn't have stood had Johnson done a good job for the city, I think he means it.
The capital is conspicuously short on posters in windows for either candidate, and when I mention this to Livingstone he thinks he knows why. When the position of mayor was created, it was supposed to re-engage voters in local democracy, but the very personality politics it promoted have ended up turning a lot of Londoners off.
"I think it degraded political debate. It imported American stuff. This isn't a race to elect a chat-show host. If it was up to me, I'd suggest an elected council because of two things. One, you have to keep your party on side. If Boris had been the leader of a Tory group at City Hall, he would have been removed from office by his colleagues; none of them would say this to you publicly, but the majority are absolutely furious that he hasn't done the job. And two, through serving on borough and city councils, I learned how to run things. If you do away with councils, where do people earn their experience? Where's the way you gradually learn, before you go up the tree? That's been killed off. Why was the Blair government so disappointing? Why is this one such a mess? Because the first thing they've run is the bloody country."
Livingstone certainly doesn't want to run the country. But last October he bet me £500 that if Johnson is re-elected he will run for parliament in 2015, because he only ever wanted the job as a platform to promote himself as the Tories' next leader – and when I check he still agrees. "Oh yeah, I still stand by that. The whole mayoral regime has been about the promotion of Boris with the eye on the succession to Cameron." Under the rules, Johnson would be allowed to hold the dual posts of MP and mayor for six months – and his deputy would become mayor until 2016.
Yet despite a six-point lead, Livingstone tells me he still doesn't think Johnson will win. "Polling in a general election is pretty accurate, because turnout is usually high. When you get down to a mayoral election, it was down to just 45% in the last election. This year it may be lower." The lower the turnout, the less reliable the polls – "And all these polls just do not relate to the mood we feel on the street. The mood on the streets is brilliant."
Had he told me this over the phone, I'd probably dismiss it as Pollyannaish propaganda. But the fact is that when we walked through London together last autumn he was for ever being stopped by friendly passers-by – and this time he is practically besieged. "Good luck!" they all tell him. "I don't need your luck," he grins back, "I need your vote!"
Perhaps Livingstone is confusing familiarity with popularity. But within three days of this interview taking place, the polls narrowed dramatically, putting the candidates neck and neck. I'd guess many of those London Labour voters who'd been considering voting for Johnson are now thinking twice about backing a Tory. As Livingstone says, of course, the polls may not be accurate. But if this has been a less-than-edifying race, I no longer think that's his fault.
source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/
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