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Ken Livingstone still steeped in politics

By Michael Hodges

Published: January 16 2009 22:23 | Last updated: January 16 2009 22:23

Anyone who has recently lost their job is likely to be feeling a little down and resentful right now. That said, what they won’t be doing is wandering into their old workplace and monitoring their replacement. But that is exactly what Ken Livingstone does when he takes his place at City Hall every month for the mayor of London’s Question Time. Strange? Perhaps, but the former mayor does not find it odd that eight months after Boris Johnson ousted him, he is still compelled to go into his former office and stir things up. As far as Livingstone is concerned, it is a job he created – and he is greedy for every detail of how his Tory vanquisher is handling it.

“I was down there this week,” he says, referring to Johnson’s Question Time. “I could go to the cinema for 10 quid but I can pop into City Hall and get two hours of pure entertainment for free. I thought I could have poked him in the eye on Wednesday, he was being so irritating.”

EDITOR’S CHOICE

More from Reportage - Nov-24

Losing political power is a painful process, especially for a 63-year-old who has done nothing other than politics for 37 years. As we talk in his terraced home in Willesden, north London, in a kitchen littered with the detritus of young children and old meals, I wonder if those slightly odd attendances at Johnson’s City Hall briefings – and his ceaseless campaigning and media appearances – are not just the actions of a man rebuilding for his next term of office, but of someone who cannot let go of his last one.

That Livingstone will seek to stand again in 2012 is a given, even though he is coy about declaring so unequivocally. In 2011 the Labour party decides when it will select its next mayoral candidate, and when it does, says Livingstone, “I’ll hold a press conference. Either to announce I’m standing or whom I am supporting. Of course, if Boris dropped dead tomorrow or fell under a Routemaster, which would be fitting, that would mean a by-election.”

Johnson, it becomes clear over the course of a day, is Livingstone’s significant other. Everything the new mayor does is analysed – even as we talk, one of Livingstone’s close political allies calls to report on Johnson’s latest announcement. At times, Livingstone shows an almost paternal interest in his successor’s progress. As victor and vanquished came off the podium in May last year, Livingstone tells me, he gave Johnson some advice: “Don’t do anything quickly. Leave it for a couple of months while you work out what you want to do.” Johnson ignored the advice, of course.

. . .

Livingstone is on the other side of the door, shouting something I can’t quite hear above the churn of the lavatory cistern.

“What?”

“I said, ‘Don’t flush!’”

“Sorry, forgot,” I apologise as I come out.

“Really?” asks Livingstone, who is standing in socks on the upper landing of his home. “Didn’t you follow that part of my policy?”

Battle of the buses

As the focus of an ideological confrontation, it might look surprisingwrites Robert Wright.. One of the bitterest divisions between the Livingstone camp and that of his successor has been over buses. Livingstone supporters favour the articulated single-deck bendy bus introduced in 2002. Boris Johnson supporters want a new version of the classic 1950s Routemaster double-decker, which Livingstone largely removed.

Yet, on closer examination, the furore is emblematic. The bendy bus, meant to ease access for those with mobility problems, reflects Livingstone’s lifelong aim of helping the less fortunate. It mirrors the key progressive conviction that the future can be better than the past. It is also hard to disagree with the logic of introducing a more accessible bus that can load and unload passengers quickly. But, long, ugly and at times difficult to manoeuvre, the bendy bus has annoyed some Londoners as much as Livingstone did.

Ask Johnson about buses, meanwhile, and he stresses the importance of an open rear platform, so that users can get on and off when they want. The winning entries in his competition to design a new Routemaster, announced in December, both embodied this libertarian feature. That and the bus’s retro design reflect Johnson’s conservative preference for the past over the present. But, in light of the obvious dangers of allowing passengers to jump out into traffic, Johnson says the conductor will prevent most actual exercise of the freedom.

It is a very Livingstone moment. Laced with humour, essentially political and ever so slightly eccentric. The policy he refers to, the Think Before You Flush campaign of 2005, was just one in an eight-year reign that offered bendy buses, a same-sex civil partnership register, the congestion charge, a ban on feeding pigeons and cheap fuel from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. Add a successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games (tragically marred by terrorist attacks in the capital the day after the result was announced, in July 2005), and you have what was, by any standards, a colourful reign. That ended last May, with the election of Johnson, journalist, former shadow cabinet member and occasional cartoon toff.

Since his defeat, Livingstone has secured a gardening column and a radio programme, and appeared on the TV panel show Have I Got News For You (also responsible for raising Johnson’s public profile). He travels the world telling people how to run their cities and has formed Progressive London, a coalition – of greens, liberals, Labour voters and just about anyone who cares to join – to safeguard what he unabashedly regards as his environmental, transport and social legacy. Arguably, it’s a shadow version of a job he no longer has.

It often seems that Livingstone, or part of him anyway, still believes he is in power. He certainly has unfinished business. He calls not being able to oversee a retraining and education programme for London’s socially excluded as “the most annoying thing about losing the election”. Shaking his head, he says, “Boris isn’t even going to want a second-chance programme, but unless you really ride the bureaucrats and kick an awful lot of arse, it won’t happen.” But of course, Livingstone can’t kick any arse. Out of office is out of office, and he is palpably hurt not to be involved with his greatest project, the 2012 Olympics. “It’s the classic thing. You lose power in Britain and you are just Joe Public again.”

If Livingstone was annoyed by Johnson ignoring his advice not to rush into any decisions, something else bugs him even more. “His stupidity was to get rid of Emma, who was managing the head office.” Livingstone is referring to Emma Beal, his partner and mother of his two youngest children (it was revealed during the election campaign that Livingstone has three other children from previous relationships). That he was shocked by Johnson’s decision indicates an occasional naivety that surprises when set against his own political ruthlessness.

“Well, Emma’s not political, she was managing the office,” says Livingstone, still defensive. “Therefore everybody who was actively managing … was gone. That’s why no one picked up on that stuff the bishop of whatever said about Ray Lewis [an early Johnson appointee forced to leave, after falsely claiming to be a magistrate, in a furore sparked by the Bishop of Barking]. There was no one there doing that, all the people that were coming in had 250 other things to do and it was a disaster.”

Livingstone’s background is markedly different to that of his rival. Brought up in a working-class family in Lambeth, he went straight from school to a job in a medical laboratory at the Royal Marsden Hospital, where he worked for eight years until 1970. He recalls sharing the canteen with leukaemia sufferers – “angelic kids dying of cancer; that cured me of any objections to animal testing”. He then trained, but never worked, as a teacher. In 1971, aged 25, he was elected to Lambeth Council and then, in 1973, to the Greater London Council. “Most things I’ve ever been involved in have been closed now,” he says, wistfully. “My school was demolished, my teacher training college was closed … and finally, me.” Livingstone switches easily between punchiness and pathos.

In 1979, he stood in Hampstead for Labour but failed to take the seat in what was, for the party, a disastrous general election. He felt “grumpy and a bit down” but as he watched Margaret Thatcher’s triumph he said to a colleague, “Don’t worry, I’m not het up about losing. Now we must win control of the GLC.” In 1981 he staged a coup that toppled the London Labour leader Andrew McIntosh immediately after the council elections.

There followed five extraordinary years that saw him dubbed Red Ken by Londoners and a “leftwing loony” by The Daily Telegraph. Leadership of the GLC at the height of Britain’s last ideological battle between left and right suited Livingstone. He displayed London’s unemployment figures on the exterior of County Hall, the seat of the GLC, directly across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, and introduced the “Fares Fair” policy of cheap public transport funded from the rates. The Law Lords declared the policy illegal in December 1981, as Livingstone must have suspected they would, but Fares Fair was always a marker of his intent, rather than a completely serious attempt to bring socialism to travel in the capital. It also thrust him into the public eye.

From the beginning Livingstone understood that leadership in London gave him a world stage, and he relished the opportunity. His early decision to talk to high-ranking figures in Sinn Féin (for which The Sun labelled him the “most hated man in Britain”) later became party policy and to this day Livingstone, eight months out of office, is confident that the world will take note when he speaks. When Israel attacked the Gaza Strip in December, he promptly issued a press release demanding “an immediate halt to the massive Israeli military attacks”.

Thatcher abolished the GLC in 1986. Livingstone was elected as the MP for Brent East the following year. However, Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader, regarded him as the sort of far-left figure that had made Labour unelectable nationally; Livingstone never left the backbenches, where he spent 14 years. “It was the least productive time of my life,” he recalls. “Backbenchers have no power and I joined the Labour party to gain power.”

When he was voted off Labour’s National Executive Committee in 1989, “my assumption was I would never hold office again”. But Livingstone, irascible, witty and a link to the socialism that New Labour was jettisoning, remained popular with the grassroots, who voted him back on to the NEC in 1997 in preference to Peter Mandelson.

This ability to derail Labour plans came to a head with the 2000 mayoral election. The leadership – horrified at the prospect of Livingstone getting the nomination – sought to impose Frank Dobson as candidate. It was a disastrous misreading of public opinion, and of Livingstone’s desire for power. Steve Norris, Tory candidate in that and the 2004 election, still finds it hard to credit: “It was daft; Livingstone has London engraved on his heart. It meant we were the only two serious candidates.” Livingstone stood as an independent, was expelled from the party and romped to victory.

If Labour expected the return of Red Ken, it was in for a surprise. His two periods in office were marked by his cohabitation with the big business interests he had once excoriated. He puts this down to the realities of globalisation and the need to attract foreign money and investment for public transport. “Big business isn’t suddenly all touchy-feely,” he says. “It’s more interested in what’s practical than ideology. It needs the City to be run well.” On his political journey from the left, he even hired Bob Kiley, an ex-CIA operative, to run the Tube network. Livingstone notes approvingly that within a year of being appointed, Kiley had replaced “27 of the top 30 Tube managers”.

. . .

The nasal “and …” with which Livingstone punctuates his conversation is a trademark tic that makes his voice instantly recognisable. Yet few comedians or impressionists pick up on it – performers tend to like him too much to attack him. Livingstone’s greatest antagonist is the Evening Standard newspaper, and the former mayor attributes many of his problems in power, and a small part of his defeat, to what he believes was harassment by the paper.

Their antipathy came to a head in the aftermath of a party in February 2006, when Livingstone compared the Standard reporter Oliver Finegold, who is Jewish, to a “German war criminal” and a concentration camp guard. It caused outrage and Livingstone was subsequently suspended for four weeks, a decision later overturned by the High Court.

The relationship sank even lower when another Standard reporter, Andrew Gilligan, accused Livingstone’s race adviser, Lee Jasper, of siphoning Greater London Authority funds to his friends. Livingstone’s refusal to suspend Jasper, arguing that he was a victim of a Standard plot, left him looking inept when Jasper was forced out. Although, as Livingstone says, no charges have been brought against Jasper, for Gilligan it was illustrative of Livingstone losing his political touch. “If it had been me, I’d have had an inquiry and kicked it all into the long grass,” says Gilligan. “But Ken was blinded to the truth of the story by his hatred for the Standard and me. There’s no doubt he did, he does, hate us both. I think he’s obsessed with us.”

Maybe, but it’s clear that Livingstone reacts strongly when he believes he is being bullied, which is how he views the fallout from the Finegold episode. He may be recognised from New York to Beijing, but Livingstone still views life through the prism of his childhood. “When I was at school, I rapidly learnt if you can’t turn something aside with humour you just come straight back at them, so they know they might win but it’s going to cost them,” he says. “It was the 1950s, bullying was part of the curriculum. The teachers weren’t worried about it, they thought it was character-forming. You got it from them. Child can’t climb up the rope? Humiliate them, they’ll try harder.”

The Finegold incident happened as Livingstone was leaving a party, and it has been noted – mainly by the Standard – that Livingstone’s more infamous episodes, such as the occasion in May 2002 when he was accused of pushing a man down some steps and hitting Beal, again at a party, occur when drink has been taken. “I like a drink. I’ve never denied that,” he says. “I’m not like some politicians who hide their glasses when the photographers turn up.” Beal returns from the shops at this moment and asks how the interview is progressing.

“We’ve been talking about my drink problem.”

“Oh?” She says with faux surprise. “How is the drink problem going?”

“Well, I have got one evidently.”

Seeing Beal bearing the shopping, a natural question arises – where does the money come from these days?

“My main income is from speaking,” says Livingstone. “I’m off to Toronto to do some conference with the mayor. There’s Australia … Recently, I spent about a week in Hong Kong, looking at their waste tips and environmental stuff. That’s the bulk of my income now. And everything else is quite small and scattered and fairly media-heavy. And I’m writing an autobiography.”

Are his speaking fees in the Tony Blair league?

“No, but I suspect I earn as much as I did when I was mayor.” So not a huge amount, but still around a comfortable £138,000.

As Livingstone tours the world’s cities – where he is taken very seriously indeed – he sells a convincing idea of the modern mayor as a powerful chief executive concerned not with today but London in 10 years’ time – skating over the awkward fact that it’s a role he no longer holds. “You’ve got to know if the population is going to be growing in the 2020s, because you need to be building for that,” argues Livingstone. “You’ve got to know what jobs are going to come to London over the next decade and therefore what are we teaching in our colleges and our schools.”

There is little to connect this message with the one Livingstone might have taken around the world in 1986. Yet ever since the putsch at the GLC, Livingstone has been surrounded by a core group of leftwing advisers. They may not be the Trotskyites they are sometimes claimed to be, but they are socialist. One of them, economics adviser John Ross, has worked with Livingstone for 22 years. And despite the former mayor’s accommodation with big business, Ross believes Livingstone’s desire to regain power is driven by a radical conscience. “He is completely a socialist,” says Ross. “He just believes that the transition to that society will take a long period of time, therefore what you have to do in any situation is get the maximum out of it that you can.”

So, which Livingstone wants the mayorship back? Democratic socialist strategist or modern corporate pragmatist? The evidence suggests the latter. Since winning the Olympic bid, Livingstone has visited China, returning recently – to Shanghai – to open a business conference. Surely it is a strange democratic socialist who is entirely at ease with China’s regime?

“They lifted 450 million people out of poverty in 25 years. I am sure that will go unmatched in human history,” he says. But what about the public executions, the imprisoned dissidents, Tibet? “As mayor of London,” Livingstone responds, and there again is the tantalising suggestion that he still is mayor of London, “it’s absolutely essential London develops good relationships with China and Chinese investment comes to London. I express my views on Tibet privately to Chinese government officials. I’m more interested in politicians who deal with human rights in their own country rather than lecture the rest of the world. I can’t think of anything I did which I felt was wrong.”

Self-belief or bluster? Even now Livingstone is happy to analyse the 2008 election “to show how I really won”. He is referring not to the actual result, but to his personal popularity, which is important to him. In 2004, he ran 10 per cent ahead of Labour nationally; in 2008, it was 13 per cent. “My personal vote had gone up to a quarter of a million. And so I didn’t feel like there was this great personal rejection.”

Even Norris points out that “he did extremely well, better against Boris than he did against me. He lost because the Labour party was going through a bad time.” But Gilligan believes that Livingstone made the same mistake that Labour did in 2000 – he misread London. “London consists of a lot of people who are rightwing, or middle-of-the-road, and actually quite liked Boris and didn’t see him as a sort of great antichrist that Ken was trying to portray him as. They got their attack on Boris wrong.”

Gilligan also discerns a certain small-mindedness. “His constant parade of petty sour-grapes criticism is discrediting,” he says. “It’s silly and it’s petty.”

. . .

Is Livingstone then just a bad loser, and the trips to City Hall a mark of an inability to let go? Ross argues that the visits are simply a public attempt to hold his successor to account. “Ken believes that the events as they unfold will show that he was right and Johnson was wrong and therefore people will change their minds.”

If Livingstone does indeed stand in 2012, he suspects his Tory rival is unlikely to be Johnson. Johnson’s ambition to be party leader means he might not stand again if the Tories lose the next general election, and if they win he will surely get no favours from David Cameron and George Osborne in terms of the nomination. “I wouldn’t assume that they wouldn’t make it difficult for Boris,” says Livingstone. “Because Boris has made clear his intention to succeed Cameron, no one in the Tory party has any interest in helping him. Why would Osborne, who clearly will want to succeed Cameron, help Boris build his reputation?”

When Livingstone stood in 2000, Tony Blair warned that he would be a “disaster” for London. It was a remark he later retracted, in a rare admission that he had been proved wrong. Livingstone must, then, be confident of being selected in 2012, but Gilligan warns against complacency. “I think Labour would do everything it possibly can to prevent him standing again, because clearly the result would be the same,” he says. “I can see no reason why Ken would be any more attractive and popular than he was in 2008.”

Were Livingstone not to be selected, says Ross, “Who knows how he would react? There are too many hypotheticals. He takes things stage by stage. He knows on May 1 his result in London was much ahead of Labour in the rest of the country on the day, so he would be the logical candidate.”

As he shows me around the garden (yes, there’s a pond; no, there’s no sign of newts), Livingstone discusses his planting regime with the same level of seriousness he gives to police budgets. He relishes the new time with his family, but it’s clear he is chafing to be back in office. What else could he do? He has no interest in directorships and, although he says he has been approached by corporate headhunters, it is not a route he is likely to travel. “How many big businesses want on their board someone who thinks their directors should all be paying a lot more tax and they shouldn’t be using tax havens?” he asks. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’d have to betray everything I actually believe in.”

The one thing Livingstone believes in above all others is Ken Livingstone as mayor again. After all, he says, “Short of being prime minister there isn’t a better job in British politics than running London.” It must be hard to see a job like that flushed down the pan, and even worse with Boris pulling the chain.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009