Like a Bad Smell

Comment has already been made elsewhere (including at Biased BBC) about Ken Livingstone’s too-regular appearances in the media of late. Really, anyone would think he was gearing up for a book launch or something.

The last week or so has seen the newt fancier commenting on China and the athletics meeting that’s going on there, trotting out his standard line of “we have no reason to criticise China’s action in Tibet after what we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan”. Well, we probably did some pretty unpleasant things during our Imperial days but that shouldn’t have stopped us having a go at Hitler. (Warning - Godwin’s Law approaching).

This morning it was the treat of listeners to Nick Ferrari on LBC, though to be fair to Nick, Livingstone has never been a stranger to that London station, where he is now finding regular genuine employment.

Ken’s real vitriol was turned on Boris because the Mayor didn’t head off on a junket to the opening ceremony of the Games in Bejing. Yet who cares? Ken’s Communist mate the Mayor of Bejing invited him over, but Boris doesn’t need to be there except at the end to receive the torch. Boris, it seems, has this old fashioned notion that the Mayor for London should spend his time in London.

Livingstone was earlier asked to give his pearls of wisdom on Boris’ first 100 days in office. “Too early to say”, said Ken, almost sounding reasonable when he welcomed the extra PCSOs on the transport network, but then thought it wrong that Boris should be appointing people from the Right to his team (as opposed, presumably, to the - ahem - broad political church that Livingstone gathered around him).

“Boris’ administration was actually more right wing than appointments like Rosie Boycott might make it appear”, he warned ominously.

I should blooming well hope so.

Livingstone: Look, I Came Here For a Good Argument

At the risk of appearing a Livingstone obsessive, I though I’d post a transcript of Ken’s first appearance today as a presenter on LBC radio.

(Errrm, it may not be entirely verbatim, but you’ll get the general idea of how it sounded!)

Ken Livingstone (for it is he): “Hi, this is Ken Livingstone here on LBC. Phone me, text me, or email me, and be as rude as you like.”

Caller 1: “Hi Ken. I’d just like to say what a tragic shame it was that you lost. I compare it to the assassination of Allende in Chile by the evil American Empire, or the rise of Hitler perhaps.”

KL: “Oh dear, how embarrassing. This isn’t a set up, honest. We’d better find someone to criticise me otherwise they’ll complain that we’re not balanced.”

Caller 2: “Hi Ken, I’d like to say congratulations to you on getting a larger vote this time than you’ve ever had before.”

KL: “Errm, thanks, but we’re going to have the authorities onto us because we’re not finding any callers to have a go at me.

“By the way, we asked Boris Johnson if he wants to come on and have a good argument, but haven’t heard back.”

Caller 3: “Ken, mate, I think you could do no wrong. I was so upset when you lost.”

KL: “I’m going to have to cut you off there, surely there’s someone out there who wants to argue with me. Incidentally, if Andrew Gilligan’s listening, he could call in if he thinks he’s hard enough.

Caller 4: “Ken, I’ve got a few points for you. I think you are an anti-semite and a paranoid fascist. Let me go through each of those.”

KL: “OK, fine. This is more like it.”

Caller 4: “Right then. That you’re paranoid. I say this because… police … bbxzxt.”

KL: “Sorry caller, you’re breaking up. Oh well, time for the travel news.”

(Time passes).

Ken: Thanks there to Dave Spart in Neasden. By the way, we did invite God onto the programme, but we haven’t heard back from the big beardy coward.

…

OK, so now for a few more accurate nuggets (again from memory .. what? I do have to work y’know):

Andrew Hosken (unofficial biographer): “So, would you run for Mayor again?”

KL: “Well, if there was a by-election – I mean, if Boris was arrested and carted off, as he should be – then yes I’d like to do it.”

On the US embassy not paying their congestion charge:

Cuddly Ken: “If I could I’d have directed the police to crush the ambassador’s car … with the ambassador still in it.”

Caller: “Why don’t you have a go at other countries … like the Nigerians for instance?”

KL: “Well, the Nigerians have never paid anyway.” (So that’s alright then?)

Livingstone Admits Mistake!

On Andrew Marr’s show this morning, former Mayor of London (a title which definitely suits him) Ken Livingstone said he regretted putting the congestion charge call centre in Coventry rather than Croydon, because people in Croydon would have had a better idea of where things were in London.

He has a point, though I doubt that is why Croydon was among the many boroughs that voted Ken out of power.

But that was it. It was rather like getting blood out of the stone for Marr, and even now, Livingstone’s admission sounds rather like Stalin regretting that he didn’t use a different interior design scheme in the Kremlin, or Franco wishing he’d tried to rig a different year’s Eurovision.

Needless to say, he still blames his defeat on Labour’s national unpopularity and, of course, the Evening Standard. This week, though, we will have the delight of witnessing Ken’s own dabbling in the media as he hosts the 1-4pm slot on LBC radio.

“I’ll be the perfect afternoon antidote to Nick Ferrari. You can detox with me.”… quoth Ken on the station’s website. Now was the reference to addiction treatment his own invention or that of a mischievous LBC PR bod?

London Election Stats

I am indebted to Croydonian for alerting me earlier this week to the release of the London election results broken down by ward*. Enjoy!

(Health warning for LibDems: You won’t enjoy this. As you’ll see further below, if these results were repeated in the 2010 council elections, you would end up with fewer councillors than the BNP.)

Firstly, the main contest …

Biggest Boris Vote
1. Stanley Ward (R.B. Kensington & Chelsea) 79.96%
2. Royal Hospital Ward (Kensington & Chelsea) 79.68%
3. Knightsbridge & Belgravia Ward (Westminster) 78.59%
Inner London average 36.24%
Outer London average 48.35%

Biggest Livingstone Vote
1. East Ham North (Newham) 73.42%
2. Green Street West (Newham) 70.92%
3. Southall Broadway (Ealing) 69.77%
Inner London average 43.80%
Outer London average 31.97%

Biggest Paddick Vote
1. The Wrythe (Sutton) 20.02% (Even here, Livingstone polled around 2.5% higher, and Boris over 26% more)
2. Wandle Valley (Sutton) 19.43%
3. St. Marks (K.C.) 19.28%
Inner London average 10.21%
Outer London average 9.49%

Now as any fule kno, it was Outer London that won it for Boris, with a 12 point lead in the outer boroughs, against Ken’s 12 point lead in the inners. Only with the ward results, and the resultant borough breakdowns, is this even clearer than when just comparing GLA constituencies, some of which straddle inner and outer London.

Although the gap was roughly equal and reversed between inner and outer London, it is clear that outer London, with approximately 800,000 more voters, was going to have the edge. Also, the inner London wards may have registered the very highest vote shares, but with the average ward size in outer London being approximately 500 voters larger, the Conservatives’ doughnut strategy was thoroughly vindicated.

“But but but..” cry the Lib Dems, “you’re only counting first preferences. That’s not fair.” Yes I am, and yes it is.

Moving on, with such a presidential style contest some focus has been given to the extra boost that that the mayoral candidates give to the “normal” party vote. Let’s compare the mayoral vote share (yes, first preferences again) to the party list “London Member” vote and look at the “premium” that the mayoral candidates gave to their parties.

Boris Premium
Highest in Mayesbrook (Barking & Dagenham) 24.64%
Lowest in Southall Broadway (Ealing) 2.88%
Overall 8.57%

Ken Premium
Highest in Spitalfields & Banglatown (Tower Hamlets): 31.50 %
Lowest in Eastbrook (Barking & Dagenham): 0.37%
Overall 9.42%

Paddick “Premium”
Highest in Thames (Barking & Dagenham): 3.27%
Lowest in Teddington (Richmond): -17.51%
Overall -1.61%

Not brilliant news for poor old Brian, then – he actually generated a negative premium – a “Brian discount” if you will. Well, as he has effectively said, the Lib Dems are rubbish at campaigning in London now. (Bad workmen and all that, Brian?)

So looking ahead to 2010, which could be the safest wards in London? Here are the final redoubts, based on the party list votes (as opposed to the mayoral votes – see above) for each party which scored a majority in any ward, which therefore includes the BNP and Greens:

Safest Conservative Ward
… by majority: Royal Hospital (Kensington & Chelsea) 65.41%
… by vote share: Knightsbridge & Belgravia (Westminster) 77.25%

Safest Labour Ward
… by majority: Southall Broadway (Ealing) 49.59%
… by vote share: Southall Broadway (Ealing) 64.94%

Safest LD Ward
… by majority: Muswell Hill (Haringey) 3.62%
… by vote share: Teddington (Richmond): 33.93% (but still beaten by the Conservatives)

In fact, based on these party list votes, the Lib Dems would take only two other wards in the whole of London: Alexandra (also Haringey) and Cathedrals (Southwark). The BNP would have more councillors, with eight wards.

Safest BNP Ward
… by majority: Mayesbrook (Barking & Dagenham) 15.67%
… by vote share: Mayesbrook (Barking & Dagenham) 38.47%

Safest Green ward
… by majority: Highgate (Camden): 0.18%
… by vote share: Brockley (Lewisham): 29.94%

And if you’ll indulge me, we’ll look at the absolute number of votes…

Largest number of votes (1st pref. mayoral)
Conservative: Hayes & Coney Hall (Bromley) 4,025 (What, my own ward? Mais oui! Why do you think I included this particular list?)
Labour: St Dunstan`s & Stepney Green (Tower Hamlets) 2,547
Lib Dem: Southfields (Wandsworth) 678

Now let’s wrap up the turnout records. I must admit I haven’t got the up to date electorate figures for every borough, most being brought forward from 2006, so take these with a pinch of salt …

Highest Turnouts
1. St. Katharine`s & Wapping (Tower Hamlets) 62.09%
2. Eastbrook (Barking and Dagenham) 59.86%
3. Stoke Newington Central (Hackney) 59.34%

Lowest Turnouts
1. Thames (Barking and Dagenham) 22.68%
2. Stratford And New Town (Newham) 22.77%
3. Cranford (Hounslow) 22.86%

Now for the booby prizes - we find out who will have to stand in the corner with the dunce’s hat on.

The most spoilt votes (1st prefs, of all votes cast) were 7.08% of ballots in Alperton (Brent)

And for the fewest spoilt papers, the gold star goes to …, the postal voters of the City, with the good burghers of the square mile only messing up two ballot papers. Otherwise, the electors in Royal Hospital ward (Kensington & Chelsea) can be smug, having only failed twelve times, or on 0.569% of ballots.

When we come to second preferences, a significant number of voters didn’t cast a vote, and this makes up the bulk (over 400,000) of spoilt 2nd preference votes. The ward whose voters were most sure that their choice would make it to the second round (or maybe they were just in a hurry) was Northumberland Park (Haringey) with 35.78% blank second preferences.

One particular category of spoilt ballot is “voting too many times”, and so we can reveal that the ward where Robert Mugabe would find himself most at home is … Plaistow South (Newham): 3.28% (95 such spoilt papers).

I think that’ll do for now. My anorak awaits its owner.

* Well, all except the postal votes, for which I only have the borough totals so far, and which I have had to ignore for the purposes of most of this election stat-fest.

The Ken Livingstone Memoirs: Publish And Be Damned Awkward

So it’s memoir season for the Blairites, which on the face of it shouldn’t unduly bother Ken Livingstone, but his own departure will still be fresh in the mind and publishers’ advances must seem somewhat more enticing when the ink is only just dry on the P45 and the mortgage is still to be paid.

So here’s an interesting question: when will Red Ken publish his own record of the ups and downs of life on the left in the last thirty years? Let’s look at some of his options:

He could publish this year. It’s not as if he hasn’t a little time on his hands, and what better way to spend the summer? For a little while, the chapters on the Blair years, of smashing the New Labour machine before running for a second term with its backing, will still have some relevancy. That is, while Gordon is still keeping the seat in the Number 10 study warm for David Cameron. Perhaps more relevant will be the usefulness of an autobiography in the context of whatever job offer(s) Ken might be mulling over – or fishing for – later this year.

However, any publication near the Labour party conference in September may be less than helpful for the party – the party which Ken, so far, has not appeared to want to hurt. Publication around that time would remind everyone of that Black Thursday in May and draw attention away from Gordon’s umpteenth fightback (though that might be doing GB a favour), and help, perhaps unwittingly or otherwise, to stir the political pot. Publication after September, then, might be less problematic, and in good time for some parliamentary selections.

Option two would be publication after this year, but before the General Election. The relevance of the recent history will be decaying at a rapid rate, but it will be coming out after Boris’ expected honeymoon period, when Ken might hope to remind people how good things were under his own, errrm, benevolent reign. However, as James Forsyth notes, the City Hall audit may uncover some inconvenient facts during this time. However, leave it too close to May 2010 and not only would it again be unhelpful to Labour’s election campaign, but possibly too late to have any impact on his chances for selection for a cosy parliamentary seat (assuming there will still be any Labour safe seats)*.

Clearly if he waits until after 2010, then it will be a true political anorak’s almanac. He can forget serialisation rights. It will be the memoirs of a political giant of the Left, a la Tony Benn. In which case, he might as well wait ten years, though that’s an awfully long time to be filling your time looking forward to your next session sitting gloomily in the London Assembly’s public gallery, hoping that some future Labour Mayoral candidate might remember to offer you a job.

* Ah, which constituency to woo – Bethnal Green & Bow perhaps?

Final Mayoral Thoughts

OK, time to move on, but it has been interesting browsing the lefty blogs and particularly the comment sections on why Ken lost, and while we’re on the subject, why the Lib Dems did so appallingly too. For instance on Michael White’s blog, elsewhere in the Grauniad and at Harry’s Place among others.

There are a few themes emerging:

1) “The Evening Standard was against Ken. ’snot fair” Well, the ES certainly helped, but don’t shoot the messenger just because he’s found a message to bring. In any case, I don’t remember the Left complaining when the ES was backing Ken.
2) “It was all part of the national swing.” Not as big a factor as they might think. Ken might have been a Labour mayor – for a few years anyway – but he is and always has been Ken first and foremost. The presidential environment of the London Mayor has ensured that the election would always be primarily about him and his record.
3) From the LibDems: “we got squeezed by the two main parties”. Oh please, change the record. You’ve had over twenty years, through both unpopular Conservative and Labour governments – haven’t you got the message yet?
4) Again from the yellow corner: “Paddick was uninspiring”. They’re not wrong – I watched some of those debates. How about the two classic moments on ITV: first was when Alistair Stewart asked if Paddick would tell borough police commanders what to do. Paddick’s response? “Yes. No, I mean….”. Then, at the end of the debate, the coup de grace … Alistair Stewart: “Who would you suggest your supporters put as their second preference vote?” Paddick: “” - that’s five whole seconds of silence … and now we know why (scroll down to 6.34) it was the far Left, er, Left List (this year’s name for the Socialist Workers Party or something).
5) “How can the outer boroughs do this? They don’t use Oysters or the Tube, what gives them the right?” Errr, perhaps the fact that we have to pay for the Tube, and the Zone 1 stuff, yet see little in return. Especially in the south, where we don’t even get the Tube*

And then amongst all that was the more realistic view from some former Livingstone supporters, which show just how he lost the backing of some core voters. Ken’s support for al-Qaradawi reflects the dilemma that others on the Left seem to be facing now – how to embrace multiculturalism but without pardoning the very politically un-correct attitudes of some of those cultures.

* and, some may ask, why would we want it, when you can already get from Bromley South to Central London non stop in 20 minutes, and with a view out of the window!

Just a Few Hours To Go

Judging by the current turnout estimates, if Boris has done it, it’ll be clearly on the back of a massive backlash from the Outer London boroughs. You know Ken – the sort of boroughs, like Bexley and Bromley that you visited less times than you did your friends in South America and Cuba. The sort of boroughs your minions have trouble locating on a map. The sort of boroughs that have bankrolled the Zone 1-centric plans, filled your cronies pockets and paid for the propagandising, smear campaigns and of course “The Londoner”.

As the few unfortunates who have already heard me speak on the subject will know, there’s only one piece of paper I’m interested in seeing with Livingstone’s name on – his P45.

Livingstone - Don’t Believe The Hype (no. 42)

Livingstone is at it again. From one month after the election 1st June, 11-18 year olds will have to “touch in” with their Oyster cards when they get on a bus – though they will still be travelling for free. This is apparently to solve the problem of rowdy behaviour by some youths on buses since free travel for under-18s was introduced by El Mayore.

So, yet another token measure to tackle a problem of his own making – in fact, a worse than useless token. The new rules are to prevent youths who are banned from the buses from boarding. Fine, except who’s going to stop them? Without physical tube-style barriers how is a driver supposed to enforce the new rules? The same drivers who cannot deal with the little darlings at the moment without risking either injury or prosecution? Bus drivers, who have enough to deal with as it is, already have access to photos and descriptions of known troublemakers, but their hands are largely tied.

It also emerged, at a recent meeting at Bromley Council, that if a child appears and has lost/forgotten their Oyster, TfL do owe a duty of care and drivers will still be expected to allow them to board rather than leave them stranded. I predict a spate of selective amnesia among the more troublesome element of our teenagers.

A Ringing Endorsement

President of Venezuela and model guardian of human rights Hugo Chavez this week described Ken Livingstone as “Ken the Red. Ken is rojo rojito (the red tide).” This was shortly before describing Iranian president Ahmedinejad in positive terms as an “extraordinary man”.

For how much longer will Londoners be seen as a laughing stock for being represented by Livingstone?

(Answer: 222 days).

Lie-vingstone plays the race card

James Cleverly is set to replace Bob Neill as the GLA member for Bexley & Bromley next year, and is moving his campaign up a gear. Earlier this week he was giving Ken Livingstone a good kicking. Good work, James.

Livingstone is questioning nominations to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority on the grounds that the nominees are Conservative too white. Livingstone apparently sees no irony in criticising an appointment on the grounds of the candidate’s colour. James rightly points out:

“Appointments to London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority should be about the safety of Londoners and not about ethnic quotas or Ken Livingstone’s petty political point scoring.

“It is insulting both to the current nominees and to London’s wider ethnic communities that Livingstone has chosen this issue to make into a political argument. The Conservative nominations had a mix of ages, genders and sexual orientations, Livingstone’s objection to the list on the grounds of diversity make it clear that he still defines people first and foremost by the colour of their skin.”

Positive discrimination benefits no-one, least of all the appointees, who have to live with the unspoken suspicion that they got the job because of their colour/gender, and so have to work twice as hard to prove the silent critics wrong.

The issue reminds me of the appointment of Kent’s current Chief Constable back in 2003. When I heard about this, I was happy with the assumption that Ch. Const. Fuller got the job because he was a match-fit officer who would bring his many skills to bear in making the county a safer place to be – an assumption which I will continue to hold until proved otherwise, despite the headline writers’ best efforts to highlight another, irrelevant, fact - his colour.

Crossposted on SELblog