Livingstone for London Mayor!
The Labour Party NEC meets on January 26 to decide on the selection procedure for the Party’s candidates for London Mayor and Greater London Authority members.
Despite – or maybe because of – the fact that Ken Livingstone had experience of running the Greater London Council Blair and his minions are determined to stop him standing. The polls show Ken as the only Labour candidate likely to beat anyone the Tories put up (or Richard Branson).
The NEC will probably go for the option floated by the Greater London Labour Party Board (executive as was) of setting up a vetting panel. This panel is designed with one main aim in mind – to prevent Livingstone getting on the ballot paper.
This is despite the large number of resolutions submitted by union and Labour Party bodies calling for candidates with nominations from 10 per cent of London CLPs to be automatically on the Labour Party ballot paper. Party members should have the right to choose the candidate for mayor from those with this level of support.
The likely leadership manoeuvre flies in the face of the wishes of the 400-odd delegates at Greater London Labour Party conference last June, who passed a resolution for automatic shortlisting with only one vote against.
The fact that Livingstone is extremely popular not only with Party and union activists but also with the London electorate as a whole only makes things worse for the bureaucracy. The best option for them would be to find a candidate who could beat Livingstone in a ballot of Party members and the whole matter would be closed. Unfortunately for them, they can’t find anyone who could even run Livingstone close.
Not for want of trying. They have floated several candidates, Glenda Jackson, Tony Banks, and Trevor Macdonald, all of whom have been dropped like a ton of bricks when they realised they couldn’t make a dent in Livingstone’s popularity.
The latest kite to be flown is Pauline Green, MEP, in the hope that she will have lots of publicity in the run up to the European elections in June, but she has an awful lot of ground to make up on Livingstone.
While the Party leadership generally succeeded in carving up the selection process for the Scottish Parliament and European elections (although not without protests), the London Mayor selection has created a lot more fuss.
Elsewhere the stitch-ups took place without too much publicity, but having created the post of a high-profile directly-elected mayor against the wishes of the Party membership, with talk of an ‘ambassador for London’, it is hardly surprising that the selection process has attracted the media’s attention. Blair is now stuck with the problem of trying to prevent a popular, high-profile, candidate from standing.
The media have been running planted stories – probably emanating from Millbank - about the terrible record of the GLC. But this hasn’t prevented the media also noticing Livingstone’s popularity, reporting and running opinion polls showing Londoners’ (and Party members) support for his right to stand and editorials in surprising places opposing the carve-up.
The type of candidate Blair would really like was shown when Robert Ayling, chief of British Airways, was floated as a potential candidate. Rather than a hindrance, Ayling’s record as a union-basher is obviously an asset as far as Blair is concerned. He may have realised by now that Londoners and London Labour Party members don’t feel quite the same way.
So why is Livingstone so unacceptable to Blair? He has expressed his willingness to work with a ‘Blairite’ deputy leader, and toned down his criticism of the policy of directly-elected mayors once he decided he wanted the job. He even claims to have written to Blair making clear that he would not see himself as a focus of opposition to the government.
He has mixed his criticism of the government’s economic policy with expressions of loyalty, and now supports Britain’s entry into the single European currency.
He has said that he could not repeat the GLC’s ‘fares fair’ policy (when fares were reduced by about 35%) and would not be able to affect the contracts for the semi-privatisation of London underground. His ‘manifesto’ is quite moderate (though not for Blair).
His proposals for solving London’s transport problems include the pedestrianisation of parts of the centre, the re-introduction of conductors on the buses (cutting delays), the reversal of the trend towards short-distance bus routes, improving the level of frequency on rail routes within the capital, and new taxes on car parking.
While pointing out the high level of poverty in large parts of London, proposals to grapple with this are thin on the ground – an appeal to the government to increase public spending in London and to the City Corporation to back a task force with hard cash and a commitment to "make full use of the government’s welfare to work programme to get people into real paid employment".
Other proposals include a Greater London development plan, integrated waste disposal across London, air quality targets, protection of the Green Belt and Sites of Special Scientific Interest, community and voluntary sector involvement in all London ‘partnerships’ and tackling energy waste and fuel poverty.
He proposes using the new Police Authority to weed out corrupt and racist police officers, making it a disciplinary offence to refuse to testify against a corrupt or racist colleague in order to do so. He also wants the police to step up the fight against ‘petty crime and vandalism’. In the long term he wants to see the GLA become the regional education and health authority and have tax-raising powers.
While all these (and other proposals) would undoubtedly improve life in London (if they got beyond the level of good intentions to concrete reality), this is more an indication of how bad things are than their radical character. They are hardly likely to disturb business in the City overmuch and there is little that challenges the government.
Livingstone rightly criticises the delay between the referendum on London government in May 1998 and the likely first elections for the mayor and Assembly in 2000. The government has been able to introduce short parliamentary bills on issues such as the Irish ‘peace agreement’, but it seems determined to delay introduction of the Greater London Authority.
There is certainly an urgent need for such an authority, but Blair wants to avoid it becoming a pole of attraction for opposition to the government. Maybe he doesn’t want an oppositional figure opening the Millennium Dome (or even worse, refusing to do so).
By the middle of 2000 the government popularity may well have fallen, and since the Assembly will be elected by PR there would be unlikely to be an absolute majority of Labour members.
Blair has shown time and again that although the government is committed to devolution of certain powers – some of which Blair would have loved to renege on if they hadn’t been such strong commitments from previous Labour leaders – the last thing he wants to do is let things get out of control.
So devolve powers, but move might and main to ensure that such powers are in ‘safe’ hands. The London mayor should content his/herself with signing annual contracts and attracting tourists and investment.
If an outright Blairite cannot be found who could secure the job (and Mandelson is now said to have declined the kind offer of losing another election) then either a loyalist who will just do as they are told or a ‘businessperson’ (Ayling, Branson) who would let the government get on with the real job of governing London.
Losing to Jeffrey Archer, who wouldn’t upset any applecarts, would be better in Blair’s eyes than allowing Livingstone to stand representing, for all his shortcomings, the opposition to his policies and ‘project’ within the labour movement.
It is for this reason that socialists should support Livingstone in his fight to become Mayor of London. Not only does Socialist Outlook support his right to stand for basic democratic reasons, but we support his candidature. Ken Livingstone’s victory would be the biggest blow yet to Blair’s attack on the labour movement, inflicting a real defeat with repercussions beyond the limitations of his policies.
Blair will not back down on his opposition to Livingstone, whatever Livingstone says or does in his attempts to ingratiate himself. The way to ensure Livingstone’s right to stand is by mobilising the immense support he enjoys among Party and union activists. Resolutions in support of his right to stand should just be the beginning; there should be demonstrations of support at the NEC meeting, at any vetting panel meeting and every other opportunity.
Blair and his supporters are only likely to back down if they are made to realise that the consequences of not doing so are worse.