Defy the fixers - left must back Livingstone
Ken Livingstone’s bid to become mayor of London is the best chance to deal a blow against Blairism since Blair took the leadership of the Labour Party three and a half years ago. The left must fully support this.
Livingstone’s campaign has been transformed by several opinion poll results, which show that he has massive support amongst Londoners. An Evening Standard poll on October 15 showed that if Livingstone were the Labour candidate he would trounce Tory candidate Lord Archer with 63% of all voters – including 23% of Tory voters!
It also showed that he has the support of 50% of Labour voters in the race for the labour candidature. Dobson could muster only 17% with 16% supporting Glenda Jackson and 7% Trevor Phillips. Even more significantly it showed that Livingstone would also win easily against all comers if he stood as an independent. Livingstone would get 43% of the vote as against 25% for Archer and 23% for Dobson.
A Mail on Sunday poll showed similar results – except that Dobson’s support in a contest with Archer had fallen. Of course this poll was taken after the new Electoral College had been announced.
The Millbank dirty tricks department has been working overtime but it was seriously wrong-footed by these results. Only a couple of days before they had announced their ‘answer’ to the Livingstone problem in the form of an electoral college designed to give Dobson the nomination.
It has three sections each having one third of the vote: one for London party members, one for trade unions and Socialist Societies, and one for London MPs, MEPs, and the Millbank selected candidates for the London Assembly – a total of just 86 people!
This did indeed give Dobson a big advantage. He would be assured at least 75% of the MPs section. Millbank also recommended that unions cast their votes as block votes once they have determined which way they will be cast, which they assumed would be wielded by the union leaderships and would benefit Dobson.
This set-up (or stitch-up) means that one vote of an MP is worth 1,000 more than the vote of a LP member, or 5,000 times more than the vote of a union member. This factor alone automatically gives Dobson half the votes he needs to win the nomination before a vote has been cast in the London LP members section or the trade union section.
But it was not so simple. The level of support shown for Livingstone in the polls affected the situation in the unions. Not only did major unions in London, such as the TGWU, MSF and the FBU announce that they would ballot their members but they also declared they would recommend a vote for Livingstone.
Even the GMB, which controversially cast its block vote for Blair’s man Alun Michael as leader of the Welsh assembly has been shamed into balloting in London – though without a recommendation.
In UNISON, the London Political Committee has recommended support for Livingstone, but it is unclear at time of writing whether the Blairites in the national machinery will be able to overturn this.
Other affiliated unions including TSSA, RMT, ASLEF, UCATT, the Bakers and the CWU have yet to decide. In the CWU it seems likely that the key debate will be whether the vote is split. The AEEU – whose leader Ken Jackson has stridently backed Dobson and attacked Ken Livingstone has formally not decided yet, but neither they nor builders’ union UCATT which also has yet to decide are expected to ballot.
Faced with this Millbank promptly changed its position and recommended that where unions had balloted they should cast their votes proportionately – which would swing the benefit back to Dobson.
This advice is now in turn being challenged in some unions who argue that since the AEEU, and possibly USDAW, intend cast block votes for Dobson without a ballot, to cast their votes proportionately would give Dobson an unfair advantage. UNISON has already taken a decision to this effect, and will cast a block vote whichever way it goes, although this cannot be defended as a democratic principle.
At the end of all this a Dobson win is still the most likely outcome, but it is now a close-run thing and much more of a gamble than was envisaged when Millbank introduced the system.
Other things have gone wrong as well. Trevor Phillips dutifully withdrew from the contest to become Dobson’s running mate, but Glenda Jackson has not been prepared to do the same.
In fact she has denounced Millbank for twisting her arm over it. This failure to reduce it to a two horse race means that there will be a split in the Blairite vote. Even if it is only a small split this is an added problem in a close-run contest.
Millbank, therefore, have a big decision to make. Will they take the gamble of defeating Livingstone in the rigged Electoral College – or will they take what Livingstone calls the ‘grassy knoll option’ and disqualify him in the selection procedure?
The odds may be against this. But they have clearly kept their options open, since the selection panel does not have to announce their short list until November 16. And any doubt that this is under tight leadership control was put to rest when Trevor Phillips announced his withdrawal from the race and immediately appeared at the top of the top-up list of candidates for the Assembly.
Millbank would pay a heavy price if they were to disqualify Livingstone in selection, both in loss of membership in London and beyond, and in credibility amongst the electorate.
But they may still see it as the best worst option against the nightmare scenario of Livingstone winning the nomination and becoming the official Labour mayor of London.
Of course, Livingstone is saying that even if he is excluded he would not stand as an independent. But the more he is attacked by the Blairites the more popular he becomes. In private he must see standing as an independent as a very real option if he is crossed off the short list by the selection panel or beaten in a heavily rigged process. And the left should press him stand in either of these circumstances and back him to the full if he does so.
None of this means that the left should be uncritical of Livingstone. For some time he has been shifting to the right and narrowing the distance between himself and the Blairites.
The most important example was his support for the Balkan war. His stance in support of the bombing disgusted many of his supporters, and made him virtually unsupportable whilst that war was on.
But if any of that was designed to soften the attitude of Millbank towards him it didn’t work. Millbank have been unflinching in their opposition to him getting anywhere near the position of mayor of London.
London people remember him from the GLC and his popular Fares Fair policy in particular – despite its problems in the end. Livingstone’s GLC was also the first to really put equal opportunities on the agenda – and this means something important to women, to black people, to lesbians and gay men and to disabled people.
And the great divide in this election is the issue of privatisation, particularly following the Paddington rail disaster. Livingstone’s stand against the privatisation of the tube is the basis of much of his support and he has made clear that he intends to make this the centre piece of his battle with Dobson.
Unfortunately the left is divided on the issue. The SWP are supporting Livingstone and even the CPGB are doing so.
But the Socialist Party equivocated at their Socialism 99 event and the current edition of the Socialist reports events without taking a position. The AWL have yet to make their position public, but the level of hostility they have displayed to Livingstone in the past would make their support unlikely.
Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party never support anyone other than themselves as a point of principle.
Yet to fail to support Livingstone under today’s conditions would be a big mistake. His challenge is a big opportunity for the left and if it is defeated it will be a defeat for the left.
These divisions (if they continue) could affect the role the London Socialist alliance could play in these events.
Should Livingstone be allowed to stand for the nomination and win it, the left will need to stand a left slate for the Assembly, which will support Livingstone as mayor.
Otherwise Livingstone could be trapped with a hostile Labour group in the Assembly. If he stand as an independent he may well propose his own slate for the Assembly which the left can unite behind.
If on the other hand he is excluded in the selection procedure or beaten by Dobson in the electoral college and does not stand as an independent then an alternative left candidate for mayor will be needed