The latest opinion poll in London shows Boris Johnson’s lead over Ken Livingstone evaporating. In a few months, by banging on about issues that don’t matter much to Londoners, Boris has squandered his eight-point lead. On the key indicator of being ‘in touch’, Livingstone is now streets ahead of Johnson. It is, as they say, game on. It would be foolish to call it either way, but my sense is that the momentum is with the Comeback Ken. If that’s right, what can it teach us?
Ken Livingstone’s political approach has always fascinated me. On the one hand, he is a shameless populist, picking up issues such as cheap tube and bus fares which he knows appeal to most Londoners. He’s been doing it for 30 years, since the days of the GLC. Then it was ‘fare’s fair’, today it’s the ‘fare deal’. I was one of the young people drawn into politics because of Ken’s GLC, especially the free music concerts in the big parks. I stood in Jubilee Gardens by County Hall in 1986 with a crowd of thousands as the last minutes of the GLC, abolished by Margaret Thatcher, ticked away. He spoke at Manchester University in 1988, and hundreds turned out to see him. Famously, he ended up in Derek Draper’s student digs, and saw for the first and only time, a picture of Roy Hattersley on a student’s wall.
Ken managed to make politics exciting and popular. Some of that old magic has been on display in recent weeks. The energetic campaigning on tube and bus fares helps to explain the big shift in the opinion polls away from Boris and towards Ken. Surely the lesson of this campaign is that simple, resonant messages, repeated often across a range of media, can start to shift public opinion. That certainly seems to be what’s happening in the capital. It’s a lesson more broadly for Labour in opposition. Sometimes what’s needed is not another big speech, but a campaign with simple, understandable goals.
But alongside the campaigning skill is Ken’s obstinate refusal to resile from positions which are extreme, eccentric or just plain barmy. His memoir You Can’t Say That is an exercise is ‘why I was right and everyone else was wrong’. Some of it is true. His championing of rights for lesbians and gay men, in the most hostile, and at times, dangerous circumstances, was both courageous and prescient. In those pre-Stonewall days, it was a political position which could earn you grief, opprobrium and possibly a kicking, and not only from the fascists. Plenty of Labour voters accepted homophobia as the norm. But Ken’s opposition to Israel, and his cosying up to some of the most odious Islamist preachers and demagogues, has made it hard for many in London to support him.
I recall his speech to a Labour Students meeting in 1988 at the NUS conference. Another politician might have given a speech attacking the Tory government’s education policies, and stirring up support for the Labour NUS candidates. Ken gave a speech about child abuse in the Belfast Kincora Boys’ Home. Now, you can argue that ventilating an obscure, but important scandal from a public platform was more useful than more political blah. The fact that the speech has stuck in my mind 20 years later, while so many other politicians’ efforts have faded from view, makes the point I suppose. The following year, he turned up at Labour’s youth and student conference to speak in support of the Militant Tendancy’s candidate, and against what he called the ‘leadership stooge’ Alun Parry. Alun, a decent bloke from Liverpool, is now a leftwing folk-singer.
That’s the irony about Ken being so far ahead on ‘being in touch’ in the opinion poll. On most issues – international, domestic, economic, political – Ken is off the scale that most people occupy.
What Ken has always shown is courage. Sometimes disastrously misplaced, but admirable nonetheless. His congestion charge is a monument to political courage: a big, expensive and initially unpopular reform which today is accepted and works. It was positively Blairite. I want Ken to win London, and not just because he’s the Labour candidate. He brings something to city politics which is rare in Britain (but often found in the USA, France and elsewhere). More importantly, a win for Labour in London would be an important milestone in Labour’s return to office nationally. We should never have lost London in the first place. A win will put us back on track.
—————————————————————————————
Paul Richards writes a weekly column for Progress, Paul’s week in politics
—————————————————————————————
An interesting piece, Paul. I think part of Ken’s appeal is not keeping to the script, something worth recognising. People give him credit for speaking his mind and it feels more authentic: the problem with New Labour often was that even though much of what was said chimed with the median voter view, the fact that so much did just felt odd to people and different to how ordinary people behave.
In the real world, people may average out at a middle position, but most will also have ideas that sound a bit out there. Ken therefore feels a bit like someone they know and understand rather than someone who appears to have just taken the political temperature before making up their mind.
An interesting parallel from another country and very different politics is Ron Paul in the States. Very few people would advocate all the positions he stands on, but because it is an eccletic mix, it often feels more real to Republican voters.
Does Paul have to be so cynical? He depicts Ken as a shameless populist picking issues because they will appeal to Londoners, as if Ken doesn’t genuinely believe in his own policies. Perhaps most politicians only do what they think will get them votes (or what their advisers say will get them votes). But surely Ken has always done what he thinks will benefit most normal people, and so most normal people agree with his policies. Isn’t it as simple as that?
Ken’s major success – the congestion charge – was “positively Blairite”? You’re only saying this because it was a success!