Ken Livingstone is a much misunderstood man. Many readers will be under the impression that the Mayor of London is somehow left-wing. Wrong. Mr Livingstone is — don’t whisper it, but shout it out over the Tannoy on the Docklands Light Railway — a card-carrying capitalist, a main-chance man.

His interview with The Times today shows that he is, down to his fetching braces, a City boy: a friend of the Square Mile, a devotee of light-touch regulation, a babbler of flip chart management-speak. Let’s all raise a glass of Petrus (on company expenses, naturally) to him. But you cry: “What about his cosying up to that Hugo Chávez fellow? That’s all a bit socialist, isn’t it?” No, the mayor screwed a £16 million oil discount out of a developing country in return for “advice” and information on street-cleaning (haven’t the Venezuelans heard of Google?). So all hail, this natural-born, hard-nosed wheeler-dealer.

Recent history needs revising in light of this important new insight into the mayor. His Red-Flag flying days at the Greater London Council, surely that was just a slick brand-building exercise? Who, for instance, would have thought that we would want to buy a nasal hair-trimmer until Victor Kiam brandwashed us. Likewise, who would have thought that Londoners wanted a nasal-voiced leader until Mr Livingstone brandwashed them. And perhaps his Loony Left antics were just a cunning ploy to discredit the GLC and cause its abolition. Well, Mr Livingstone is an ardent believer in streamlined government.

He’s done a little ideological arbitrage in his day, but we are now long on Livingstone, the capital’s capitalist.