The sun glints on the Thames as I walk across Tower Bridge to City Hall to
meet Ken Livingstone. High on top of the building, a dark figure is looking
through a telescope – for a moment I think it’s the mayor, so paranoid after
his terrible week that he’s watching my every move as I approach his lair.
It is fitting that Red Ken dubbed his offices “the glass testicle”, because
whatever his many faults, Ken probably has more political cojones than any
other politician of his generation.
As a child I loved Ken Livingstone. His original “fares fair” policy when he
was head of the Greater London Council meant I could travel anywhere in
London for 10p. For years he led a charmed political life as Teflon Ken,
always moving on before any dirt could stick.
He ran rings round Tony Blair to become mayor of London, against new Labour’s
wishes – and has stacked up a formidable list of enemies; as Neil Kinnock
famously said: “Everyone likes Ken Livingstone except the people who know
him.” Another Labour insider told me: “There are three reactions when you
mention Ken: fear, hatred or adulation – you are either with Ken or against
him.”
The breathtaking view from the mayor’s office takes in the “gherkin”
skyscraper, HMS Belfast and the Tower of London; but Livingstone has reason
to feel besieged. Last week, after a 13-week war with the Evening Standard,
London’s local paper, Lee Jasper, his close friend and political crony of
two decades’ standing, was forced to resign.
“It’s been a bit of a week,” he admits, looking scruffy, unshaven and all his
62 years. (He perks up when he tells me that he raised nearly £250,000 for
his campaign in four minutes the night before in an auction of a work by
Banksy, the graffiti artist.)
The allegations against Jasper, the mayor’s former race adviser, are that he
helped to direct at least £2.5m of public funds to 11 ethnic organisations
to which he had close links. The Standard’s Andrew Gilligan (the former BBC
Today programme reporter who said the government had “sexed up” its Iraq war
dossier) has been relentless in pursuit of Jasper.
Despite reports of police investigations into missing funds, the killer blow
eluded Gilligan until last week when a series of embarrassing leaked e-mails
revealed a rather closer than normal relationship between Jasper and Karen
Chouhan, the 50-year-old company secretary of a group that received £65,000
from City Hall. (Jasper wrote that he wanted to “honey glaze” her before a
“passionate embrace” and that he loved her “thighs, bum and belly”.)
Surely Livingstone should have sacked Jasper (who has nine children) weeks
ago? “No,” he says firmly. “There was not a shred of evidence against Lee
till these new e-mails. The e-mails were the first thing that broke our
internal codes and if they had been produced at the beginning, he would have
gone at the beginning, rather than dragging all this out.”
What about the more serious allegations about the misuse of taxpayers’ money?
“There is no evidence that he did anything wrong, or that there is any
financial wrongdoing by anyone. I’ve been on the receiving end of complete
inventions by the Standard for 25 years. And when it’s Gilligan, given his
involvement with David Kelly [the government scientist who was outed as
Gilligan’s source and committed suicide], and his failure to take proper
notes, which came out of the Hutton inquiry – the idea that I am going to
suspend or sack someone because Gilligan writes something in the Standard
would be a travesty.”
That is a typical Ken “reverse ferret” – skim over the allegation and kick
hard at the morals of the person who made it to try to undermine the attack.
But however hard he defends Jasper (and he stood by him long after it was
politically sensible), the scandal is doing him damage. Today his regime is
a bit like John Major’s government, buffeted by sleazy allegations that just
keep on coming.
When he was first elected mayor, he was a rebel, David against the new Labour
establishment’s Goliath. Now his regime seems tarnished and Ken, the cheeky
chappie, has revealed his nasty side. The voters know it. The most recent
YouGov survey put his Tory rival, blond bombshell Boris Johnson, ahead in
the polls on 44% (down one point), Ken on 39% (down five points) and Brian
Paddick at 12% (up five points, good news for the gay, pro-spliff Liberal
Democrat former policeman). So Ken is in choppy waters.
When asked how damaging all this has been to him, he is characteristically
bullish: “Well, my poll ratings have fallen from 49% to 44%. That’s
remarkable. It’s not exactly 18% is it? Londoners aren’t stupid. They know
the Standard is out to get me, it has been for 20 years. People know they’re
doing one last heave to get rid of me.”
Aha. Another Ken tactic. Baffling statistics (there have been rows about the
figures all week – his office explains the discrepancy by saying that his
figures come from private Labour polling that puts him and Boris neck and
neck) followed by allegations of a complex conspiracy. The bare bones of
which are that Associated Newspapers (the Standard’s owner) wants him out of
office before the new contract comes up for its Metro newspaper, which is
lucrative and distributed free at Tube stations. “Because they think I might
rig the contract so they don’t get it . . . I would go to prison if I did
that. But they believe it because they think I am a creature of such pure
malignant evil with such a web of influence that I could do that.”
There is always a reason why people are being nasty to Ken and his associates
that is never, ever anything to do with what they’ve actually done. For
instance, Ken said that the attacks on Jasper were “racist”: does that mean
newspapers can’t investigate anyone who is from an ethnic minority who might
have mismanaged public funds?
So, Ken, what about when Trevor Phillips (then head of the Commission for
Racial Equality) dared to say that multiculturalism was leading to
segregation. At that point, the mayor of London announced that Phillips (who
is black) had “gone so far over to the other side that he’ll soon be joining
the BNP”. Now, wasn’t that “racist”?
Ken, of course, has never apologised. But does he regret saying it? “No.” And
to demonstrate that he was right, he adds gleefully: “Can you believe
Phillips’s latest piece in Prospect magazine?” (Phillips argues that Barack
Obama, the US Democratic senator, would be the wrong kind of black
president.) “How can he say that?” shouts Ken. “Having Obama as president
would be a breathtaking advance for black people, not just in the US but
around the world.”
How does Ken square his great love for racial and sexual equality with
appearing alongside and endorsing hardline Muslim clerics such as Yusuf
al-Qaradawi (who says homosexuality is a sexual perversion punishable by
death and calls on God to destroy the “usurper Jews”). Could it be that by
sucking up to such figures, he convinces Muslim bodies that, unlike other
political figures, he is on their side – and then gets their votes?
Politics, politics, all is politics.
At this Ken is an undoubted master: today, for instance, he attacks Gordon
Brown for not showing enough “courage” to take a lead on climate change and
for getting it wrong on taxing “nondoms” (foreigners who live in Britain but
don’t pay tax on the money they make outside of this country).
Ken thinks that this is a recipe for disaster: “I’d love to tax rich Londoners
and give the money to the poor, but a tax on nondoms is undoubtedly
dangerous for London. We rely on importing people; 90% of migrants here come
with a degree.” What we need to do, he thinks, is to have “joint US/EU
legislation to squeeze all tax havens – otherwise these people will just
move elsewhere”.
Is Ken – with an eye on the May 1 election – distancing himself from an
unpopular prime minister? Watch this space. He is dismissive of the decision
last week by Ruth Kelly, the transport minister, to shelve road pricing,
saying that she and Gordon are “too nervous”. He adds: “I’m one
of the pessimistic ones on global warming – I think tens of millions are
going to die as a result of rising sea water. It will be a catastrophe . . .
there is a real potential that human civilisa-tion may not survive the
century.
“But over the past two years we’ve shown how you can reduce carbon emissions
by 60% in 20 years in London, so you could reach the 80%-90% reduction
required by 2050. It can be done. It requires the government to take action,
switch to locally produced energy – 65% of energy generated is wasted. If
you use the wasted heat to warm homes, you can reduce the waste to 15%.
“Within 10 years, all the advanced countries will have to recast their
economies – like they did in the second world war to create enough
armaments. All efforts will have to be concentrated on carbon-capture
technology. But so far Brown and the other political leaders don’t really
think it’s that bad and aren’t really thinking in these terms.”
Why not? “They won’t take the necessary action because they are nervous about
losing jobs and increasing costs. There is a lack of courage in our
government – they lack the courage to lead. They worry that tackling climate
change means we’ve got to live a worse life: that we’ll be living in mud
huts, making our own clothes and growing muesli. We don’t. We just have to
stop the consumer binge where if something breaks down you buy a new one,
which is unsustainable, and go back to the values of my parents’ generation:
waste not, want not.”
Surprisingly, Ken’s parents were both working-class Tories (his mother Ethel
was a dancer in London theatres, his father Robert a seaman in the merchant
navy). He was brought up in Lambeth, south London, failed his 11-plus and
worked for eight years as a hospital technician before winning a seat on
Lambeth borough council.
Despite all his slick footwork, the down-to-earth side of Ken is real: not for
him limos and swanky restaurants. He tells me it’s his turn to do the family
shopping. “There’s me bags,” he says, pointing to a grotty, reusable blue
shopper. He claims to be a nifty cook but cheats with supermarket starters:
“I had to learn to cook: my parents thought I was so dysfunctional I’d never
be married.”
He and Emma Beal, his wife, have two children of three and five: “knackering”
he says. He is about as far from a sleek plutocrat as you can imagine.
Those who loathe Ken are relieved that at least he didn’t become prime
minister, a job he would have “loved”. If he were sitting in Downing Street
today, what would he do?
“No more motorways, no more airport expansion, no big power stations, divert
all money to fund rail. I have no problem with the nanny state – the English
ruling class love a bit of being beaten by nanny and it didn’t do them any
harm.” In an age where politicians hardly ever say what they mean, it is no
wonder he connects with voters.
You can also never predict which way he will jump on things: unlike many on
the left, he insists: “I love America. I was inspired by the Kennedys to go
into public service.”
How could we add a bit of American magic to our own political process? After
all, even people who usually hate politics are riveted by the US elections.
Ken’s face lights up: “We need to have a primary system in this country. The
reason our politics is so boring is because we vet all our candidates. As a
result, it’s becoming an all-graduate profession: even in this Labour
government, there are only two definably working-class players: Hazel Blears
and Alan Johnston. The working class can’t get past the vetting process.
“We need to break the grip of the party machine. The primary system allows
people to bypass the party structures. We also need a directly elected prime
minister who can bring anyone into his government, not just MPs – then you’d
get a wider spread of people. Parliament should be smaller.” Kate Hoey, the
Labour MP, has accused Ken of running London like “1930s Chicago” – he
admitted on the Today programme to running it like a “personal fiefdom”, but
blames that on the way the mayor’s powers were drawn up by Blair. He
confesses to being a “workaholic” (he often used to sleep on his office sofa
when he ran the old GLC) and says that he needs to work all hours because so
many of London’s levers are in his hands. (“The reason we can do things
quickly is because we don’t have Sir Hum-phrys and civil servants. My
so-called cronies work with me because they want to get on with change.”)
His grasp on the specifics of his brief, from crime to housing to creating a
Paris-style beach to encourage Londoners to holiday in the city this summer,
seems firm.
“In this job you’ve really got to be on top of the detail, you’ve got to know
how to run things: the next mayor has got to deliver Crossrail on budget,
build 50,000 low-cost home in three years and take over dealing with
unemployment and skills from the government.”
This is the thrust of his most deadly dart against Johnson. Boris, he jibes,
“has never run anything”. (Johnson has been a columnist, newspaper executive
and editor of the Spectator magazine.). He also insists several times that
Boris is a “climate change denier” – but on what evidence?
“Where’s my Boris file?” he calls to his office. Boris should be worried: Ken
has been through all his speeches and columns for ammunition to use against
him.
“That’s where you find out what Boris really thinks. Like ‘screw up the Kyoto
treaty and use it for putting practice’. It all played very well with
retired colonels in the home counties, propping up the bar in golf clubs. It
never occurred to Boris that he’d have to run in London.”
Will Ken get back in? Maybe. But he’s been in the job for eight years – and it
shows.
