The Metropolis

Mayor Livingstone, you presume?

Adam Bienkov | Saturday 3 July, 2010 15:47

Could Ken Livingstone or “Comeback Ken” as the Evening Standard have dubbed him surprise us all by returning to City Hall?

At first glance it seems unlikely. Politicians rarely return to the seats they have lost and almost never in order to replace the people who have succeeded them.
And yet Ken has made a career out of confounding expectations, most famously when he took on the best efforts of Tony Blair in order to become London’t first Mayor in 2000.

Like then, Ken still faces fierce opposition from big names on the right wing of the Labour party and like then they still seem incapable of beating him.

But unlike then Ken faces an incumbent Mayor who is well known and enjoys a dogged loyalty from his supporters. So while Ken looks more likely to win the Labour nomination than Oona King, his chances of beating Boris appear far more distant.

However, for all his charm, there are signs that Boris is far more vulnerable than is commonly believed.

There has been very little polling since 2008 but the recent Annual London Survey shows that many Londoners are deeply non-plussed by Boris’s performance as Mayor.

Asked how he was doing in the job, just 26% said they were satisfied with him, down from 44% for Ken three years ago. More telling was the huge amount of people who have little or no opinion of Boris’s performance at all, up to 63%.

So while Boris is clearly a less divisive figure than his predecessor, he is also making far less of an impact on Londoners. And with the government cuts set to hit London hard in 2012, Londoners may well decide it is in their interests to turn to Ken.

The current Mayor’s performance aside, another factor that could stop Ken is the choices made by the smaller parties.

At the last election the Lib Dems feel that they underperformed and are now holding out to see who Labour selects before choosing their candidate.

However, I’m told that both the Lib Dems and the Greens are unlikely to go for the kind of celebrity candidate that could take a big chunk out of Ken or Boris’s vote.

London Lib Dems tell me that they are looking for somebody who would improve the showing of their Assembly candidates rather than concentrating on gaining the Mayoralty itself.

“We’re not going to win it realistically” one source told me candidly, “but we do need somebody who can go up against Jeremy Paxman.”

The Greens too are looking for a solid performer who will raise the party’s profile rather than their own. “We don’t want the tail to wag the dog” one said.

On individual names I’m told that former Green Mayoral candidate Sian Berry is not in the frame this time and reports that Lembit Öpik would run were described to me as “total bollocks.”

Yet the deciding factor for the main parties may well be time. By 2012 Ken will be approaching 70 and may struggle to find the energy needed to take back City Hall.
But for Boris too the clock is ticking. And as each month goes by, Londoners will increasingly ask just what if anything he has done for them.

In the next two years Boris will have all the advantages of incumbency to secure re-election, and it would be a fool who underestimated his political skill.

But in opposition Ken also has many advantages, and it’s how he uses them which will ultimately decide whether he has one last comeback in him after all these years.

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