The Metropolis

City Hall: The old mayor will battle the new mayor. Again.

Adam Bienkov | Sunday 3 October, 2010 19:50

It’s the second most powerful job in British politics with an international platform and a huge personal mandate. Successful applicants can expect a plush office with riverside views and invites to all the best parties in the finest city in the world.

And yet, barring some miracle or catastrophe, City Hall will only ever have had two occupants, by the time it enters the second half of its second decade.
I pondered this as I watched Ken Livingstone clinch Labour’s nomination for Mayor. Now I say clinch but in reality the result was never in much doubt.

His opponent Oona King, is a pleasant enough former MP, who’s best known for losing a very safe Labour seat to George Galloway five years ago.
In other words she’s a nobody, and in the world of Mayoral politics, that’s fatal.
Most people I spoke to in the room admitted that she had run a poor campaign, but even if her campaign had been faultless, her low profile meant that she never had much hope of success.

Before she emerged as Ken’s rival, there had been months of briefings that a truly “big name” was about to step forward to take Ken on. Yet when push came to shove there were no Peter Mandelsons or Alan Johnsons, no Richard Bransons or Alan Sugars, nor even a Jon Cruddas or Tessa Jowell in sight.

Perhaps they had calculated that they could not beat Ken, or perhaps just as likely the thought of taking on Boris Johnson had scared them off. But whatever the reason, they lost their nerve, Ken beat Oona, and we are now faced with a re-run of the race that ended just over two years ago.

Like all sequels, Ken vs. Boris 2 (and this time it’s personal) promises to be a far less blockbusting version of the original, with London’s media far less thrilled with the prospect of covering it for 19 months to come.

“I think we’ll try to ignore them for the next year at least” one well known broadcaster told me looking wearily around the room.

“The thought of it is quite depressing” another London-based hack conceded to me later that day.

But after the cameras had packed away I asked Ken what he would be doing for the next year and a half now that he was officially Boris’s “Shadow Mayor.”

“I just wish I was the shadow of my former self” he quipped before listing a programme of David Cameron-style town hall meetings and visits to all of the suburbs that had turned out for his opponent in 2008.

He was clearly emotionally drained, but also hungry for the coming fight in a way that he never appeared two years ago. Because contrary to the picture painted of him, Ken seems to have learnt at least some lessons from his defeat and demonstrated that he can battle even harder than a candidate many years his junior.

And yet in Boris he will face one of the most skillful and charismatic politicians in the country, who despite doing relatively little for Londoners, has done lots to increase his own personal brand.

And it is this brand rather than policies that Ken will need to beat if he is to succeed in what will be his fourth time as a candidate for London Mayor.

The final scene in that encounter may be a bloody one. But whatever the result, the credits will roll on what will surely be the last fight between the two biggest and seemingly only major figures left in London politics today.

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