Why Ken Livingstone's left-wing alliance could be his undoing
Last May, shortly after losing the mayoral election to Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone wrote an article for the Guardian. The piece promised to draw some conclusions from that defeat, but, in truth, it was short on analysis and long on a kind of bruised self-justification.
Livingstone reminded his critics that his share of the vote had increased since 2004; that he’d polled 13% more than Labour had done nationally in the local elections; and that the London he was leaving behind was recognised as the most ‘successful’ and the most ‘dynamic’ capital city in the world. This, he said, was why his campaign had been supported by ‘very large sections of big business’ (as if proper recognition of that fact would have swayed those disenfranchised working- and lower-middle class voters in London’s outer boroughs who either stayed at home or defected to Johnson).
After taking a swipe at the Liberal Democrats for choosing not to enter into an anti-Tory pact with Labour and the Greens, Livingstone promised to return at the head of a ‘new progressive alliance’ that would secure London’s standing as the ‘greatest capital city in the world’. In October, following a hiatus during which he’d haunted the public gallery at the new mayor’s monthly Question Time like the melancholy ghost of administrations past, he announced the creation of Progressive London, a broad coalition of left-of-centre politicians, trade unionists and intellectuals. Last Saturday, Progressive London held its inaugural conference at Congress House, the TUC’s headquarters in Bloomsbury.The speakers at the day-long event, which was attended by more than 500 people, included the leaders of the Green and Liberal Democrat groups in the London Assembly, Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell and Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, as well as assorted academics, think tankers, journalists and bloggers.
Before the conference, some commentators had wondered whether Progressive London would amount to anything more than what the Guardian’s Dave Hill, a close observer of the political scene in the capital, called a ‘barely covert campaign to re-elect’ Livingstone.If Saturday’s discussions are anything to go by, the movement already has a momentum that the former mayor will find it difficult to control.The principal reason for this is that the political landscape in London has been utterly transformed by the global financial crisis. The pre-eminence of the capital on the world stage, for which Livingstone claims much of the credit, depended more or less entirely on the success of the City. Livingstone’s London was a deregulated city-state whose growth was driven by a combination of mass immigration and the financial services. It’s easy to forget that shortly before the election he had warned Alastair Darling of the potentially disastrous consequences of imposing a levy on non-domiciled foreigners working in the City of London.
Among the many victims of financial meltdown, then, has been Livingstone’s economic strategy for London, though you wouldn’t have guessed it from listening to him rail against the iniquities financial capitalism in his set-piece speech. It took a member of the audience at a session on the global economic crisis to point to the elephant in the room, and remind everyone that Livingstone’s embrace of the now-disgraced Masters of the Universe had been more or less total.
Tessa Jowell pointed out the electoral consequences of this, and suggested that the new progressive coalition should be developing policies that will benefit the inhabitants of Zone 6 as well as the denizens of Zone 1 – places like Dagenham, for example, the constituency of Labour MP Jon Cruddas, who turned out to be the star of the show on Saturday.Cruddas’s blokeish charm and intellectual rigour, not to mention his recognition that Labour in London needs to tempt back alienated white working-class voters, make him an attractive alternative to the ageing Livingstone. Though Cruddas has given no hint that he is interested in running for mayor, it was hard not to come away from the conference thinking that this was less a comeback for the former incumbent than a swansong.
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10 comments
It is impossible for any Mayor of London to give the City the cold shoulder. Ken should be judged on what he managed to achieve in spite of this constraint - the congestion charge, free or reduced travel for disadvantaged groups, a massive investment to regenerate East London, a rebranding of London's international image as open and dynamic... an admirable list of progressive policies.
As Lenin put it in his essay 'On Compromise':
'The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution."
Jonathan Derbyshire's review of the Progressive London conference last Saturday is misses the point entirely. It was not about getting Ken re-elected but rather about making sure that the current Mayor is properly scrutinised over the next three and a half years and not letting the progressive agenda slip. The Assembly and the press aren't doing it so thank god someone is.
Thanks Neil, you hit the nail on the head.
Boris didn't win the election - Ken lost it. Voters were just sick of Ken's contemptuous and ridiculous behaviour, and I speak as a former supporter.
Please stop depicting Ken as a hard-done-by righteous class-warrior. He brought this on himself.
Jonathan Derbyshire seems a bit confused. Or perhaps its just his Democratiya mindset means he can't resist attacking Ken wherever possible.
How can the Mayor who brought in the congestion charge and subsidised travel for those on income support also be the king of deregulation?
But thumbs up for supporting Cruddas. We don't want him to be Mayor of London though, we want him leading in Parliament.
The entire British political class bought into neo-liberalism. Livingstone can at least claim to have improved the quality of life of ordinary Londoners.
A lot of the attacks on him stem not from anything he got wrong, but from what he got right, his opposition to the war in Iraq for starters.
In what way does Ken Livingstone have any connection with the Left? He allies himself with Leninoid tyrants from Caracas and elsewhere whose political programme can be summed up in a few words: everyone in a socialist paradise must be pauperised to the pre-Neolithic except for my glorious revolutionary person (like during all the other experiments in "creative" state capitalism by great anti-capitalist heroes/shysters/depopulators). These same Leninoid tyrants are busy supporting Hamas and putting the squeeze on people of the Jewish persuasion out of some whack-o impression they're being anti-colonialist (they are in fact ardent colonialists for jihadi tyranny). I mean, since when did tyranny rhyme with progressivism? Or constraining personal ambition and initiative and fostering PC attacks on freedom of speech? We're talking about Brownish-Red Ken, or maybe Molotov-Ribbentrop Ken?
Quite sad really that Ken has been affected by the Pension Black Hole. He should be of on his retiement voyage now, makes wonder what will happen to the rest of us..... .
John Ross - the unsung genius of the Livingstone administration.
Has Time Out considered an additional weekly article on Ken Livingstone entitled ' The View From Up Kens Arse' ?
I'm afraid Jonathan doesn't understand what makes London tick economically - which is, not first and foremost banking, but a whole complex of service industries like creative industries, tourism and business services. These depend on London's participation in the global economy.
Contrary to folk legend employment in finance in London is not huge - about 300,000. What is huge are three groupings of jobs - business services (over 1 million), creative industries and tourism (close to half a million each).
Finance and banking in the narrow sense is in a mess from which it will take a long time to recover. It is the other internationally oriented service sectors, upon which two million jobs depend, aided by the devaluation of the pound, that can pull London out of recession - reviving London as a manufacturing centre unfortunately has no prospect of success.
The financial part of 'the City' gave huge financial contributions to Boris Johnson, not Ken, (which in turn is why Johnson, virtually alone in the UK has been praising bankers to the sky since the crash). Ken had good relations was with non-financial business, like the creative sectors, in London.
London's economy can only be rebuilt, after what will probably be a loss of several hundred thousand jobs in the present recession, by taking part in the global economy, especially internationally oriented services and the new environmental industries - that is by London's position as a world city.
For millions of Londoners, rhetoric is not a way forward, they need an economic strategy that can deliver a role for London, which means jobs and prosperity for Londoners in a changing world economy.
For those who want to follow the financial crisis Ken Livingstone incidentally publishes Socialist Economic Bulletin which can be found at http://socialisteconomicbulletin.blogspot.com/