London now needs more than just a Boris Johnson v Ken Livingstone rerun

12 April 2012

Here we go again. Ken versus Boris in 2012, Boris versus Ken. Can no one come up with something new for this pre-Olympic sack race?

In 2000 Ken Livingstone put the elected mayoralty on the map and became, for a while, an emollient Mr London, before sinking into spendthrift cronyism. In two weeks' time he is bidding to return from the living dead by beating the admirable Oona King for the Labour nomination.

From being a Left-wing enfant terrible, Livingstone is now the candidate of the old Labour machine, against King's ethnic cosmopolitanism. He makes even Tony Blair seem like the future.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson finally declared his bid for the Tory nomination last weekend, dismissing any prime ministerial ambition as akin to "being decapitated by a Frisbee or locked in a disused fridge", curious similes for the highest office in the land. Johnson has a serious problem. Livingstone, if he wins his party nomination, will be able to portray Johnson as the Tory candidate of Tory cuts, which by 2012 could be on a par with Armageddon. Livingstone indeed set out his stall last week by announcing: "The Government's cuts are his cuts."

This is unfair. Whatever else can be laid at Johnson's door, parsimony with public money is not it. London, he cries incessantly, "is the motor of the UK economy and it will be a disaster for the whole country if London is starved of fuel". To him, fuel means public money which David Cameron would be "barking" if he cut. He has championed the capital's chief business, financial services, by opposing Cameron's bank reform and cap on immigration. He has resisted taxes on non-doms and bonuses.

While ending some of Livingstone's more disreputable expenditures, such as agencies run by friends, Johnson has been assiduous in demanding more central cash for transport and housing. He has spent freely on cycling and continues Livingstone's obsession with a skyline of phallic towers.

In a nutshell, Johnson has been "Livingstone-lite", a big city mayor of civic growth and corporatism, big-time transport, low taxes and open markets. He has nailed his colours to the £16 billion Crossrail and wants to lead the city through an almighty Olympics splurge in his re-election year of 2012.

A rerun of the 2008 election would certainly add to the gaiety of the nation, as the two men take on their now-familiar Ealing comedy stereotypes, weed against toff, spiv against cad and rotter against bounder. Livingstone and Johnson have become national figures, who should have been able to use their celebrity status to wield greater political influence in Westminster and Whitehall. Sadly they have not done so. Neither has been able to exploit his electoral weight, witness the total absence of metropolitan leadership in reforming the capital's policing, education and health services.

London craves new faces. When the mayoralty was invented in the early days of Blair, a wondrous list of names emerged from the woodwork: Richard Branson, Bob Geldof, Greg Dyke, Jeffery Archer, Alan Sugar and a cavalcade of lesser publicity seekers. The eyes watered at the prospect. At last civic leadership in the capital was attracting the kind of glamour familiar in cities abroad. Where glamour led, political ambition and eventually competence would surely follow.

The Livingstone-Johnson era has seen the mayoralty running on a political B-road, rather than the highway to senior office it is in most of Europe and America. This is illustrated in the leading Liberal-Democrat candidate being the jokester, Lembit Opik. The selection procedures are hardly conducive to openness. The Labour Party is closing its primary this month, with a long 18 months to go before the election. The declared purpose is to give the candidate time to become an "established presence", but all it has done is protect Livingstone from further challenge. To pretend he needs 18 months to become better known is absurd.

There is, or was, a more exciting prospect in two names mooted in recent months. The former home secretary, Alan Johnson, would have made an excellent (if confusing) rival to Boris. Then last December Peter Mandelson appeared to float his chances. He was a competent minister and his family link to Herbert Morrison made his candidature seem plausible. Running London against a Tory government would surely have appealed to them. On the Tory side, Michael Portillo ruled himself out in 2007 but his name still hovers enticingly over the job, as does that of the man who will be garnering maximum publicity in 2012, the Olympics chief Sebastian Coe.

Then there are wilder possibilities who could take a punt on independent candidature. I would take a strong side bet on either Richard Branson or Alan Sugar splitting the votes of both Livingstone and Johnson and coming through at the last round on second preferences. Both should enjoy testing their much-vaunted executive skill in the field of government. And what of Tube drivers' leader, Bob Crow, now styling himself as a new political activist? If he wants to wield power, he should put his name to a grander ballot than that of his train driver members.

The achievement of Livingstone and Johnson was to get an elected mayoralty taken seriously. Its abolition is inconceivable, while its imitation across England is a particular ambition of David Cameron. It has cleansed civic leadership of the party bossism that so afflicted London government — notably under an earlier Livingstone incarnation — and that still afflicts most of the London boroughs. But the office of mayor needs taking forward. Others should step forward, stand up and be counted.

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