Photo: Royston Ford (Flickr)
The closer we get to the London mayoral elections the more it seems that Ken Livingstone is suffering from a severe case of split personality. On one hand you’ve got Comrade Livingstone – the champion of the ordinary person in the street, who fought the good fight for so many years for his fellow man; and then you’ve got the his alter-ego – the friend of the union fat-cats who offers his support to extremists and serves to be the epitome of ‘champagne socialism’.
Now amidst the furore surrounding the phone hacking scandal it has emerged that Red Ken was also guilty of ‘cozying up’ to those at the very top of News International. Admittedly this is hardly surprising, there are very few high profile politicians that can’t be accused of this in recent years, and with good reason as the Murdoch media empire has undoubtedly had a great deal of clout when it comes to electoral support. However, it was the fact that in a shamelessly opportunistic stunt Livingstone attempted to present his political opponent Boris Johnson as being the Mayoral candidate who had the closest ties with the Murdoch’s when the truth is that not only is Livingstone a previous employee of numerous Murdoch publications, he has also wined and dined with both James Murdoch and now ex-CEO of News International, Rebekah Brooks – something he regretted to mention when accusing Johnson of the very same thing.
It gets worse; however, Livingstone also has very close ties with Matthew Freud – founder of Freud Communications and a Murdoch by marriage. During his previous time as Mayor, Livingstone hired Freud Communications at a cost of £108k of tax payer’s money a month through his ‘London Unlimited’ scheme – presumably named in honour of the ‘unlimited’ amount of London’s money Livingstone was prepared to waste, something which he appears destined to repeat if given the chance in 2012 as shown by his vow to let Londoners know “On the morning after the election” how he plans to fund his policies.
Perhaps Livingstone would have been better off seeking assistance from Matthew Freud’s great-grandfather Sigmund who may be able to shed some light on his ever changing personality.
When Boris took over the mayoralty, one of his many cost-cutting measures was to terminate the contract between the GLA and Freud Communications – saving the London taxpayer £108,000 a month.
Of course Livingstone’s mixed messages don’t stop at just his relationship with the Murdoch Empire – far from it in fact. He would also have you believe that as part of his loyal service to the “ordinary people” of London during his time as Mayor he strove to “hold down fare rises”. In truth fares increased at an unprecedented rate under Livingstone – with a 25% rise in 2007 alone before true to form he cut fares in to aid his campaign for another term – needless to say Londoners didn’t fall for this.
What’s more, fares would not have risen anything like the amount they have under Boris Johnson in recent years if it wasn’t for the amount of power Livingstone had handed to Bob Crow and the RMT during his own time at London’s helm. Clearly keen to help his champagne socialist crony (let’s not forget Crow is a man who pockets £145k a year and still exercises his apparent ‘right’ to live in a council house) Livingstone allowed the RMT to hold the people of London to ransom as TfL employees wages rose dramatically, with many now taking home pay cheques almost as impressive as that of their glorious leader.
Why the Labour party chose Livingstone as their candidate in what could have been a very winnable election for them really does beggar belief, especially considering he shouldn’t even be in the party after defying party rules in October of last year by campaigning for Lutfur Rahman, an independent running to be mayor of Tower Hamlets. But whilst the Labour party seem to be prepared to give Red Ken chance after chance, it is hard to believe that the London electorate will be quite so forgiving.
Thomas Barlow
Statisfied 