No-one appears to have used that headline yet, which I’m frankly amazed by, so I thought I’d better get in quick.
Overall, this latest incident does rather confirm some of the points I was making last week about the nature of the London Mayor and the GLA. These institutions lack any kind of civic culture, we are struggling to invent one 8 years after the event, and it is a mistake to think that ‘celebrity’ candidates are going to solve the problem.
But what a nasty, undemocratic, bullying idea of the Tories. I’m delighted it appears to have backfired on them. I’m sure they are attempting to spin this as the Lib Dems playing party politics while they are trying to work constructively in the interests of Londoners, but nothing could be further from the truth. As a party we would never be able to recover from being the Conservative’s mini-me. We have a genuine dilemma of who to stand, but the most anonymous face-slapping moron would be preferable to a joint candidate. Far from beating him, an Anyone-But-Ken candidate would be likely to bolster him – one only needs to cast one’s mind back to 2000 to recall that Labour tried that and got bitten in the arse.
Ultimately, there may be only one way of defeating Ken Livingstone: wait until he’s too old to keep going and enjoy the fact that Labour will end up struggling to find a candidate as much as everyone else. In the meantime, old fashioned party (and non-party) politics will have to do. Anyone got a monkey suit? It worked in Hartlepool.
Well the Tories here tried desperately to do a similar thing at parish pump level. Woodley town council (24/24 Lib Dem at present) is up for election, so cue letters from the Tories to a number of town cllrs amid claims that they had had ‘a number of enquiries’ from elected representatives wanting to join.
Surprise surprise, when nominations closed the Lib Dems have a full slate and have de facto won 6 seats ‘unopposed’ due to a shortage of Tory candidates!
But the Tory tactics remind me of the sort of stunt played by certain parties who jump around in the press claiming they are going to stand candidates, hold a meeting, and then don’t, causing only disruption in the process. Are the Tories really playing by the far-right’s campaign manual?