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How Did Red Ken Get Away With It?; Iain MacWhirter asks why

Sunday Herald, The, Dec 21, 2003 by Iain MacWhirter

Pop quiz: what's the difference between Ken Livingstone and George Galloway? Answer: only Ken Livingstone has committed the cardinal sin of standing against a Labour candidate in an election. So why, you might ask, is Red Ken being invited back into the bosom of the Labour party while Gorgeous George has been unceremoniously booted out of it?

Last week, Labour's National Executive Committee effectively voted to allow the mayor of London to become a member of the Labour party again, setting aside a mandatory five-year ban imposed when he stood against Labour's candidate for mayor - Frank Dobson - three years ago. It is an extraordinary reversal of fortune for the politician Labour leaders have loved to loathe for nearly 20 years.

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Ken Livingstone was the archetypal loony lefty. The Sun called him "the most odious man in Britain". He gave public money to Babies Against The Bomb when he was leader of the Greater London Council in the 1980s. He provided platforms for Sinn Fein, when they were still regarded as terrorists and allied himself with a number of Marxist groupings such as Socialist Organiser.

During the London Mayoral elections in 2000, Tony Blair insisted that Livingstone would be a "disaster" for London; Labour's Frank Dobson attacked his "extremism" and Neil Kinnock said he could "never be trusted". One of the reasons Chancellor Gordon Brown was so keen to get a seat on the National Executive Committee earlier this year was so he could block Livingstone's readmission.

Cynics might say that Livingstone's antipathy to the Chancellor - he says Brown is ruining the economy - could explain Tony Blair's willingness to see him readmitted. Maybe. But the Prime Minister's change of heart about Ken has been extraordinary. Most of the Labour leadership oppose his return along with the vast majority of London Labour MPs, like Ken's former GLC colleague Tony Banks, who think that Livingstone is a lazy and untrustworty egotist.

He is certainly a loner. I recall Livingstone in the Millbank health club in the 1990s when he was still an MP, doing endless solitary lengths of the pool. He rarely spoke to anyone. George Galloway, by contrast, was a gregarious and busy constituency MP who always seemed to command respect across the Labour benches.

The right-wing Labour MP Tam Dalyell said Galloway was a "deeply serious committed politician and a man of great sincerity". Some Labour MPs disliked George's suntan, his attractive Palestinian wife and the money he made from his libel actions. There was a whiff of scandal from the days of the Dundee Labour clubs and the investigation of his expenses from the charity War On Want. But Galloway has never been found guilty of any wrongdoing.

Yet Galloway was dumped in October for bringing the party into disrepute. He was found guilty of inciting Arabs to fight British troops, inciting British troops to disobey orders and threatening to stand against a Labour candidate. This was pretty rough justice. Galloway has always had a penchant for going over the top, as when he appeared to praise the "indefatigability" of Saddam Hussein. But Ken Livingstone condemned the war in similar terms. He even called George W Bush "the greatest threat to life on this planet we've probably ever seen".

Livingstone is on record as defending riotous direct action by anti-globalisation protesters in London. He once told the music magazine NME that "capitalism kills more people every year than Hitler did in the second world war". Even the Board Of Deputies Of British Jews took exception to that one.

Labour is generally pretty tolerant of politicians who have a history of rhetorical excess. Paul Boateng once called the metropolitan police fascist and he's now a Labour minister. But the ultimate crime in the party has always been standing against Labour in an election. When Ken Livingstone announced his determination to stand against Labour's Frank Dobson for London Mayor in 2000 he stepped beyond the pale.

Normally, there is no way back for those who commit this ultimate sin. So why is Ken back? Well, in part it's a result of a remarkable change in political style. Since he has been mayor, Livingstone has abandoned his Marxist ways. He has praised the City and backed London business. He has lost his enthusiasm for direct action and now supports the police, even against anti-capitalist demonstrators some of whom he recently called "mindless yobs".

In many respects, 58-year-old Ken Livingstone is now a mainstream Labour politician. The feminist and sexual minorities agenda that he promoted in the 1980s is no longer considered avant garde. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness now have offices in Westminster. Red Ken is now best known for congestion charging in London - a policy which began life as a proposal from the right-wing Adam Smith Institute.

But Livingstone's main attraction for Tony Blair is nothing to do with Ken's new political maturity. It is the sweet smell of success. Ken's transport policies actually seem to have worked. This is a very rare example of a radical policy being implemented in an imaginative and effective way. And the PM would like to learn from it.

How Did Red Ken Get Away With It?; Iain MacWhirter asks why

Sunday Herald, The, Dec 21, 2003 by Iain MacWhirter

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