The Undoing of a Big Mouth
by Si Bishop

Ken Livingstone is the ‘Marmite Mayor’. Either you love him or you hate him. The frequency of his outrageous remarks is growing, as is the scale of the offensive they cause. At some stage the balance between our love for colourful, maverick politicians and otherwise unacceptably offensive remarks will tip. Londoners will ask: What do we get from Livingstone’s offensiveness?  The answer: A Mayor whose Big Mouth makes him a liability. No one wants to be led by a liability – and they will make that clear at the ballot box in 2008.

Boris Johnson is so popular. He plays the ‘loveable buffoon’ to perfection. How could bumbling-Boris ever be duplicitous?

Ken has shrewdly built his career by appealing to ‘the-man-on-the-street’ through populist statements that usually involve sticking two fingers up to whoever is the ‘unpopular’ figure of the day. In the early 1980s it was Maggie Thatcher, until she finally chopped his balls off by scrapping the Greater London Council (GLC). In 2000, when he won the London Mayoralty as an Independent having been thrown out of the Labour Party, it was Tony Blair. He even did it recently when he called the American Ambassador a “chiselling little crook” for refusing to pay the congestion charge. It is a simple, winning formula. What would people begrudge more than paying the congestion charge? Fat, rich, Iraq-war-causing Americans not paying it. The perfect target.

He also knows the public like ‘colourful politicians’. Or put another way, most politicians are seen as dull or duplicitous or both. That is why Boris Johnson is so popular. He plays the ‘loveable buffoon’ to perfection. How could bumbling-Boris ever be duplicitous? Somehow, people almost apply a different set of values to Boris as they do to others. He can get away with his naughty affairs because we are willing to sacrifice values for entertainment. His womanising just makes him all the more delicious a spectacle.

Ken Livingstone similarly gets away with his outrageous remarks because they add to his colourful, maverick reputation. We expect it from the man who:

• Invited Gerry Adams to County Hall – directly opposite Parliament – during the IRA bombing campaigns of the 1980s;
• Warmly embraced Dr. Yusef al-Qaradawi, a homophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamic cleric during a visit to City Hall in 2004;
• Compared a Jewish journalist to a “concentration camp guard”.

But ‘trust’ in political leaders often trumps policy-driven improvements. Just ask Tony Blair. Despite delivering a consistently healthy economy, he has seen his popularity plummet because, post-Iraq, the public does not trust him anymore. This is Ken Livingstone’s Achilles-heel. While so often his policies are working and many of his remarks are based on shrewd political calculation, many others are based on a dangerous combination of arrogance and ideology.

If the right buttons are pressed, the ‘Red-mist’ descends. Out goes the shrewd, in comes the heady (somewhat uncontrollable) mix of arrogance and ideology.

The arrogance comes from, like most politicians, a humungous ego, inflated in Ken Livingstone’s case by success against the odds - such as his election as Mayor. The ideology comes from a lifetime of firebrand left-wing politics based on deep-seated beliefs. If the right buttons are pressed, the ‘Red-mist’ descends. Out goes the shrewd, in comes the heady (somewhat uncontrollable) mix of arrogance and ideology.

Luckily for him, it is often hard to differentiate between the ‘shrewd’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘ideological’. His comparison of a Jewish Evening Standard journalist to a “concentration camp guard” illustrates this. No shrewd politician would make such an offensive remark – and the tape recording made by Oliver Finegold of the moment it happened suggests he was less than shrewd, possibly even somewhat under the influence by alcohol, when he made it. Yet a cynic might suggest his stubborn refusal to do the decent thing and apologise is based on shrewd political calculations – made in the cold, sober light of the following days – combined perhaps with a slightly unhinged belief that the press are out to get him. 

His resultant one-month suspension from office is currently on hold after the High Court granted him permission to appeal. If the court upholds the suspension, his ‘arrogance’ may well see him take the case to the House of Lords. Bizarrely, the jury is out on the impact this could have. If eventually suspended, he will undoubtedly play the martyr card, claiming democracy has been perverted, and could return after the ban as the ultimate ‘anti-establishment’ hero.

That remains a possibility. But history suggests voters eventually tire of such behaviour. A couple of months back on a visit to China, Ken Livingstone compared the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre to the Trafalgar Square poll tax riots. A few weeks later he defended Chairman Mao’s reign of terror, saying: “One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot-binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao-Tsetung era.”