The most famed mayor in the western world is Rudy Giuliani of New York, now preparing to stand in a senatorial race against Hillary Clinton. He is famed - and envied - because he is so successful; in a largely Democrat town, the Republican mayor has won two terms of office and praise from his enemies. Much of his support is down to the remarkable decrease in New York's crime rate under his leadership; but he gives other messages, too, to those now aspiring to be mayor of London.
The first is to oppose your country's leader and oppose your party. Be very controversial, make sure your enemies are other centres of power which are less popular than you are and fight your corner like a demon. You will make many enemies, but you will also ensure that any contenders are at a huge disadvantage because you will be able to say that your battles have been fought for the citizens and that your enemies are theirs.
Giuliani is now preparing to run for the New York state senatorial seat vacated by the Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and thus heaps blame on the Democrats in general and the Clinton White House in particular for the ills of America. Yet in 1994, Giuliani supported the Democrat incumbent, Mario Cuomo, in the gubernatorial race for New York state against the Republican George Pataki: Pataki narrowly won, and the two have been at loud loggerheads ever since - a state of affairs which does not seem to have harmed the mayor one bit. Giuliani uses Pataki to prove that the mayor cares more about New York than the governor does. In a recent spat over pollution levels, each sought to out-ecologise the other, a political competition that may actually benefit New Yorkers.
Fighting - the message goes - makes you popular, and means that you are taken seriously at national level. Indeed, both Giuliani and Pataki have been spoken of as future vice-presidential, even presidential, material. Giuliani has been likened by the former Democrat mayor David Dinkins, whose period in office was widely criticised for ineffectiveness, to both Hitler and Mussolini. But the mayor believes in strong-man tactics: "There is no way," Giuliani told a New York Times interviewer in August, "that I could have won most of [my] battles without being confrontational."
The recent spat over "Sensation", the show of contemporary British art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, proves how Giuliani makes anger and controversy work for him. The mayor let it be known he thought the work was trash and focused particularly on a work called The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili, which was made of cut-outs from pornographic magazines and shellacked elephant dung. Giuliani threatened to cut off all city funding to the museum. New York's museums and cultural institutions rose against him; when he went to the Metropolitan Opera in late September to present a commendation to the tenor Placido Domingo, he was booed by the same moneyed crowd who had for years applauded his fight against crime. Yet, since the show is British, the art unpopular, and many of his future electors conservative Catholics, Giuliani's stand is seen as positive for his present office and his future campaign. Hillary came out for the museum - but after a significant pause, and not strongly.
New York is to the USA what London is to Britain: the dominant city, in its population, economy and cultural range. Both cities are disliked for being snobbish, rich and culturally elitist.
Giuliani has consistently buttressed the idea of New York as a "sovereign nation"; an entity with its own character, humour, traditions, rights and privileges. He has shaped a view of New York both for those who live in it and those who do not; and he has changed its image from capital of crime to capital of crime-busting.
London's new mayor must do the same - rather more urgently than his New York equivalent, since his will be the first administration to have the ability to "brand" London and thus give it a leftist or a rightist tinge.
Giuliani has turned his city to the right, most of all on law and order. He has cut the murder rate from around 2,000 a year in the early 1990s to a little over 600 last year. Giuliani has also cut mugging, burglary and what are known as "lifestyle offences": begging, graffiti and jaywalking.
It is not simply the rich who sleep more safely in their Central Park apartments; murder and violent crime have gone down fastest of all in the low-rent districts.
This has been achieved as the city gets steadily more racially heterogeneous. Thirty years ago this was still a largely white city: whites were 63 per cent, with blacks at 19 per cent, Hispanics at16 per cent and Asians at 2 per cent. Next year, it will be a city where whites are a little over one-third, at 35 per cent, Hispanics at 29 per cent, blacks at 26 per cent and Asians at 10 per cent.
Giuliani has been fond of saying that his tough policy broke the link many made between more blacks and Hispanics and more crime; although the death in February of Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old African immigrant mowed down by four white police officers as he stood, unarmed and with no previous convictions in the lobby of his Bronx apartment, has overshadowed that claim.
This is New York's equivalent of the Stephen Lawrence case, and though it is a much more violent crime of commission than the neglect that followed Lawrence's death, it is also harder to make a charge of "institutional racism" stick against a police department which is substantially composed of minorities in a city composed of minorities.
The Metropolitan Police remains an overwhelmingly white force in a less overwhelmingly white capital: the new mayor, who will have oversight of the Met, will have to tread a careful line between involvement of more minorities and a tough law and order stance to calm Londoners' fear of crime.
In a recent interview, Ken Livingstone - who expressed some admiration for Giuliani - told me that " Giuliani has identified crime with blacks and excluded blacks from his coalition. You can talk about crime and be tough on crime without talking about black crime. You want to get blacks into the police force, and so you must watch your language."
The latest poll, in the New York Times earlier this month, showed the mayor gaining on Hillary Clinton in almost every way, with 46 per cent of those polled saying they would vote for him as against 42 per cent for her. Most of the respondents thought that Giuliani would care more about New York and do more for New York. He was much more identified with a city for which Hillary has only recently conceived an affection (and in which she has never lived).
Hillary does come ahead on "the issues" - especially on education. It is a reminder of how wide the New York mayor's remit is: he has a budget of over $35 billion (£22 billion), the size of a small (and rich) nation. He is able to raise and, as he did this year, cut taxes, and to declare a deficit or surplus. For years, New York was so much in deficit it was technically bankrupt; in April this year, Giuliani declared a $2.1 billion (£1.3 billion) surplus. He controls education, local social security and healthcare, as well as transport (which will be the London mayor's main power, and probably most contentious issue).
Giuliani has made himself a force because he has the money and the power to write his own narrative, and because he makes use of enemies. The London mayor will have less money and power, and a nervous government seeks to confine him or her to good works and ensure that the successful candidate is government-friendly.
Neither of these assigned roles is, however, in the interest of the politician who fills the office. That is the writing Giuliani has put on the wall, and all the hopefuls for London have read it.
