What Ken’s detractors always forget is that he brings with him his own loyal vote, going back to his glory days at the GLC, which compensates for any missing Labour voters-
but for eveyone of his own personal vote he added he took to swing voters away.

Ken spoke to Sinn Fein when leader of GLC?'Most odious man in Britain'. What they fail to say is how much that was setting the framework for the Peace Process that was finalised by Mo Mowlam and all benefit from- Ken welcomed with open arms the leader of the London derry IRA wing and it was the fact that the IRA ran out of money, had most of their people in prison and the UDA was killing more than the IRA was that resulted in Adams having tog ive up o united ireland and go to the peace table, when Diane Abbott says that ken was right on troops out ,she forgets that troops were sent into Northen Iralend to protect Catholics and they've only just now come out, after the IRA has been disbanded. It was right the labour shadow front bench, weren't pro the idea of troops out, as the public similar supproted laobur agreeing with the temporary measures prevention of terrorism act in 1989.

Evening Standard which was more rabidly pro-Tory than ever.the Evening standard was pro ken this time with articels by lefty Simon jenkins, adn the Standard didn't actually back Boris in 2008 they were jsut anti Livingstone.

And as Mayor of London he introduced civil -nonsense

The more I read of these comments, the more my view of him as a decent man becomes set in stone. Any guy who could upset Thatcher, The Daily Mail, The Evening Standard and the assorted fascists above (what are you doing on this website anyway) is a hero of mine. Tories avoid tax, Ken dodges tax. The City is tax efficient!

"In fact the origins of the differences of opinion between Ken and some on the right were really about his long-standing support of justice for the Palestinians."

How did the Palestinians even come into these disputes with London Jews? I do not even understand how this issue could honestly be raised. I do not agree with much of what George Galloway does but I note that he manages to do a great deal for the Palestinian cause without this leading to any run-ins with Jews.

Not only is this author dishonest in not discussing forthrightly the accusation of anti-semitism against Ken but she discusses it in a conspiratorial manner. Notice she says, the accusations of anti-semitism were always withdrawn as soon as Ken began to address them; and that they couldn't be addressed as they were never spelt out. They were spelled out. He called a Jewish man a concentration camp guard and was prone to making insulting comments about Jewish people which he confirmed in this latest election. There is no conspiracy against Ken as he had plenty of opportunity to make amends for the things he said but instead chose to continue on that path.

This another excerpt of Ian Jack's review of Ken's biography in London Review of Books.

The animosity expressed towards him, particularly though not exclusively by the Evening Standard and the Mail, has lasted more than thirty years, since the days when Thatcher’s government and most Tory newspapers saw the GLC leader as ‘Red Ken’, whose aim in the Daily Telegraph’s word was to ‘Marxify’ London. It represents one of the most sustained hate campaigns in the history of the British press. A ‘nondescript, instantly forgettable little fellow with a nasal voice’ was how Frederick Forsyth described him in his 1984 novel The Fourth Protocol, in which Livingstone’s move against McIntosh at County Hall became a coup ‘of which Lenin himself would have been proud’. Private Eye claimed, falsely, that Colonel Gaddafi had put $200,000 into a Swiss bank account, to be divided between Livingstone and his Lambeth colleague ‘Red’ Ted Knight. The Mail wanted to know if he was queer. The Sun called him the most odious man in Britain. The GLC’s abolition and the ending of the Cold War brought a lull, but hostilities were renewed during his two terms as mayor and reached a peak in 2005 when Livingstone told an Evening Standard reporter, who was Jewish, that he was behaving like ‘a concentration camp guard … doing it because you are paid to, aren’t you?’ The Standard interpreted his remarks as anti-semitic and redoubled what Livingstone calls, with some justice, their ‘demented’ campaign against him. He writes of the 2008 mayoral election that ‘even after all these years I was still shocked by the nastiness I evoked.’ The Mail’s Peter Oborne called him ‘an almost habitual, pathological liar’. During the campaign it was revealed that he had three older children from previous relationships as well as the two born to his second wife (and office manager), Emma Beal. A News of the World columnist was surprised that there were three women in the world willing to have sex with him.

(My Observation : The Most Odious profession in this Country is Journalism (watch Leeveson enquiry). The Most Odious Journalist is Andrew Gillian. He found a job in Daily Telegraph (where else he will go). A Snake find a place at Snake Pit).

This a excerpt of Ian Jack's review of Ken's biography in London Review of Books.

In retrospect, his success came partly from the fact that, unusually for a British politician, he was never seduced by the stardust of Westminster and hated his time there as an MP. Too tiny a newt, possibly, in too big a tank. By contrast, local government, when local meant London, offered a civic leader control over important areas such as transport and housing that affected several million people. Livingstone found that through prodigious amounts of work and scheming he could outwit his officials as well as the political opposition both inside and outside his own party. He describes these years at the GLC amusingly and, so far as one can tell, frankly. County Hall, the council’s South Bank headquarters, had luxuries that surpassed the palace just over the river. When Livingstone arrived there in 1973, chairs of committees had ‘personal assistants, typists, chauffeur-driven cars, constantly restocked drinks cupboards and access to the royal box at the Royal Festival Hall’. In mimicry of Parliament, councillors were addressed as ‘honourable members’ and the building’s bars and restaurants stayed open late into the night to cater for ‘late-night sittings’ in the debating chamber, as though councillors were addressing the invasion of Poland rather than street-cleaning in Chelsea. Under Livingstone’s safari-suited leadership, much of this flummery disappeared. He brought early closing to the bars and made the GLC’s meeting rooms available for rent to outsiders, so that ‘the gentlemen’s club atmosphere evaporated as the building filled up with people discussing job losses, nuclear weapons, racism, sexism and the environment.’ Add to that dungaree-wearing list the Troops Out movement and Livingstone’s invitation to Gerry Adams to come to County Hall ‘to discuss how the war might be ended’, and who can wonder that he got up so many noses in the 1980s: so far up, in Mrs Thatcher’s case, that in one of her most dictatorial moments she abolished the GLC and sold off its building to a Japanese corporation. Though this is not to deny that in many respects – from talking to Sinn Féin to the congestion charge – Livingstone’s politics were prescient.

Of all the charges against Ken, the most incredulous is He is corrupt. He earns the money on his individual capacity and as all the consulants/contractors in the country he earned it thru' a Company. The Companies House itself advise the same. Where the question of Tax Dodging comes? This is the typical Right-Wing Media's Smea. What he did what all the Contractors/Consulatants do? Ask any IT Contractor. Because they don't have all the perks for permanent staff (Job security, Paid Leave, Sick Leave, Career Progression, etc.). The real tax dodging happens , which cost Treasaury £25 bn, when they move the company profits to overseas account and dodge the tax. Rupert Murdoch practise it as a fine art. Lord Ashdown did it. Lord Sugar did it. Philip Green doing it. I am wondering how Andrew Gilligan pay his tax.

Shame on Guardian journalists/commentators like Jonathan Freedland, Nick Cohen for buying into this crap without checking the facts.

But Ken Livingstone was and is an anti-semitic tax-dodger. Nothing to do with the press.

Applying the Macpherson Criteria for prejudice, we know that Ken Livingstone is anti-Semitic.....
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck .... then its a duck, but this is not a duck ...
This guy talks like an anti-Semite, acts like an anti-Semite and thank goodness is now an unelectable anti-Semite

it's the fourth estate which decides who loses and who wins, who's in who's out. And the fourth estate decided to convey the message that ken was an anti-semitic tax dodger; matter closed. Like they decided Diane Abbott was a racist....

Excellent Diane. You've summed up my thoughts precisely.

What a sleazy pathetic attempt by Abbot to excuse/justify unequivocal racist anti-semitism. So sorry that I was one of the 3% in Barnet who refused to vote for this scumbag who promised to turn London into a "beacon for Islam".
Abbot failed to provide any justification for Livingstone spewing anti-jew hatred and earning thousands by presenting shows on Press TV, the state run channel of islamofascist, women-stoning, Gay-hanging Iran.

Diane "The Racist" Abbott. Whom really should be crying in the political wilderness, but still clings to the saggy nipples of the anti British Labour party.

She's right regarding the Right Wing Attack Machine going all out to destroy Ken. Did Boris hire Karl Rove to "advise" him during this campaign?

Aside from that, now UK politics is more like Stateside politics. Actual issues and competent politicians don't matter. All that matters is spin and celeb hype. Boris is "colorful". He has no actual solutions to any current major problems affecting London. But damn, we love to hype the "will Boris become PM" soundbites.

In almost all of the post-election coverage, it was the Right Wing sources (Telegraph, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and more). Now, it's more hype regarding Cameron:

What did he say to Murdoch?
Was he having an "alleged" affair with Rebecca? I mean, casual acquaintances don't send hundreds of texts daily, do they?
Will Cameron be recalled? One Tory MP says that he will be. Is she lying? Is 10 Downing putting out denials or non-denial denials (sounds like All the President's Men)?

Hype is all that matters.

Diane, the problem is not what you or Ken do, yourself.

The problem is you condemn others as villains, even provoking violence against others, when they do exactly what you do. Its called hypocrisy. Only a brainwashed leftist sheep - no different from a religious bigots - would not see the utter untenability of this position.

The one analysis missing from the whole analysis is not Boris's personality, but apart from his vanity projetcs, he kept the transport programme in line with Ken's, no new ideas and wasn't a disaster. Now social housing has dried up and transport is likely to be pricved well outside of affordability for most, attitudes will change making a Labour mayor in 2016 likely - whoever it is.
But I think Dianne is spot on. When fares go through the roof and people take to their cars again, perhaps a few people will start to realise what they've elected. When Dan Hodges train breaks down, or when Alan Sugar gets stuck in traffic, no doubt they won't see the irony of it all. But the bulk of those who fell for the media campaign against Ken (which frankly Ken should have been better prepared for, but that's another matter) - it's them I feel for.

Thanks Diane for this! Ken's achievements in London are simply immense and he truly is a giant amongst mere mortals with regards to his generation of Labourites.

Unlike Kinnock et al, it was only Ken that had seriously got Margaret Thatcher's goat and it was because of this that the GLC was disbanded. Today's cosmopolitan and tolerant London is as a result of the likes of the 80s so-called 'Loony Left' led by 'Red' Ken and their advocacy of tolerance (for ethnic minorities, gay people and women's rights) and London is so much better for it.

With this defeat, it genuinely feels like an end of an era and a continuation of a new one in Labour nationally - i.e rather than Labour politicians who started out or made their name in the 80s, we now have a much more newer ones. To an extent, at a difficult time like this, perhaps we need more greyer and experienced people like Ken, which is why I still felt that we needed and need Ken for one last time.