It was a cold Thursday morning and a posse of health professionals was assembling at Church House, Westminster, for what had been billed as a debate on London’s health between all the mayoral candidates. The session was to be chaired by the BBC’s social affairs editor, Niall Dickson, and the obligatory panel of experts had been assembled, perhaps to provide a reality check for the candidates’ promises.
At 10.10am they shuffled in: Steve Norris, looking relaxed and benign with his reading glasses marooned halfway down his nose; Susan Kramer, in a vivid pink jacket and pearls, the impression of terrier-like purpose only confirmed by her bizarre and unflattering haircut; Frank Dobson, portly and out of breath, puffing on to the platform and attempting to sit in a place clearly marked Ken Livingstone. Of Livingstone – the only man in the race if the polls are to be believed – there was no trace.
“If I become mayor,” Dobson intoned, “I will appoint a health officer for London and I will tackle the things that make people ill.” He listed them: unemployment, low wages, crime and disorder, and environmental pollution. People in deprived boroughs, he told us, were more ill than people in rich boroughs; Hackney had ten times the infant mortality of Kingston upon Thames. Dobson’s solution was to ask his health officer for London to draw up reports, while the mayor busied himself putting the rest of London to rights. His audience sat, unmoved. Kramer’s statistics were similar: infant mortality in London was twice that of other European cities, mental health was underfunded, and HIV rampant. And, like Dobson, when elected she planned to talk about it a lot.
By the time Norris got to his feet, there was little left to say about London’s health, except to point out that there was nothing to choose between the three of them and little to be expected from any. “People are bored with that sterile nonsense,” he declared. “They just want a strategy to deal with it.” His “strategy” was to adopt Dobson’s idea for a health officer. Dobson shifted grumpily in his seat. Everyone had stolen his idea, he muttered.
An hour and a half into the proceedings, and only five minutes before the end, Livingstone arrived on the platform, coat and briefcase in hand. He sat down, removed his jacket and looked around, waiting for Kramer to complete an interminable description of the fuss she planned to make if waiting lists in the capital grew any longer. Finally, Livingstone rose to his feet. “Sorry I was late,” he said. “My campaign has been organised at rather short notice.” Since all the candidates agreed on the problem and the solution, he continued, the only question of any interest was how to get the necessary resources. Livingstone’s answer was to claw it back from the Scots, cast in this campaign as the robber barons of the British Isles. “I won’t be afraid of standing up and embarrassing the government – naming and shaming a government that won’t treat all its citizens equally.” On the far right of the platform, Dobson harrumphed into his beard.
There was a rush to leave the platform. Halfway down the stairs, a man with a headset bounced up to Livingstone. “Just call me Jonathan,” he said, as he steered his candidate out of a side door and on to the double-decker, open-topped Ken-4-Mayor battle bus parked outside, engine ticking. “I don’t believe it,” complained a solemn journalist from a health magazine. “He just parked his bus and nipped in for five minutes.”
On the top deck, some 15 young helpers in matching imperial purple fleece jackets were gyrating to the heavy beat of the overactive sound system. “Right, people,” said Jonathan, “we have several journalists here, so energy, energy!”
The bus moved off, pushing a wave of noise out into the London street: disco rhythms overlaid with the sayings of Ken, dispensed in the laid-back Estuarine composure that Livingstone has made his own. Boom, boom, boom. “Disraeli said damn your principles, stick with your party . . . I disagree.” Boom, boom, boom. “Mr Livingstone, I presume,” a child’s voice cuts in. Boom, boom, boom. Ken took up his position at the front of the bus and intoned: “This is Ken Livingstone, your independent candidate for mayor. Vote to keep the tube in the public sector. Four weeks today. Don’t let them privatise the tube.”
The campaign bus is a natural Livingstone habitat. Jonathan swarmed up and down the stairs, urging his team on to new heights of energy as Ken engaged in repartee with London’s passers-by and institutions. From the pavement, people looked up, registered his presence and broke into smiles. Pedestrians cheered and waved, motorists honked, bus drivers laughed. All seemed delighted to see him. When a woman grimaced up at him from a shop doorway, he pounced at once. “Oh madam . . . can’t I persuade you? What about your second preference?” He kept up the stream of chat, delivered with a self-deprecating charm that camouflaged his concentration. “Vote for me – it’s the only way to keep me off the streets . . . Have a poster, sorry we’ve got such an ugly candidate.”
The battle bus passed Westminster City Hall. “One thing I will do is send a hit squad to Israel to bring back Lady Porter and the 22 million quid she stole.” A thin cheer rises from the pavement. “What’s the SAS for if not to apprehend international criminals?”
Down on to the pavement to press the flesh. People crowd round, eager to shake his hand. “I’m an admirer of Giuliani [mayor of New York] and I think you are the same kinda guy,” an American announces. Ken’s affable smile does not move. “He’s tough,” his admirer continued. “Everybody goes to jail. It works.” Livingstone slid smoothly away.
Outside Victoria Station, a camera crew in hot pursuit, he received the warmth due to the man remembered for giving the tube back to the people. Within minutes, a Railtrack functionary arrived. “Private property,” she announced officiously. “You can’t film here.”
“I’ve got a right to come here and talk to people,” Livingstone protested. “This is the campaign for London mayor.”
“Did you ask permission to film here?” the Railtrack functionary demanded of nobody in particular. Three more Railtrack officials materialised and harried the Ken party. A man identified by his badge as “Michael H, team leader” decided to assert his authority. “People pay a lot of money to film in this station,” he said. “It’s a security issue,” he added, realising, too late, that extorting money from news crews might be poor PR.
“It’s nice to see Railtrack taking an interest in safety after killing so many people,” Ken remarked, his genial smile dangerously unchanged.
Michael H looked like a man suddenly assailed by doubt. “Tell me,” said Livingstone, affably, “do you think your directors should go to prison for manslaughter?”
As the battle bus moved off past John Prescott’s super-ministry, the Livingstone repartee continued. “Is John Prescott in? Hello John. Vote for me and I’ll save the tube. You don’t want it privatised, do you? It’s those nasty men in the Treasury, I know.”
The bus turned into Whitehall and headed towards Downing Street. “I look forward to a fruitful working relationship with the Prime Minister . . . will he give me his second preference?”
Outside the Treasury: “Is Gordon in? Please don’t privatise the tube, Gordon.”
Passing the law courts in the Strand: “What’s all this about the judges for Livingstone? Let’s have some of you up here bopping on my bus. I’ve forgiven you for stopping Fares Fair, but don’t do it again.”
Livingstone teased his way across London, evoking what has lodged in the public memory as his heroic last stand at the GLC, the great failure that he has parlayed into his best political capital. The cheekie chappie on the bus is a people’s hero, the symbol of the little man who embarks on resistance to the forces of power, knowing he can only be defeated.
That evening, the people’s hero was back in the City with the other candidates at a hustings at KPMG, the management consultants. City suits sipped wine in the well-appointed atrium. The place was loud with purposeful conversation about money. Ken was late again. Gerry Acher, senior partner of KPMG, had posted runners at the tube station to meet him. “He travels by tube, you know,” Acher said, delighted, apparently, by such eccentricity.
Here, Livingstone’s self-deprecating style is angled to a different purpose: to reassure the money that the mayor’s powers are too limited to do any damage. “All the candidates try to outdo each other at these events,” he said. “You should have seen the lesbian and gay hustings, that was a laugh. But don’t worry. While I’m here, the chances of the government devolving tax-raising powers are a little less than zero.” How, the candidates were asked, would they get money out of the government? By mobilising popular support, Ken said. “If the government thinks neglect has an electoral price, they’ll pay attention.” He paused and grinned. “There are 25 marginal seats in London, so I expect a positive working relationship.”
Dobson was left huffing. “You get together a cogent and well-argued case, and you put it to the government and see what the response is,” he said in reply to the same question. “Then, if it’s negative, you look for support.” Asked to say how each candidate was different from the others, Livingstone offered a congestion tax, Norris said he was pro-business, and Kramer talked about community banks. I put it to Norris’s campaign manager that his cause was lost. Not at all, he protested. “Our candidate’s liability is the party,” he explained cheerfully. “So we’ve come up with a great idea to get round it.” He paused, like a conductor calling his orchestra to order. “Norris is . . . ‘the Tory you can vote for’!”
I asked Ken why he was always late. “Look,” he said, “four weeks ago, I had four people working for me. Now, I’ve got a campaign going, but I have to do things like making sure it doesn’t go over budget and get ruled illegal. I just have a lot to do.” He plodded out into the night, raincoat flapping, the people’s candidate in search of a lift home.
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