If you read Ken Livngstone's article in this morning's Guardian you could be forgiven for thinking so. We haven't seen the last of Ken by any means. Prediction: he will stand in a safe Labour seat in a by-election or at the next election and then stand for the leadership on the exact manifesto he outlined in his article today. A lot of Labour people would be persuaded by it.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Is This Man the Next Leader of the Labour Party?
If you read Ken Livngstone's article in this morning's Guardian you could be forgiven for thinking so. We haven't seen the last of Ken by any means. Prediction: he will stand in a safe Labour seat in a by-election or at the next election and then stand for the leadership on the exact manifesto he outlined in his article today. A lot of Labour people would be persuaded by it.
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23 comments:
I do hope so.
Does Labour have such a thing as safe seats any more?
I did wonder whether he would. In many ways he's much better than any of the current "contenders".
Well Iain,
Who will jump/be pushed to make way for him? It will be someone within the M25. Hoey?
Given the Sun poll, is there such a thing as a safe Labour seat - or will Ken get all the highly-taxed but lowly-paid out to vote?
Brown's ditherings over the 10% tax U-turn fob-off beggars belief.
Talk about stopping digging a deeper hole, etc.
It was interesting to note that on This Week, Diane Abbott said Ken's speech at the count last week her "moment of the week". At the same time as praising him, she also said it was the end of his electoral career. I thought it was quite presumptious of her - but I think it was almost a shot across his bows: don't think about coming back to Westminster.
The truth is, he wasn't able to make friends and influence people at Westminster. He has been hardwired into London politics for decades which made him an ideal person for London Mayor but I don't think he resonates elsewhere. It will certainly be great soap opera if he tries it but also pretty delusional.
It's feasible he could be a major figure on the Labour benches, but he'd have no chance of the leadership I'm sure. As Iain said elsewhere, the polls which indicate Labour would do worse under Labour's young turks are meaningless. Milliband and Purnell are the future for that party I'd say.
Brilliant! Does he think that the rest of the country is *more* left-wing than London?
When Maggie Thatcher banished Red Ken from the GLC building to play with his newts,the man who cultivated his cronies and fellow travellers soon found a constituency and became an MP to haunt and harry the Labour leaders. I thought at that time it was a very good tactic by Mrs Thatcher. The reason for Blair swallowed his pride and let Ken in to New labour and the reason for Brown to eat his words and support Ken are what I would call President Lyndon Johnson's approach. When some one asked the president why he was still keeping Edgar Hoover, with characteritic candour the President replied ' I would rather have him inside the tent pissing out than standing outside and pissing in'. Now Ken is outside the tent, a loose cannon.
The comments on Livingstone's Guardian piece say it all: he blew it with his ridiculous global-stage pontificating; his scandalous waste of public money on pet projects and visiting extremists; his failure to answer any of the corruption allegations; and his endless pratter about climate change, when Londoners' main concern is getting to work on time and not getting knifed on the way home.
He is already yesterday's man, with nothing to say of any relevance.
My my, what a hope.
He may lead a very leftist splinter group when the party implodes very soon, bankrupt and in disarray.
Maybe Hoey will defect, with Ken standing against her at the next GE.
It could be Portillo, afterall there's a chance he voted for Ken: so next stop the Labour Party.
Anonymous 2:56. I thought LBJ was quoting Lloyd-George referring to Churchill, which makes even more sense.
Oh, please, please... (Can you hear me begging, God?) In the words of Bendy Wendy... Bring it on.
Word verif: belover
Lol...Leninspart as leader would make Footie and Kinnochio seem positively liberal tame by comparison.
The plus plus in this scenario would be a guarantee of at least two terms of a Tory administration.
We should all, temporarily, join the Labour party and vote for him.
Ken did confess in a SKY interview his ambition, when first entering Parliament, was to become Prime Minister.
Iain. Pleased to see you are listening.
I knew Ken was bitter about London and that is what this article sort of shows, but he's got very little on how he would actually turn things around. Instead he's banging the same drum as Mr Brown.
"It's back to the mid 90's for all of us, never mind that Thatcher's experiment made us an international city, or that Major's government helped set up the UK for this 10 year boom, or anything else the Major Government gave us on a platter. Instead we shall now all die because we couldn't kill off the oldest and most successful political party in the United Kingdom's history. Like Darling would say: We're all Dooooooooomed! Tory Decline is in the wings! Doooooooooom!"
Could we have some more substance on the issues Ken, like Boris actually did with his campaign?
Reading Ken's words it strikes me he's taunting the Liberals more than anything. Witness the supposed promise (made after the fact) that he would have rewarded the Greens... and we assume he's suggesting the same offer might have been available to the Liberals too.
Could he be trying to bring them closer to Labour to cover a possible hung Parliament? Yeah right, poor Liberals, we know how that worked out for them in '97.
If they've any sense the Liberals will stay well clear of the Mafia currently robbing the Country.
Ken would make a great leader of the party. But I still feel it is a long way off Why can he not stand to be mayor again. McCain is trying to be president of the USA in his seventies.
... and in Labour's darkest hour, a hero came forth to offer salvation. The one man in the party who could fill Michael Foot's donkey jacket. The one man in the party who still gets Christmas cards from the Scargills.
Comrade Ken for Labour leader! Let's go for 20 years in opposition this time Ken.
In the run-up, Ken definitely said on TV that,whatever the result, it would be his LAST public office.
Are MPs to be PFI'd, too?
Maybe Livingstone leading the Labour Party would bring about the return of politics to the intellectual battle of principle that it once was, instead of the petty squabbling over ownership of mainstream myopia that the Third Way has caused it to become.
If so, his elevation cannot come too quickly.
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