A Longshot Contest for London Mayor

You would think that two well-oiled machines such as Britain’s Labor and Conservative parties would know how to run something as seemingly straightforward as a campaign for mayor of one of the world’s great cities.

Think again.

The contest for London’s first directly elected mayor has been a triumph of scandal and backbiting over issues, of arm-twisting over democracy. And the race is just getting started.

The Tories this week announced their second-choice candidate for the May 4 vote--their first choice, millionaire author Jeffrey Archer, having been forced to quit the campaign after admitting that he persuaded a friend to commit perjury for him in a libel trial that netted him about $800,000 in damages.

The winner of the Tory ballot to replace Archer was Steven Norris, a former transportation minister and confessed five-time adulterer, who lists among his strengths the fact that all of his dirty laundry already has been aired.

A clear underdog in a city that favors Labor, Norris will have nearly a month’s head start on the hustings against his main rival, whom the Labor Party has yet to name.

Labor, in turn, has another month to continue ravaging its own short list of candidates: a former health secretary who did not want the job, a former Oscar-winning actress who does and a left-wing maverick whom the Labor powers-that-be cannot stand.

The bookies’ favorite and, not incidentally, the most popular choice among Labor rank and file, is the last of these: Ken Livingstone, a member of what is now called “old Labor” who has been dubbed Red Ken by the conservative press.

As head of the Greater London Council under then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Livingstone advocated cheap public transportation, gay rights and engagement with the Irish Republican Army’s political wing, Sinn Fein. The latter, at least, is now government policy.

Livingstone’s main attribute--or drawback, depending on whose point of view--is that he is independent of the “new Labor” government, regarded by many as run by control freaks. He is not a member of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s inner circle and does not agree with some of his neoliberal economic policies, such as a plan to privatize the London Underground.

Blairites fear that Livingstone would use the mayor’s office to embarrass and challenge the government whenever he disagrees with its policies, and they have done everything possible to try to block his nomination, including stacking the voting rules against him.

Blair has been actively backing Frank Dobson, whom he reportedly had to strong-arm into quitting his job as health secretary to run for the post. Meanwhile, Blair has also tried to win over the longshot candidate, actress Glenda Jackson, a member of Parliament who lacks a sufficient power base within the party.

The declared candidates considered less likely than Jackson to win the seat are the Liberal Democrats’ Susan Kramer and punk godfather Malcolm McLaren, the former manager of the Sex Pistols. If Labor picks Dobson, there is speculation that Livingstone will run as an independent.

Except for the appointed, ceremonial Lord Mayor, London has never had its own central government. Public functions are split between the national government and 32 local boroughs.

The job that both sides are fighting so hard and poorly to win is to have a relatively small budget of about $5 billion and limited powers, with primary responsibility for transportation and the police and fire departments.

“Transportation is no small thing in London, where cars move as slowly today as the horse and cart did in 1912,” said columnist Gary Younge of the left-of-center Guardian newspaper. “But most of the rest of the job is pomp and ceremony, which is why it attracts so many pompous and ceremonious people.”

So why all the fuss?

“The mayor of London will have enormous legitimacy,” Jackson said. “With 5 to 7 million people in the London electorate, he or she is likely to have the largest political mandate in the country.”