Maverick Looks Set to Be New London Mayor

Voters here thumbed their noses at Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor Party on Thursday, apparently choosing its nemesis, Ken Livingstone, as the city’s first directly elected mayor.

The British Broadcasting Corp. projected victory for the 54-year-old maverick who defied Labor’s best efforts to beat him and consistently led in opinion polls. The BBC gave him 51% of the vote based on early returns.

Dubbed “Red Ken” for his left-of-center views, Livingstone was denied the Labor candidacy and then thrown out of the party for running as an independent against its standard-bearer.

The new mayor of London will have limited official powers. But as the popularly elected leader of the capital’s 7 million residents, Livingstone will have a high profile. He could become a permanent thorn in the prime minister’s side and, potentially, a tougher policy critic than the Tory party has provided.

But conciliatory amid predictions of victory, Livingstone tried to put those suggestions to rest Thursday night.

“Tony Blair and myself both want the new system to work. We have a huge interest in working together as benefits Londoners and the Labor Party,” Livingstone said on BBC television. “I want to make sure I establish a system of government that serves as a model for the rest of the country.”

The election is seen as a test of the Blair government’s popularity ahead of a general election expected next year, and the news was not good. Labor also was facing the possibility of losses in 152 local councils throughout England, where the Tories and Liberal Democrats were expecting substantial gains.

But Labor’s defeat in its traditional stronghold of London was the biggest setback for Blair since he took office in May 1997.

The prime minister created the elected office of mayor and a new 25-member London Assembly as part of his policy to devolve power from Parliament to local governments. But he did not envision losing control of the new administration.

He opposed Livingstone’s efforts to run on the so-called Labor ticket. Instead, Blair handpicked former Health Secretary Frank Dobson as the party’s official candidate and then helped him fight a losing battle. Dobson was struggling to hold on to third place late Thursday behind Tory candidate Steve Norris.

“Blair made the biggest mistake telling people not to vote for Livingstone because then people who weren’t even going to vote for him did,” said John Saunders, 68, a Tory who cast his ballot for the Labor outcast. “We don’t tell him how to run the country, and he shouldn’t tell us how to vote.”

Adding insult to injury, Livingstone barely campaigned. He toured downtown atop a purple double-decker bus and took the subway to remote corners of the city, where he shook hands with ordinary folks who seemed to love his easy manner and rumpled individualism.

Much of his appeal stemmed from his promise to stand up to Blair’s government of “control freaks,” particularly over a plan to partially privatize London’s aging subway system.

“I think he will deliver,” said Keith Graham, a 52-year-old Livingstone voter. “He’s someone who’s different--he takes no nonsense.”

That is what former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher discovered when Livingstone served as head of the Greater London Council, the city’s last metropolitan government, until she dissolved it in 1986.

While Thatcher’s Tory government was building Britain’s nuclear deterrent, the Greater London Council under Livingstone declared the capital a nuclear-free zone. He met with Gerry Adams, leader of the Irish Republican Army’s political wing, Sinn Fein, long before it was politically acceptable in Britain, and supported the IRA’s goal of a united Ireland.

He was a socialist champion of the underdog, supporting gay rights and cutting subway fares, and to Blair he symbolizes the loony and not electable old Labor Party of the 1970s and early ‘80s. The prime minister has referred to Livingstone’s supporters as a “ragbag of Trotskyists and Tory newspapers” and said his election would be a disaster for London.

In fact, Tory newspapers backed Norris.

The Daily Mail on Thursday said voters’ enthusiasm for Livingstone bore “a depressing resemblance to lemmings rushing for the nearest cliff.” The paper recalled a recent interview in which Livingstone likened international financial institutions to Adolf Hitler, saying 15 million to 20 million people die each year in developing countries because of the debt burden.

Other conservative commentators worried that London, which has enjoyed high growth, low unemployment and a competitive financial center, could lose business and investment under Livingstone.

The question, said Mark Kleinman, a lecturer on social policy at the London School of Economics, is: “Is Livingstone going to spend four years on London, or is he going to concern himself with things like the World Trade Organization, Northern Ireland and other extraneous issues?”

Another question on many observers’ minds is whether Labor will try to bring Livingstone and his supporters back into the fold ahead of next year’s vote.

Livingstone made it clear that is what he would like to happen.

Apparently only about a third of the city’s 5 million voters turned out for the election. Conservative Julian Longley, 43, said many Londoners do not want a mayor and additional layer of bureaucracy.

“I’m not voting deliberately,” Longley said. “It just encourages them.”