IT'S GOING TO BE WORSE THAN YOU THINK

Leo McKinstry says that Ken Livingstone will wipe the smile

off the faces of those Londoners who think he's a cuddly joker with a passion for fair play and clean air

WHAT a card, what a comic! How could anyone be seriously opposed to Ken Liv- ingstone, the man who informs London, in that voice that sounds like a cross between Kenneth Williams and Private Pike from Dad's Army, that when he is mayor, 'the sun will be shining every day'?

With just a week to go before polling, he is now such a runaway favourite that the bookies have even decided to stop taking bets on him. 'To all intents and purposes, Ken Livingstone looks unbeatable,' says Graham Sharpe of the bookmakers William Hill. And that view is borne Out by the opinion polls, which have consistently shown Livingstone to be more than 30 per cent ahead of his rival, an astonishing margin for a British electoral contest.

Livingstone's seemingly inevitable triumph has certainly not been built on solid policy pronouncements, for it would be hard to conceive of a more irresponsible and frivolous candidate. Ten days ago he launched his election manifesto for London and it was typi- cal Red Ken stuff, packed with trivial, eye-catching gestures such as promot- ing an annual St Patrick's Day celebra- tion and banning lobbyists from the Greater London Assembly. On the major issues in the capital such as crime, business and transport, his document was, like the man himself; long on rhetoric but short on practicalities.

Yet Livingstone's essential shallowness hardly appears to matter to Londoners. They seem to prefer a clownish, student- style activist to a realistic civic leader. Ken Livingstone has become that rarest of British beasts, the genuinely popular left- wing politician. Usually, the only radical socialists with an affectionate following are either long retired from office, like Tony Benn or Michael Foot, or confined to the pages of fiction, like Harry Perkins, the prime-ministerial hero of Chris Mullin's novel A Very British Coup. But, with Living- stone, the nearer he comes to power, the more his following grows, even among oth- erwise sensible people who should despise his puerile antics. As one New Labour member, Paul Richards, ruefully put it to me, 'Even if every single Labour supporter stays at home, Ken will win easily because so many Tories are backing him.'

Apart from Livingstone's comic appeal, there are two other reasons why the public is strongly behind his campaign. First, the electorate wants, understandably, to give Tony Blair a bloody nose. Ken has become the ideal lightning rod for disenchantment with New Labour's failure to deliver on its promises and its obsessive control-freakery.

Second, there is a widespread belief that the London mayor will have no power; there- fore, when Ken wins, he will not be able to cause any serious harm. But this kind of thinking is based on a dangerous fallacy. In reality, a Livingstone mayoralty will be able to cause great mischief across the capital, with disastrous consequences for business, public services and taxation. Far from being little more than a cuddly figurehead, Living- stone, armed with unprecedented powers 'and a personal mandate unique in the histo- ry of British politics, will soon be a menace to public life in the capital.

Take the issue of crime. It is impossible to see Red Ken as a crusader for zero toler- ance of law-breaking, like the mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani. Indeed, respect for the law has never been one of Livingstone's strong points. This is the politician who notoriously sided with the rioters during the recent violent protests in the City, who explained that he had 'always been in favour of direct action', and who has argued, only this month, that the IRA are not criminals but 'people who believe they are fighting for the freedom of their country'. In a similar vein, he has called for the decriminalisation both of prostitution and of the use of drugs like cannabis and Ecstasy.

Given those attitudes, it is little wonder that many police officers are privately expressing despair about combating drugs or terrorism under a Livingstone mayoralty. As one experienced police officer put it to me, 'Livingstone will be a nightmare for us. He'll constantly interfere in our operations, squander money on loony causes but be totally uninterested in the fight against crime.' Perhaps even more disturbing for the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade is the way they will be undermined by Livingstone's morbid obsession with political correctness. The wretched Macpherson report into so-ealled institutionalised racism has already caused mayhem in the Met, with morale plummeting and senior offi- cers caught up in a grotesque McCarthyite witch-hunt for alleged prejudice. But Macpherson will seem mild compared to what Livingstone has in store, with his constant blather about ethnic and gender balances, awareness training and 'embracing diversity'. It is optimistic to believe that the police or fire service could remain operationally effective if 50 per cent of their recruits were female.

And this fixation with race and gender targets will also be felt throughout the 65,000-strong workforce of the Greater London Authority, distorting priorities and inducing bureaucratic sclerosis. We have only to look at Hackney and Lambeth to see the dismal results of a myopic focus on race and gender at the expense of wider service delivery to the public. Gay rights will be an equally important part of Living- stone's agenda. He has pledged himself to introduce a civic register for gay couples in London, thereby giving official GLA sanc- tion to gay marriages, while he is also promising more public funds for gay events like the London Gay Pride festival. Per- haps most outrageous of all is his demand that 'homophobic companies' should be boycotted by the GLA. Citing the example of Brian Souter, the owner of the transport company Stagecoach who has campaigned against the repeal of Section 28, Living- stone said on 30 March, 'I will not tolerate companies that are commercially involved with the GLA if they display homophobia.' This ideological bullying is all too typical of Livingstone. When he was leader of the GLC in the Eighties, he banned major com- panies like Rowntree Mackintosh from ten- dering for GLC contracts because of their supposed 'racist' policies. He occasionally likes to pose as the friend of London com- merce, but the mask regularly slips, as occurred earlier this month when he prepos- terously claimed that the City of London was responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler. As the business organisation London First said, 'This language of conflict ought to be consigned to the dustbin.' In January this year, Livingstone childishly claimed that, as mayor, he would never invite the World Trade Organisation to London 'unless we get vast stocks in so we can throw stuff at them in an organised way'. Livingstone has never had anything to do with business and has absolutely no understanding of wealth creation. That is precisely why it will be so dangerous for him to be in charge of the capital's finances.

All his wretched politically correct schemes and overblown job-creation plans in his manifesto, he promised 10,000 new green' jobs in the capital — will have to be paid for, which can only mean a hike in business costs and tax bills. And he will have much more freedom in this area than most People think. Frighteningly, he will be directly in charge of a budget of £3.3 billion, and will have his own tax-raising powers. As Tony Travers of the London School of Eco- nomics has pointed out, 'The Welsh have no taxation powers at all. The Scots can only make changes to the basic income tax rate. In contrast, Livingstone would inherit a council-tax yield of £350 million which he Will be free to put up in future years.' It is in the area of transport that the financial costs of the Livingstone regime could be most keenly felt. The government has decided to parcel off the Tube into three public-private partnerships (PPP) and, for all his noisy rhetoric against pri- vatisation, Livingstone will not be able to do much about this because the PPP con- tracts will have been signed by the time he reaches office. But he could make life a nightmare for private operators by rigor- ously monitoring and enforcing every minute condition of each contract — say, on running times, recruitment policies, or health and safety. Perhaps more importantly, his plan to raise further funds for capital investment through the issue of bonds could impose massive costs on the taxpayer, especially When, as is bound to happen, capital pro- jects slip behind schedule. A recent study by the London Business School said that Livingstone's bonds policy is 'naive' and could end up costing Londoners an extra £2.3 billion on top of PPP.

Just as worryingly, Livingstone will be the arch-enemy of the London motorist. He himself has never learnt to drive and, under his regime, drivers will be viewed rather as Mugabe views white Zimbabwean farmers.

'Asthma and pollution are murdering us.

The freedom to drive is really the freedom to he recently told an audience of schoolchildren. All the emphasis will be on charges — his manifesto proposes a £5 daily charge for bringing a car into the capital — tolls, cycle lanes, bus lanes and parking restrictions. Little wonder that the London Chamber of Commerce has warned that businesses will fight 'tooth and nail' against his plans for congestion charging.

Livingstone's malign influence will be felt in other ways. You can be sure that abso- lutely no action will be taken to deal with low productivity and poor industrial rela- tions in large parts of the public sector like the Underground. On the other hand, there will be plenty of scope for bureaucratic tin- kering and mischief-making in other areas under the mayor's control. On the environ- ment, for instance, Livingstone will be statu- torily required to 'develop an air quality strategy for London', 'prepare a biodiversity action plan', 'develop an ambient noise strategy for the capital' and 'publish a municipal waste management strategy'. He should enjoy that, having already proved himself an expert in municipal waste.

On top of all his formal powers, Living- stone as mayor will also have a great quan- tity of patronage at his disposal. He will be responsible for appointing the entire boards of the two vital new bodies, Trans- port for London and the London Develop- ment Agency, which will be in charge of economic regeneration.

He will also appoint the majority of the boards of the Police Authority and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In addition, he can form his own cabinet from GLA councillors, recruit his own advisers and appoint ten staff mem- bers of a central policy unit. There is real scope there for him to impose his socialist outlook on the capital. He has already spread rumours that he might appoint Lee Jasper, the radical black activist and chair of the National Anti-Racism Alliance, as the chairman of his Police Authority. The fact that this job is not under his control only highlights Livingstone's frivolity, though he could, of course, appoint Jasper to another position. He has also spoken of the ghastly Peter Tatchell serving as a Lon- don 'Gay Czar', while he recently hinted that Darren Johnson, the Green mayoral candidate, might be appointed his deputy. Johnson, a 29-year-old homosexual, is just as politically correct as Livingstone. He said this week, 'I buy the Daily Telegraph but I get really angry reading the letters page. It is still a shock to the system that people think like that.' It might also be a shock to Telegraph readers that, under Liv- ingstone, a bigoted pipsqueak like Johnson could be helping to run the capital.

Livingstone proved a disastrous leader of London. His hard-line ideological stance was compounded by his weakness as an adminis- trator. He allowed County Hall meetings to drag on all night without any decisions being made. His rule meant politically motivated chaos, and the same will happen this time round. It is astonishing that so many London voters have yet to snap out of his spell.