This column is a celebration of the re-election last week of Ken Livingstone as Lord Mayor of London. There are three reasons to celebrate.
First, his victory served to further highlight the disastrous showing of Tony Blair’s New Labour in the rest of the country, where it contrived to come in third in the local government elections — an astoundingly bad result for a governing party. As many of its leaders have conceded in public since, Blair got a ”kicking” from Labour supporters who wanted to show how much they resent his decision to participate in the unlawful invasion of Iraq.
Livingstone bucked this trend despite the fact that he recently returned to the Labour fold. In 2000 he was expelled from the party for daring to stand in the city’s first mayoral election. He stood anyway, as an independent, and won convincingly.
How did Livingstone amass such popularity that he could withstand a massive wave of discontent with the ruling party? Because — a second reason to celebrate — he did what so few modern political leaders, especially those of the ”third way” social democratic variety, do, which is to Keep It Simple. I know I sound like Ronald Reagan, but even though by definition we expect progressive governments to do more than conservative ones, it is perfectly reasonable to ask them to be more strategically focused than they habitually are.
When Livingstone came to office he prioritised one issue way above all others — the increasingly cloying congestion of central London. And, within this overarching objective of reducing congestion, he set two policy goals: road-pricing and more buses.
The five-quid-a-go congestion charge for motorists entering central London was a political risk. There was plenty of opposition from commercial and other interests. But Livingstone’s instinct was that it would work and he trusted his instinct. And it has. Anyone who has visited London in the past year will have noticed a striking change. The traffic moves; jumping in a taxi now saves time.
But Livingstone knew that conceptually you cannot make it harder and more expensive for motorists and not improve the service provided by public transport. The complexity of the long-term public-private partnership for developing the underground railway meant that it was untouchable. The chaos of the privatisation of the railways meant that they too were beyond Livingstone’s reach in a four-year first term.
So he went for the buses. Livingstone has added 1 200 buses to the 5 800 inherited and replaced 4 500. Because of clever ”quality incentive” contracts with bus operators, good service is rewarded. Bus use is up 33%; because of the reduction in traffic more of them can run on time and because more people are using them, the market has pushed the price down from an average cost per journey by about 20%.
This is what working Londoners wanted: better public services and less congestion. And Livingstone delivered by sticking to core Labour issues. As he said a week ago, after his re-election, voters had not turned to the Liberal Democrats in the capital but ”to a Labour candidate standing for good public services, protection of the environment and opposition to the war. I believe the same would happen nationally.”
Thus, as a third reason to celebrate, vicarious Londoners can herald the fact that these policies have made London a more congenial, less dysfunctional place to be and that democracy has rewarded Livingstone’s uncomplicated determination to deliver on the single most important issue for Londoners: transport. As such, it was a victory for local, devolved democracy, as much as for Livingstone himself.
It’s an object lesson for politics anywhere, anytime. The clear-sighted identification of bold, achievable objectives, which the core electorate can themselves identify with and support. There are political leaders everywhere, including in South Africa, who can learn from Livingstone’s success.
While it would be churlish to conclude that the African National Congress has been anything other than successful in its policy choices and delivery given its resounding electoral victory in April, it is in the same breath impossible to say with such precision what its priorities are and remain. Ask South Africans what the two main policy objectives of the Mbeki government are and I doubt you would get two answers the same.
Was the Mandela administration any clearer? Possibly. ”National reconciliation”, or words to that effect, would almost certainly strike a chord of recognition with most South Africans. But the second — sound economic management — was achieved through stealth; the axiomatic switch from the Reconstruction and Development Programme to the growth, employment and redistribution policy was made in the dead of night in 1996. Such was the intensity of its controversial character in ideological terms that the shift had to be made without consultation with the ANC’s partners on the left, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party.
Perhaps for opposite but equivalent reasons, the adjustment to macroeconomic policy that is now underfoot is also being delicately presented lest it provoke undue concern from conservative bankers and policymakers in the West.
His detractors from the left would say that this has been Blair’s undoing. British voters, especially those who voted Labour in the past two elections, no longer know what he stands for. Although, like the ANC, Labour’s baseline record in office is far better than many of its critics would accept, Blair’s obsession with complicated public-private partnerships as the base for ”reform” of health and other services has served to obscure the positive. Imperial adventurism on Iraq has simply multiplied this effect.
John Kampfer’s book, Blair’s Wars, records how easily distracted Blair was from the clear mandate to improve public services and clean up the government his people gave him in 1997. Kampfer shows how when he entered office Blair knew virtually nothing about foreign affairs and had even less interest. Incredibly, Blair apparently had no understanding of the interdependent nature of the modern world, one charge that can never be laid at the door of Thabo Mbeki.
In the run-up to the April election, some of Mbeki’s closest advisers were concerned that he appeared to be, and indeed was, devoting more attention to international affairs than domestic policy. Importantly, the South African electorate, if it thinks he has, was prepared to forgive him for it. The British electorate is unlikely to be so accommodating, recognising that Blair has gone far beyond their core concerns and interests with Iraq.
”Red Ken” Livingstone is fond of boasting: ”Both the two main political figures of the past decade, Thatcher and Blair, have tried to crush me and I have survived.” As London buses flow once again, Livingstone is sitting pretty, while Blair could not be more uncomfortable, having squandered a unique historical opportunity — an unprecedented two full terms of office for Labour — on an ill-conceived, unlawful and tragically miscalculated adventure in the Persian Gulf. A betrayal not just of the progressive traditions of Labour but of the idea of liberal interventionism, a subject for another time.