LENIN'S TOMB

Saturday, May 05, 2012

The anti- vote. posted by Richard Seymour

I am currently on a writing job, so can't spend too much time on this. But the elections deserve at least a word or two on the Tomb.

First of all, let us all rejoice in another Liberal Democide, a Liberal Defenestration, a Liberal Decomposition, a Liberal Debacle, a Liberal Demolition Derby, a Liberal Demise. Let's hug ourselves with pleasure at Liberals Demolished, and Liberals Disemboweled. There is no more civilized spectator sport than rubber-necking at a Liberal Democrash. They're Lib Dead, Lib Dumped, and Lib Derelict. They're finished. Brian Paddick got less than 5% in the London mayoral elections, actually losing to Jenny Jones of the Greens, only just beating the ex-civil servant 'non-party-political' Siobhan Benita (to whom we will return). Nationwide, they were mauled by Labour. Their share of the vote remained in the region of 15%, meaning that they haven't recovered from their nadir last year. They lost over three hundred councillors. They held onto six councils, all in relatively wealthy areas of Cheltenham, Hertfordshire, the Lake District, Hampshire, and Portsmouth. Their long march into Labour heartlands has been reversed, and their retreat has left orange carcasses everywhere. It is not so much that the centre is collapsing, though there is an element of that. It is that the Liberals can no longer occupy any space to the left of the centre.

The wolf-eyed replicant seems unperturbed. Watching him on the news yesterday, I suddenly saw that he had the look of a man who did not give an immense fuck. He said the words 'sad' and 'sorry', and pouted in what might be a cyborg's imitation of human affect. But it was as frigid as a penguin's fart. One imagines him, faced with a demoralised membership and backbench, scowling at them all to grow up and live in the real world. This is what it costs to be in office, to make difficult decisions. There are parties and party leaders across Europe who are willingly immolating themselves in order to implement austerity measures and appease the gods of finance. For Nick Clegg, to be down to 16% in local elections is no great pain. He expects growth to resume at some point before 2015, and Osborne to introduce an inflationary, give-away budget just before the general election. And perhaps there will be some landmark liberal reform just in time for the vote: the abolition of badger confinement, or the introduction of large print safety tags on electric blankets.

Second, and much better, the Tories finally got some of what they are due. Their share of the vote is back down to 31%, they lost the GLA, and they lost over four hundred council seats. Their notoriously ill-disciplined backbenchers are already decrying Cameronite triangulation for having failed to motivate grassroots conservatives with the classic poujadist pabulum: prison for strikers, deportation of you-know-who, and the restoration of the cat o' nine tails. How about that? And the reactionaries are not stupid. They may slightly over-estimate the challenge from UKIP, for now, but they understand the need for a more populist conservatism. One Tory MP complained yesterday that the government had wasted the last budget cutting taxes for the rich when they could have cut fuel duty. The latter would have been a conventionally right-wing policy, while also handing a material incentive to the base. Because the major reason the Tories lost was not due to a Labour surge, but to the complete demoralisation of the right-wing vote. Turnout was the lowest for over a decade. Labour under Ed Miliband certainly can't be credited with galvanising people on the basis of anything so tangible as an agenda. It was almost wholly an anti-government vote.

Third - oh, and this is delicious - the rout of the fascists. As things stand, the BNP seem to have lost every seat they contested, and their mayoral candidate received less than 2% in London. The sad old geezer with the orange Sainsbury's bag who returned twice to deliver BNP newsletters in our area won't live to the see the Fourth Reich after all. Their electoral meltdown, after a decade of constantly expanding their base, seemed to have come very suddenly after their peak in 2009. It must be said, because few will admit it, that it didn't actually happen that way; there was a great deal of hard work by anti-fascists going on below the media radar to split the fascists from their right-wing, racist electoral base, thus preventing these racists from empowering a bunch of Nazis. Such campaigns made all the difference in Barking and Stoke, which were the key electoral battlegrounds in 2010, where the BNP's slide began. Simultaneously, there were ongoing fights to prevent the 'mainstreaming' of Griffin and the BNP, by fighting for a 'no platform' position within unions, student bodies and so on. And of course, the physical obstruction of the far right organised under the canopy of the EDL, whose aim has been to incite the sort of riots and racial polarisation that gave the BNP their first open door in Burnley, Bradford and elsewhere. (How different those cities look and feel today). The EDL's decisive setback, I still maintain, was in Tower Hamlets. Since then, they have been losing momentum and numbers. There is still a mass base for right-wing, racist and authoritarian politics. It just won't find expression in an empowered fascist bloc for now.

Finally, and this is no good at all, Boris Johnson returns to City Hall. His friendships with Alexander Lebedev and Sarah Sands - respectively, proprietor and editor of the Evening Standard - undoubtedly helped. The Standard ran a scare campaign to mobilise the anti-Ken Livingstone vote, claiming that reams of illegitimate votes were being racked up for Ken in Muslim areas. But this would have had less traction were it not for the Labour Right. These people embarked on a sabotage campaign in print and on television, their hatred for him vastly disproportionate to their real political differences with him. Some openly said they supported Boris Johnson and would vote for him. Others muttered darkly that it was far from ideal that Ken was the candidate. 'Hold your nose' and vote for him was Tom Watson's advice. Some of this reflected resentment over the way Livingstone had himself defied the party bosses and the right-wing managerial establishment in the East End to back Lutfur Rahman. More generally, it reflected discontent with Ken's anti-racist, centre-left politics, the way that he would occasionally shoot from the hip and embarrass the functionaries of our increasingly managed democracy. And it has been suggested, and I can't help concurring, that there's a certain amount of resentment in the charisma-free political class over his ability to communicate with the plebs.

I don't completely disagree with those who say that Ken Livingstone helped sabotaged himself. It's true that he could have motivated more people to turn out and vote for him, that his campaign wasn't hugely ambitious and that he's far too fond of the Metropolitan Police. It's also true that he said some stupid things, offered some hostages to fortune, and allowed Andrew Gilligan to provoke him into a ridiculous miscalculation over his tax affairs. But he would have carried an election on this agenda in 2000 or 2004. His defeat cannot largely be explained by his lack of radicalism alone. The fact is that he got fewer votes than the Labour Party itself, which was hardly running on a programme of radicalism; meanwhile, Boris received considerably more votes than the Conservatives. There was an active anti-Ken vote. This could only have been neutralised to the extent that Johnson was successfully depicted as an ally and confederate of the government, which he adamantly refused to be. That is why it was so important that sections of the Labour Right endorsed Johnson, thus colluding in the attempt to represent him as something other than a Tory.

There was also a slight whimper of excitement among some Labourites over Siobhan Benita, a former civil servant who espoused a vague, seemingly apolitical liberalism - a drip, you might say, of the first water. Well, why not? She was a close colleague of Gus O'Donnell, the former Blairite cabinet secretary, and had accumulated supporters such as Sir Richard Branson and Michael Portillo. She had high profile communications experts on her campaign team, who procured some glittering coverage of the passionate 'Mum for London' with her 'People Not Politics' schtick. They made her a t-shirt which, appropriating a recent Stonewall campaign, said "I'm an independent. Get over it." Inevitably her clothing and appearance came up. Because she's a lady and, well, that goes with territory does it not? Between lechery on the one hand, and condescension on the other ("she's awfully pretty, but..."), it seemed that her professional dress and business-like demeanour conformed to a certain ego-ideal among the capital's petty bourgeois ideological producers. She was like Nicola Horlick, supermum, juggling a career and a family, striking an almost Zen balance on all sides. As a consequence, Benita polled much better than pre-election surveys anticipated. But if London's politicos have got that out of their system, I hope it's the last we'll be seeing of that sort of thing. I disapprove of the 'non-political' politician, just as I think we need more of what the bores call 'punch and judy politics', not less.

As for Livingstone, I regret that this was his last election. As the results came in, and his tally crept ever closer to Boris, one almost thought he might do it on second preference votes. To paraphrase P G Wodehouse, the voice of Fate seemed to call him, but it was the wrong number. "Harrow? Is it me you're looking for? No?" No. Goodbye, Ken.

Labels: boris johnson, david cameron, elections, ken livingstone, liberals, london, mayor, nick clegg, tories

Thursday, March 29, 2012

The sinister magic of Boris Johnson posted by Richard Seymour

My article for Open Democracy on Boris Johnson and London's mayoral contest:

In 2008, the outer ring of rich suburbs in the capital turned out en masse to elect Boris Johnson as their mayor. These suburbs, ripe in the spring air with the whiff of barbecues and bigotry, knew what they wanted. A mayor who would cut all the trendy programmes, put the frighteners on young thugs, sock it to the unions and practice a suitable ambiguity toward London’s unsettling multiculture...

Labels: boris johnson, ken livingstone, london, mayor, neoliberalism, reactionaries, sociopaths, thatcherism, tories, trade unions

Saturday, May 03, 2008

London Meltdown posted by Richard Seymour

What could go wrong did go wrong. Boris Johnson is mayor, with a convincing lead. The BNP got a seat on the Assembly. And the Left List failed to make an impact except in a few concentrated areas. The reasons for the latter are obvious enough: launching a new brand name in the space of a couple of months; set-back by a recent split in the organisation; squeezed by the Tory surge and the desire of many to 'Stop Boris' by backing Labour; squeezed by direct competition with those who still had the old name (who did poorly, but better than us overall, and much better in City and East); squeezed by a higher turnout. There were so many things militating against a strong Left List showing. But even I would not have expected last night's atrophy. New Labour has collapsed decisively not on some right-wing hocus-pocus about crime or immigration (although the media hysteria obviously contributed to Livingstone's defeat), but on the ten pence tax rate and the economy and the sense that Labour doesn't even try to represent ordinary working people any more. But the Left has not been in a position to make any inroads as a result. On the contrary - all of the Left experienced a decline, and the right-wing parties got a boost. And, in part because of the poisonous climate generated over immigrants and Muslims, the Nazis of the BNP are on the Assembly while their estranged half-cousins from the National Front (who consider the BNP sell-outs) polled strongly in Bexley and Bromley as well as in Lewisham and Greenwich. There are some hard fights ahead.

The Blairites' advice was evidently no use to Ken, who lost it in the last few days with a series of bizarre declarations, building up to his claim that he wanted to arrest people for littering. Even Boris Johnson didn't go that far. The Blairite strategy is to move so far to the right on certain issues that even the Tories can't criticise you, while giving the left some friendly words. More accurately, this is the Clintonite strategy of triangulation developed by the Republican PR man Dick Morris. Livingstone listened to this kind of advice at his own immense peril, but what else did he have to offer? He tried at the last minute to cut a vaguely 'progressive' looking deal with the Green Party, but I suspect that most Berry voters would have given him a second-preference anyway. And the Greens didn't do all that well in the end, despite some locally strong votes. They kept two seats on the Assembly, but gained little from the extensive media exposure. Livingstone didn't have anything new to offer Labour voters, wasn't really keen to distance himself too much from the government, had no chance with most right-wing voters - his niche was exhausted and depleted. The Tories have been canny in selecting Boris because, despite his obvious unfitness for the role, his burlesque comedy obscures the memory of the 'nasty party'. I suspect that 'nice' centre-right voters who might previously have lumped for the Lib Dems went back to the fold. It's been hard to detect much in the way of policy from the Tories, and certainly little distinctive. Johnson did not win on an aggressive platform of clubbing the unions, hammering immigrants and brutalizing petty criminals. This isn't Margaret Thatcher, the next generation. It is BoJo the Bozo, the clown from hell, all slapstick and bravado. His platform consisted of some relatively unthreatening centre-right soundbites, which is one reason why the (quite legitimate) attempts to make him sound scary didn't work. One very small contributor to Johnson's win is highlighted by John Harris in the Guardian today: "the topsy-turvy, faux-progressive politics minted by the self-styled pro-war left". I don't credit Nick Cohen, Martin Bright and company with very much influence at all, but they certainly contributed to the reactionary media campaign about 'Islamism', providing a 'progressive' proscenium for the racist dramaturgy.

What of Labour's national wipe-out? First of all, we've just seen the complete enervation of the New Labour vision of a Whiggish coalition, a 'progressive' lib-lab bloc for centre-left hegemony in the 21st Century. New Labour collapsed, but the Liberals didn't pick up very much of the slack. In Wales, as in Scotland, the nationalists are getting the benefit of the anti-New Labour vote. In England, the Liberals lost control of some councils and gained some, and they seem to have a net gain overall of just one council. It is surprising in this context to see the Lib Dem result being spoken of as if it's a credible one for Nick Clegg. Commentators have been quick to draw comparisons with 1983, but the last time Labour's share of the vote was this low was in 1968, shortly after Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech and at the height of Harold Wilson's unpopularity over devaluation. Wilson's government had also, despite some moderate reformist pledges, reneged on many commitments at the behest of the IMF. What is different this time round is the extent of Labour's collapse in its heartlands. It didn't just crumble in the marginals. It lost core votes across Wales, in Hartlepool, and in Wolverhampton. It lost a strong presence in Reading, by no means a marginal seat. It was kicked out of Bury in Greater Manchester after 22 years. The rapid erosion that began under Blair is now an avalanche. Blair's 2005 election victory was more of a loss for the Tories than a thumbs-up for New Labour, with just over a third of voters backing the government and with less voters than supported Labour when it lost in 1992. It is now obvious that the Labour Party will crash to a poor second in 2010, while the Tories will pick up around 40% of the vote. The Lib Dems will not match their 22% vote in 2005.

Anyone who thinks that Labour is about to turn left is kidding themselves. Far more likely is that the government will take a more aggressive stance toward the unions (as it did in 1969, with 'In Place of Strife') and make a demonstrative crackdown on immigration (as it did with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968). Labour doesn't contain the resources for a regeneration of its battered left, any more than it did when John McDonnell failed to get enough PLP support to even run a campaign against Gordon Brown. The last vaguely leftish credible alternative to Brown was the late Robin Cook, whose standing after his dignified antiwar resignation speech would have made him the obvious candidate. And even he would have struggled. Just because the left-of-Labour vote was poor, just because the Tories have made a decisive recovery, don't think that we can place our hopes in a New Labour conversion, or that we can avoid continuing to try to build a left-of-Labour alternative. We will be lying to ourselves in quite a dangerous way if we imagine that we can claw back some space by just abandoning the electoral terrain to New Labour. The fact that it is now a more difficult task in the short-term does not mean it can be wished away.

For socialists, however, elections are not our main kind of activity. Saying that, I run the risk of appearing to diminish the hard work put in and the hopes invested in the campaign, and that is not my meaning. However, while we should spare no blushes in being directly honest about what just happened, we should not allow ourselves to disappear up our own ballot-boxes. How we intervene in the coming crises over pay, the economy, and the rising threat of racism and the far right, is far more significant than how many votes we rack up. One of the first things we can do is turn out for the protest against the Nazi BNP outside City Hall, this coming Tuesday at 6pm.

Labels: boris johnson, disaster politics, ken livingstone, left list, london, mayor, new labour

Friday, May 02, 2008

Looks like it's Boris posted by Richard Seymour

Unless something weird happens at the last moment, it looks like Boris Johnson has won - he must have quite a convincing lead for Paddy Power to be paying out bets backing the Tory. The Tories are confidently predicting victory. This can only mean one thing: there are at least a million arseholes in this city, and they've just collectively thrown their weight behind the biggest arsehole of them all, head honcho number one arsehole. No wonder I feel like kicking something.

Labels: boris johnson, disaster politics, london, mayor

Thursday, May 01, 2008

And we're back. posted by Richard Seymour

Just in time for the election, the Tomb returns (like, er, Jesus and Easter and that). Just so that we're clear, this is your programme for today. You have three chances to vote, and what follows is an insultingly obvious step-by-step strategy for you to help secure the best possible result for the Left:

1. The Mayoral vote. PINK BALLOT PAPER
Has first and second preference. If you vote Lindsey 1 and Ken 2, you will in no way jeopardise Ken's chance of beating Boris Johnson. Voting Lindsey first will send a clear message that you are not happy with the way Livingstone is cosying up to City and the property developers.
Once the first preferences are counted, the top two candidates are set aside and everyone else's votes are re-distributed as per the second preferences. Once they are totalled the Mayor is decided. A second preference counts no less than a first preference.
Vote with a cross for No 5 Lindsey in the first column, if you want to put a cross for Ken in the second column.

2. The constituency candidates. YELLOW BALLOT PAPER
We are standing Left List candidates across the city, and the constituency elections are decided just like parliamentary elections - first past the post.
Vote Left List candidate with a cross.

3. The London Wide Assembly Member. PEACH BALLOT PAPER
This is perhaps the most important part of the election. It is proportional representation. If the Left List gets 5% of the vote, Lindsey gets elected. Conversely if the BNP get 5% they get a seat. We need the MAXIMUM turnout in this part of the election to get representation and to keep the BNP out.
One cross, next to No 8 Left List

Interesting to see what note the campaigns are heading to the polls on. Livingstone is rehashing his support for 'zero tolerance' policies, using the language of New Labour's 'Respect agenda'. He may just scrape through, but if he does it will be no thanks to his endless prostration before the Blairite court. Boris Johnson is wisely concealing himself from the public, and not saying too much about anything. This is presumably so that the first thing voters remember will not be a spoiled upper class reactionary who can't remember his lines, but rather a spoiled upper class reactionary who can't remember his lines on Have I Got News For You. The Greens, whose mayoral candidate is supported by the Federation of Small Businesses, have recently consolidated their pact with New Labour by launching a joint 'green manifesto' with Ken Livingstone. Brian Paddick is fading gracefully into the background, registering a pathetic 12% of the vote for the Lib Dems. I still don't know what exactly his campaign is about, beyond the fact that he is an ex-copper and considers himself the 'serious choice' for Londoners. I also heard once that he preferred hope to fear, which is nice, but I both hope and fear that he'll be doing traffic duty before the dust has settled.

So, at this glorious apex of Metropolitan democracy, in which no serious issue has failed to be neglected, there is only one candidate who doesn't believe in unaffordable housing, wants to slash tube and bus fares, isn't afraid to mention the war, and will back trade unionists. You know what to do.

Labels: gla elections, left list, lindsey german, london, mayor, socialism

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Ken and Blairbie posted by Richard Seymour

So, Ken Livingstone is bragging about receiving advice on his election from Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. Indeed - why stop at one sleazy, reviled warmonger when you can have his sleazy, reviled, war-flogging propagandist in the same bargain? This is the candidate who has been nicking Boris Johnson's policies and, amid many less bread more circus policy announcements, getting Ed Balls to butter up the City of London. Question: how much help has this strategy been so far? Presumably, Ken Livingstone has drawn the conclusion that is losing popularity because he is insufficiently integrated into the New Labour electoral machine. This is a ludicrous idea, to be sure, but no more ludicrous than the conviction that stealing Boris Johnson's policies is a route to popularity, or the thought that having watched Metronet crash and burn, a PPP deal is just what is required for the extended East London line. One of Livingstone's remaining sources of credibility after he re-joined New Labour was his apparent distance from a hated Prime Minister and his loathed war policies. Now, he's burning bridges faster than the Luftwaffe, and the only constituency left to flip off will soon be the newts. I always knew Ken Livingstone was an opportunist. I never thought he was an idiot.

Labels: elections, ken livingstone, london, mayor, new labour

Monday, April 21, 2008

Left List for London posted by Richard Seymour

From the Left List page, I see they've put up the election broadcast. Thought you all might like to see it, in case you're not in front of the television when it is broadcast tomorrow evening:

Labels: gla elections, left list, lindsey german, london, mayor

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Latest Menezes cover-up posted by Richard Seymour

The depressing saga of the Metropolitan Police getting away with murder takes a new twist. The Metropolitan Police Authority, after saving Sir Ian Blair's job last year, has shelved an inquiry into how he handled the crisis following the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. Ken Livingstone has, of course, sadly decided to throw his political weight behind the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, reciting the New Labour mantra. Clearly, when Livingstone relies upon votes from London's working class, and particularly those most likely to be targeted by the police, it wouldn't do to have another set of revelations or criticisms of the man that he has so forcefully and vigorously defended. Unsurprisingly, when "unaccountable delays" occur, some people are saying that it might be for 'political' reasons (ie, to stop a complete electoral fuck-up). Personally, I wouldn't impugn the purity of Livingstone's motives, but ideologically he seems to have a real affinity for the police. After all, he now wants police cadets in London schools. What's that going to look like? "Right kids, listen up. At the end of the firing range, you see a man: there is his unseasonal clothing, there's the Mongolian eyes, and behind them is the brain which you must destroy, okay?" And I certainly don't want to use any inflammatory language - opportunistic, sordid, furtive, disgusting, all that unnecessarily excitable language. But what does it tell you when even the preposterous Boris Johnson is pretending to be ever-so-slightly more sceptical of Sir Ian Blair? When the sadsacks of the Liberal Democrats are taking a more principled position than - excuse me - Ken socialism-in-one-city Livingstone? What does this mean? I suspect what it means is that these politicians know that voters don't really like it when the police get off scot-free for killing someone, and are put off when politicians prattle obsequiously on their behalf. It means that Livingstone doesn't even have the usual excuse of psepholigical rectitude. He is a party man now, and so shall remain to the bitter end. (Mind you, still give him your second preference vote, because you don't really want that fucking sociopath loser Boris Johnson to be mayor).

Labels: boris johnson, ian blair, Jean Charles De Menezes, ken livingstone, london, mayor, metropolitian police

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Election sums. posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by 'christian h':

Those pesky preference votes...

First, the conclusion: A Ken (1st) - Third Party (2nd) vote is mathematically equivalent to a Third Party (1st) - Ken (2nd) vote as far as the eventual outcome is concerned. However, the Third Party (1st) - Ken (2nd) option is preferable as any second preference votes of Third Party won't be counted.

Here's how it works.

It's election time in Londongrad. Running for mayor are Dr. Evil (Boris, to his admirers), Mini Me (aka Ken) and Austin Powers (fusion of left-of-Ken candidates). The voting system is "preference voting", also known as "instant run-off voting." Voter X really prefers Austin Powers, but she absolutely doesn't want Dr. Evil to win. What should she do?

The system works as follows: every voter can assign two votes, a 1st and 2nd preference vote. It is legal to leave the 2nd preference blank, but it isn't possible to only vote for a 2nd preference. The votes have to go to different candidates. After polls close, all 1st preference votes are counted. If one candidate obtains more than 50% of those - that is, more votes than both his opponents together - he is declared the winner. Otherwise, all 1st preference votes of the candidate with the fewest votes are discarded and the corresponding 2nd preference votes counted instead. since only two candidates are left in the race, one of them now is guaranteed to win.

Assume there are 100 eligible voters in Londongrad. On election day, 78 come out to vote - the rest are watching football. Of those 78, 40 vote Dr. Evil 1st preference, 37 vote Mini Me, and one (that's X) votes Austin Powers. The next day, the website socialistsplitters.com accuses X of throwing the vote to Dr. Evil. Are they right? No. If X had voted Mini Me 1st preference, Dr. Evil still had 40 votes - more than half. In formulas, if E, M and A denote 1st preference votes for Dr. Evil, Mini Me and Austin respectively, Dr. Evil wins outright if and only if E > A + M. Only the sum of A and M matters, not the individual totals.

... phew, bad dream! Turns out, Dr. Evil got only 38 of the 1st preference votes, Mini Me 37, and Austin Powers got 3 (one of them cast by X). Now Austin has the fewest 1st preference votes, so they are discarded; instead, the 2nd preference votes on those ballots are now added to the totals of Dr. Evil and Mini Me. If at least two Austin-voters did their duty and voted Mini Me with their 2nd preference, Mini Me has 37+2 = 39 total votes to Dr. Evil's 38, and wins. Only if X and her comrades inexplicably decided to leave 2nd preference blank will Dr. Evil walk away victorious.

In formulas, if e, m and denote second preference votes of the Austin Powers voters, for Dr. Evil and Mini Me respectively, Dr. Evil will now win if E + e > M + m.

To recap, Dr. Evil will win if

(a) either E > M + A

(b) or M + A >= E and E + e > M + m. and E + e > M + m.

Since M + A is at least M + m and no Austin voter will vote Dr. Evil with 2nd preference (that is, e = 0), this simplifies to give that Dr. Evil will win if and only if E > M + m. That is, the only number that matters is M + m - a 2nd preference vote for Mini Me is equally as good as a 1st preference vote.

Labels: gla elections, left list, london, mayor, respect

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Respect and the GLA Elections posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by EastIsRed.

Last Saturday, around fifty activists crammed into one of the University of London Union's third-floor rooms to discuss the Respect campaign for the Greater London Assembly elections. The size of the meeting, and the geographical breadth it represented, came as a very pleasant surprise to many. Branches had sent on or two delegates each, which meant that the meeting represented a large and geographically diverse range of branches. Even areas where we are relatively weak, like south-east London, had some representation. Despite the internal arguments of the last few months, Respect activists across London were prepared to throw themselves into the campaign.

Because the possibilities remain: from the incipient recession, to the continuing occupation of Iraq , the space for a non-Labour left has expanded as perhaps never before. One important indicator is that those representing Old Labour values and significant social forces, previously tied exclusively to Labour, have seen where Brown is taking the Party, and have started to look elsewhere – not necessarily to Respect, naturally, but outside of Labour's thinning ranks.

So the large turnout was important. This was pretty much the first chance for Respect activists to meet up since "Respect Renewal" split from the organisation, and the first that provided the opportunity for a serious discussion of our strategy. George Galloway's exit from Respect had proved a distraction from real political work.

Discussion centred on two main points: first, a broad look at our strategy in the campaign; second, getting down to the hard slog of building an organisation and campaigning on the ground. The London elections are complex, by British standards: there's a mayor and a GLA to vote for. Each uses a somewhat different electoral system: you cast a first preference and a second preference for mayor, but you vote for a constituency candidate and then a party list for the GLA.

The party list vote is used to ensure the proportion of seats on the GLA matches parties' proportions of the citywide vote, and so smaller parties can manage to get a seat with a good poll across London. And – importantly – the preference system in the mayoral vote means you can vote for the candidate you actually like, followed by the candidate that will keep the Tories out – current mayor, Ken Livingstone. As he said, back in 2004, calling for a second preference Livingstone vote allowed Lindsey German and Respect to "campaign for her political position without risking a Tory victory."

This matters, because Livingstone's posse have been putting the word out that a left-wing challenge to the incumbent mayor will let the Conservatives take power in London. Either they don't understand the voting system or, more likely, they are being totally disingenuous: standing in the mayoral contest provides a brilliant platform for a candidate, with invites to hustings, media interviews, and so on, as well as London-wide mailshot of the candidate's manifesto. You don't get any of this if you just stand for the Greater London Assembly – a credible campaign for the GLA, in other words, absolutely demands that you also stand a candidate for mayor.

If you're pessimistic about building a non-Labour left, or simply wedded to the Labour Party, a credible campaign by the non-Labour left is the last thing you want to see. But Livingstone needs a left-wing challenge. His combination of nice noises about the war with appeasement for the City of London deserves to meet some opposition from the Left. It's absurd that Livingstone's (correct and necessary) opposition to Islamophobia should be taken as the only test he needs to pass; actually, this is the minimum we should be expecting from the "socialist" mayor of one of the most unequal cities in Europe. We simply have to raise our sights, and start to challenge the revolting concentrations of wealth, power and privilege that exist in London and across the UK.

Respect is unique in being the only electable organisation standing in these elections with anything worthwhile to say about the economy and, in particular, the City. No-one else will touch the bankers and the speculators: Livingstone has bent over backwards to accomodate them for the last eight years; Johnson doubtless fagged for a few at Eton; and the Lib Dems are firmly committed to the City's agenda, proposing (amongst other things) to ban strikes for public sector workers. Even the Green Party in London , as far as can be told, has said nothing on the issue.

So on what is fast becoming the most decisive political question – and the economy is a political question, whatever our neoliberal friends say – the main parties are in consensus: no challenge to the City, no change to the status quo.

This is hugely to Respect's advantage. There's a crying need for someone to stand up to the sort of free-market vanishing-point lunacy that has just seen the Government desperately bribing fat cats with our money to take Northern Rock off its hands. Livingstone and the London Labour Party aren't going to.

Of course, the recent attacks on Livingstone have been unfair: in many ways, I can't think of a better Mayor for the City, one better able to soft-soap his left-leaning constituents into accepting a London Plan written fundamentally entirely around the City's needs, or into tolerating a chief economic advisor (John Ross) who sings the praises of hedge funds. Former Tory candidate Stephen Norris couldn't do it: much of London would be up in arms if this king of PFI tried anything similar. Likewise for Johnson. That Livingstone's vision for the capital has effectively collapsed into City boosterism is a terrible shame – it's not particularly surprising since he's pulled, especially, by his ties to New Labour - but it is still a shame.

As such, there's an air of unreality about the politically unhinged Martin Bright laying into Livingstone for being too left-wing. It goes without saying that Livingstone needs defending from the red-baiting filth Bright and his new Tory friends are hawking about: Bright, this professional Islam-basher and habitual friend of the hard Right, should be treated with the contempt he richly deserves. It should go without saying, too, that Livingstone deserves any left-winger's second preference – better a London mayor who opposes the Iraq war and racism, than a racist who militantly supported the invasion of Iraq. It's perfectly obvious which one is closer to ordinary Londoners.

There's an argument out there that the Left shouldn't even stand against Livingstone for precisely those reasons. It was kind of "Respect Renewal" to confirm everything we said about their split from Respect by having their leadership come out in wholehearted support of Labour's candidate for Mayor. It's perfectly clear, now, that what took place was a left-right split: one side wanted an independent, non-Labour organisation of the Left; the other side was quite prepared to compromise with New Labour, even to the point of ducking key political questions. And the outbreaks of bafflement and consternation amongst the waifs and strays on what we must suppose is Renewal's left-wing show exactly why a new formation of the Left needs a leadership accountable to its members – which was, of course, precisely the point.

Although I strongly suspect those elements of Renewal's leadership now trooping off rightwards to a happy marriage with New Labour would dearly love to really trash Respect on the way, they're not in a good position to do so: they've ruled out a mayoral candidate and they're only standing one constituency candidate in the GLA. However, they've put the word out that George Galloway will be heading up an anti-Respect GLA slate.

This may just be an attempt to put the frighteners on Respect, because it looks distinctly cack-handed otherwise: aside from the lopsidedness of supporting Livingstone, but then opposing his party, I will be amazed if they can mobilise the sort of London-wide political resources they need to run a convincing campaign across the city – especially without the added publicity of a mayoral candidate. One of the perils of relying too heavily on local opportunism is that you end up with the bulk of your membership scarcely bothered by what happens on the other side of Whitechapel High Street, let alone Norwood or Uxbridge.

Last April, when Lindsey German was selected unanimously by a meeting of more than 300 Respect members, the arguments were very different. Responding to a Morning Star editorial, which opposed a Respect mayoral bid, George Galloway MP and Lindsey German wrote a 900 word reply, which the Morning Star reprinted. They expressed surprise that the Star would urge a "free run" for Livingstone. "The Respect candidate came fifth in the last election, beating both the British National Party and the Greens. Yet you do not direct your appeal to the Green Party, which could also be accused of splitting the vote." Further:

The electoral system for London mayor actually makes it very hard for the vote to be split, since it operates on the basis of transfers - all candidates bar the top two have their second preference vote distributed to eventually determine the winner. Respect's candidate was the only one to call clearly for transfers to Ken in 2004 and more than a quarter of those voters responded - a relatively high proportion. And there is no reason to suppose that, if Respect does not stand, its voters will turn out in a greater proportion than our transfers and vote for Ken.

They stressed the importance of a "strong left voice" being expressed on "the issues facing Londoners - the acute housing crisis, which is not being dealt with, the transport system, which is both the most expensive and one of the worst in the world, the privatisation of the East London Line and the business agenda, which is making London a worse place for many of the poor to live". And they added:

Many Londoners are dissatisfied with the record of new Labour in government and will not turn out to vote Labour in the numbers that they once did. A vote for Respect by these people will help the left and can help Ken by lifting the left vote overall from people who might otherwise abstain.

A good vote for Respect will also help to keep the fascist BNP off the assembly. More votes for new Labour will not keep the BNP off the assembly, because the proportional representation system favours the election of smaller parties. So, the only way of keeping the BNP off is to vote for a left-wing, smaller party.

Respect is the obvious candidate for this vote - but its chances will be undermined without the publicity that comes from standing a mayoral candidate.

These arguments are as incisive today as they were in April. The difference is that George Galloway and his supporters are no longer making them. No matter. Respect, as the GLA meeting showed, has activists in place from Newham to Neasden. Reports across the city are promising: Respect members are involved in campaigns to defend victimised trade unionists, against council house stock transfer, and against city academies. In Waltham Forest, north-east London, we face an immediate electoral challenge with a local council by-election. There are very good reason to think we can get a credible vote. There's no guarantee about this, especially with Labour and the Lib Dems throwing themselves into the contest, but if our candidate, Carole Vincent, can get the sort of vote Respect has been achieving up and down the country, we'll be on target for the GLA. (Anybody wanting to help with the campaign can find details here.)

Lindsey German was, after all, just 4,000 votes short of election last time round – and that was when Respect was just a few months old. We beat the BNP and even the Greens into 6th and 7th places on the mayoral vote. Just 0.43% more of the vote would've lifted Lindsey over the magic 5% hurdle, and onto the GLA.

Around 23% of our vote came from the City and East constituency, where Galloway currently has his only activist base. Even if half of that vote disappears as a result of the split, a good campaign across the rest of London still puts the GLA well within our grasp. There is not only a need but a real thirst for a left-wing challenge to the neoliberal consensus. It can be seen all over: from the sold-out film-showing we held last Sunday, to the excellent recent attendances for Respect meetings across the country.

We've also had vastly more experience running elections now, and have a hugely higher brand recognition, and a significantly larger membership and activist base. The split has damaged us, of course, but not as much as might be supposed: and, remember, we elected our first councillor a long time before we elected George Galloway. It was impossible to come away from the GLA planning meeting without thinking that we were in with a shout, giving a voice to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary, working-class Londoners excluded by all the main parties.

The Respect GLA campaign launch is a week today, Thursday, 31 January, at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square WC1, from 7.30pm. If you want an alternative in London to the parties of neoliberalism and war, you need to be there.

Labels: gla elections, london, mayor, new labour, respect, socialism

Beyond the Ken posted by Richard Seymour

Look, if anyone asks, I wasn't here. I'm busy. I have things to do. But as it's my coffee-break, allow me to expatiate a bit on this nasty little witch-hunt against London mayor Ken Livingstone. He is, according to creeps like Martin Bright and the Evening Standard crowd, a drunk, a brawler, a cronyist, a confederate of "Trotskyists" (Socialist Action, a tiny group that operates within the Labour Party), and a collaborator with evil (the Muslim kind). As Seumas Milne points out, where it isn't irrelevant, it's largely reactionary whinging. It isn't the first time there's been a media frenzy over Livingstone's alleged failings. There were the allegations of anti-Semitism from the Evening Standard a while ago when Ken Livingstone compared an Evening Standard reporter to a concentration camp guard and the guy happened to be Jewish. The Sun routinely attacks Livingstone, especially over his "shocking anti-US rants". Labour Friends of Israel once tried to undermine Livingstone's mayoral campaign with a dossier accusing him of an "anti-Zionist bias". But the recent spiral of attacks is designed to ensure he is replaced as London mayor by Boris Johnson. There's a section of New Labour opinion that would rather have four years of the tweedy twit from Henley and then get a proper pro-war Blairite figure selected as the Labour candidate next time round. Nick Cohen is such a one. Amazingly, Johnson was just 1% behind Livingstone in a recent poll.

The mayor of London has one or two things going for him. He has resisted, by and large, the Islamophobic agenda of his opponents. He has opposed the war on Iraq. He cut a nice little oil deal with Hugo Chavez which cut bus fares for low income earners. And even though the congestion charge is unfairly applied it did succeed in reducing traffic in Central London, and he is successfully reducing emissions. He also didn't allow himself to be bullied by the pro-pigeon lobby. These things count. On the other hand, he has largely been a pal to New Labour, ditched his efforts to block tube privatisation, pushed neoliberal fiscal policies, and promoted the interests of the City. He has attacked striking tube workers and called on people to cross picket lines. He smeared the tube driver Chris Barrett who was unfairly sacked by London Underground as a "parasite". He has attacked anticapitalist protesters. He has defended the police who shot Jean Charles De Menezes and particularly the Met Commissioner. While he has promoted the idea of a limited amount of affordable housing - a good idea, but drastically short of what's needed - he has decided to allow the market to determine what counts as "affordable". In fact, he usually gives in to pressure from the Home Builders' Federation, as when he abandoned minimum space requirements that were designed to prevent Londoners being cramped into smaller and smaller homes - this matters a lot when, especially in places like Tower Hamlets, few family-sized homes are built by the private sector, and overcrowding is endemic. I might mention that before he became mayor, Livingstone was one of the most disgusting cheerleaders of the war on Yugoslavia. Livingstone doesn't recognise the category of a principle, and is notorious for flopping left or right depending on the circumstances. As he is a creature of the Labour Party electoral machine, he usually flops to the right. Like I say, his strengths do count - they just don't count for much.

However. Livingstone is much better than his bigoted neoconservative opponent, Boris Johnson. Johnson is not merely an old reactionary racist twit, he is aggressively pro-imperialist, aligned with the Ed Vaizeys and Michael Goves of the Tory party, the Henry Jackson wing. When it comes to a contest with the Tories, there is no contest. The Tomb should have something about the upcoming GLA and mayoral elections shortly. I don't know about you, but I will be voting for Respect candidates where I can. That will include putting my cross beside Stop the War convenor Lindsey German for London mayor. However, I will put Ken Livingstone for my second preference, as I did in 2004. My understanding is that the Respect candidate is urging people who vote for her to put Livingstone as the second preference. Interestingly, when Lindsey German stood in the last mayoral election, Livingstone took the trouble to praise her, noting that the non-sectarian way in which she mobilised "allows her to campaign for her political position without risking a Tory victory". He was right. Lindsey was able to beat both the BNP and the Greens and come out fifth, but at the same time the Tories lost by a decent margin. Backing Livingstone for a second preference, in order to properly campaign on the issues that matter while doing nothing to assist a Johnson victory, is obviously the best way to proceed. But right at this moment, and whatever criticisms are justly levelled at the mayor, I think it obvious that everyone on the Left ought to defend Livingstone against this tetra-tsunami of reactionary twaddle. As you were.

Labels: ken livingstone, london, mayor, new labour, respect, socialism