Having triumphed against the odds, against the media, and against his own expectations, the victorious candidate was mobbed by adoring supporters – many of them young, all of them exhilarated.
He was magnanimous, yet steely-eyed in victory. One of the first things he did, establishing beyond doubt that things had changed, was to upbraid the mainstream media. It had tried and failed to stop him, thus he held the cards. Henceforth, the game would be played on his terms.
Ken Livingstone, the adored victor then, was at the Queen Elizabeth ll Centre on Saturday to relate to Jeremy Corbyn his experience on seizing the London mayoralty in 2000. Perhaps the conversation went further. It should have. For there is much Corbyn might learn from Livingstone about how a leftwing leader can capture the affections of the mainstream.
They would talk about the difference between Livingstone’s first term as London mayor – an almost flawless display of how a high-profile leftwing leader with much baggage can neutralise artillery attacks and mollify a sceptical public with a sunny demeanour, a practical programme and astute political positioning. Then they might talk about the second term, when lack of discipline and complacency meant that the successful calibration of the first term was ruinously reset so it appeared to embrace leftwing gesture politics. A Corbyn moulded from that first template might have some chance of attracting unaligned support simply by talking sense and seeming competent. And the prospects for that are greater now than in Livingstone’s day because general disdain for the political classes runs deeper than was the case. But a Corbyn replicating the second term – singing the Red Flag each day through a loud hailer, in the direction of the Sun and the Mail – won’t stand a chance. The good news is that the precedents are there.
First-term Livingstone confounded the lines we draw to separate left from right. As an anti-establishment candidate, fighting against the hierarchy of his party and the mainstream media, he drew support across the political spectrum. Not left or right in normal terms, just Ken. This was never more apparent than the evening he ventured as elected mayor into the gilded dining halls of the Mansion House for a ceremonial dinner with the bigwigs of London government and the city. As he left, having fulfilled his duties, but having declined to acquiesce by wearing a dinner suit at the top table, he was chased down a flight of stairs by a posh fellow in pinstripes. “I don’t agree with what you say,” gushed the city type, “but I love the way you say it.” Not so much a case of opposites attract; more an indication that opposites don’t always repel.
First-term Livingstone was focused, dripping with reasonableness, patience, good humour, self-deprecation and pragmatism. The consequence was that with support and not much opposition, he got a lot done; the congestion charge, the significant upgrade of the London Underground, equality initiatives inside and outside City Hall, the initial shaping of the new entity that was the mayoralty.
But in the second term the calibration went. It was easier to portray second-term Livingstone not just as a man with ideology but as an ideologue. He was embroiled in controversy about the oil deal he struck with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, about his invitation to the Muslim fundamentalist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi , about poorly documented grants given to supportive minority groups and famously his ill-judged comments to a Jewish newspaper reporter.
Much that he did in the second term was laudable – think the London Olympics bid, the towering, pitch-perfect reaction to the London terrorist attack on the tube that followed and transport upgrades that make the capital liveable. Still, it became easier for opponents – including the Evening Standard, by then right leaning – to make his ideological underpinning a potent issue, disillusioning those who supported him as Ken, the left-leaning pragmatist. Enter Boris Johnson in 2008.
So there is much Livingstone can and should tell Corbyn as the latter prepares his pitch to the wider electorate. The new leader can run as a human surrounded by androids or a grown-up in a land of children, or as a can-do guy seeking fairness. A man of his own design; from brand Ken to brand Jez. He can and must be progressive, forcefully so. But the moment he seems like an ideologue, the game will be over. He has surged thanks to his “new kind of politics”; reversion to an old kind of politics would quickly bring him down.
