London Mayoral Election 2012

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ken Livingston seems a little too left wing for London.

If this was the case then he would not have won in 2000 or 2004. He also wouldn't have had a hope in hell of re-election in 2008 and he at least kept it competitive. He's losing despite the best climate for Labour candidates in municipal () elections since the mid 1990s because of his personal failings. He was a less than perfect candidate anyway (having spent his final term as Mayor alienating certain important sections of Labour's base in London) but that's what's done the (probably fatal) damage. You cannot run for office as a bold reforming Lefty and have such serious questions be asked about (amongst other things) your tax affairs.

Of course you can't actually rule out an upset, even at this stage. But if he does fluke this, then it'll be because of the government's unpopularity.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A little part of me just died, I think.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Dismore seems to be beating Coleman in Barnet & Camden. No matter our partisan differences, I think we can all agree that it would be a very good thing if that holds...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...and it will hold because he's actually being hammered.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Labour have come very close to gaining Havering & Redbridge on the GLA which is... er... a surprise.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mayoral election 'too close to call', apparently.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Who is this Siobhan Benita chick?

Candidate For Affluent Labour Voters Who Do Not Like Ken Livingstone. Or something like that, anyway.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There are some... er... interesting rumours floating around. This could take a while.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Might have done if I gambled, but I don't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The level of ticket splitting in Barnet & Camden is pretty hilarious.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They'll be released in a couple of days, apparently.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So can anyone explain why Boris won while Labour took over the assembly.

Roughly half this thread has been taken over by the question of Livingstone's likely underperformance.

But, basically, Johnson is personally popular (not because of anything he's done as Mayor, but because of his carefully crafted media image that made him a celebrity ages ago), which is about half of it. The other half is Livingstone's personal failings combining with certain political miscalculations and the usual issues that come with a career stretching back four decades. Given the narrow margin, we can be fairly sure that it was the tax thing that did him in.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

From the Grauniad Diary:

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[Filuwaúrdjan]

By which point he'll be 69 and will (still) have never run for office in his life. Don't see it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't know if Sugar actually ever gave money to the Tories; he was generally listed as supportive in the 1980s and endorsed Major in 1992 (but only after praising some elements of Labour's economic policies (!) IIRC) but he doesn't seem to have been an especially political animal until Blair. Odd man, but not actually any kind of politician.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There has pretty much always been a small number of very rich people* who have supported (both in the normal sense, and also sometimes financially) the Labour Party. There's a tendency for them to see themselves as outsiders in some sense, which often translates as being from a minority group or a working class background (Julian Hodge is a particularly good example of the latter). I'm not sure what that says about the right of the Party to call itself Labour, especially given the 'interesting' financial affairs of many of the various small left-of-Labour parties over the decades...

*Even in the late 1930s there was a small group of City financiers who would discretely meet Labour Party economists on a regular basis.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Great work: well done

Yeah, the general patterns are much more normal than last time (though still off in some areas, of course), which is actually very interesting. You can tell it was the national picture (and the voters that brought out) that made it so close at the end.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Rotherhithe is that gentrified? The horror.

Surrey Docks ward is, yeah. Loads of posh flats where there had previously been water. Livingstone won Rotherhithe ward itself.

Sentiments absolutely and utterly and absolutely echoed, o/c...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Great stuff. Some really interesting patterns in places; Feltham is immediately striking when compared to the Mayoral map, as is Finchley (and then on closer inspection the whole of Barnet, basically). Harold Hill et al as well.