BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 02.07.00

Film: Polly Billington outlines the challenges facing the new Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.



POLLY BILLINGTON: Ken Livingstone fought his electoral campaign from the top of the battle bus. The view from the bus is very different now ... as many of the people he was fighting are on board. The Lib Dems, the Greens - even old foes from the Labour Party and the Tories have been co-opted as experts in their field. But can he keep them with him? Does he have it in him to be the kind of leader that London needs? He's already proved his ability to reinvent himself, from Red Ken to Cuddly Ken, but can he transform himself into the kind of politician that will take on the problems of the capital? SUSAN KRAMER: He said that he wanted to pursue a manifesto and he wasn't going to be deflected from that and since I agree with most of his manifesto so I am here to help that get implemented. If he starts to back off for all kinds of other reasons then obviously I wouldn't be able to remain a part of it. TREVOR PHILLIPS: During the election campaign we did point out that Ken had rather an interesting history of saying one thing on Monday and deciding quite the opposite on Tuesday. So I don't think it should be a huge surprise to people that he suddenly decided that the manifesto is a sort of a burden that he can do without. BILLINGTON: Facing assembly members at mayoral Question Time, it's clear that Ken Livingstone's still very much on his own against the serried ranks of party politicians eager to hold him to account. Making alliances with some of them helps to promote an image of inclusiveness that he's keen on. But will it help or hinder him in getting things done? Transport is London's and Ken Livingstone's biggest problem. He promised to improve public transport by keeping the tube in public hands - a pledge that appeared to be popular during the election. He also wants to introduce congestion charging to crack down on traffic growth in central London - that may prove to be deeply unpopular. There are political and practical realities that may make delivering on either of these policies difficult. Ken Livingstone and the Labour Party parted company over how to pay for improvements to the tube. He promised to oppose the government's plans for a public private partnership to finance the underground network. This made him the champion of the left .... and he said the public backed him on this issue. But PPP is on its way ... and some of those who he's appointed to help run London's transport system say he should learn to live with it. STEVEN NORRIS: Ken will need to understand that the private sector is probably the only source of large scale finance available to deliver that kind of improvement over a period - over the period for example of these franchises which are currently being negotiated over 30 years. If Ken therefore insists that his whole election was a, was a referendum on whether or not we should privatise the Tube, and he thinks that gestures like that are what will change the face of London's transport, he will be sadly mistaken. KRAMER: Ken is going to have to continue the fight that he committed to during the campaign to keep the tube in public hands and raise finance in the cheapest way that there is which is by basically going to the bond markets and getting the money that way. And that means taking on the government and its you know it's, it's focus on doing this partial sell off of the tube, it's public private partnership so there is going to be some conflict over that issue, it may be that Ken can't win but he has got to make sure he really carries out the fight so that the government is forced to truly understand the decision that it is making. BILLINGTON: Whatever he does with regard to tube funding will lose him some allies ... either from Labour and the Tories if he sticks by his promises - or the Liberal Democrats and others who want him to fight on against PPP. But more immediately the public will want to see improvements to the underground NOW. That might mean taking on those who run it and work on it. TONY TRAVERS: There's no doubt that taking on powerful vested interests in the services that run London is different from being a politician. Livingstone has been a brilliant politician, he's fought his way through to being a candidate in this Mayoral race and eventually won against the Labour Party, but there is a great difference between that kind of political activity and the brutalising world of getting large corporations with thousands and thousands of staff to change their work practises. And that's what he now has to do. NORRIS: If all he does is lie, lie down and get his tummy tickled every time the unions bark he's going to find life pretty difficult in terms of delivering improvement in London. The real question is, where's he going to be when the picket lines are out - is he going to be actually taking them on; or is he going to make London a slave to the employees that he himself is ultimately the employer of? BILLINGTON: And while he's tackling management and unions below ground, at street level he's promised to take on the motorist by introducing congestion charging. Some say charging people for using their cars in central London is the route to becoming a hate figure. Can Ken manage to introduce them without paying the political price? NORRIS: When you actually pick just an area out of the centre of a city you create all kinds of problems - the diversion of traffic that deliberately avoids the cordon area. People who have a child at school inside the cordon but live outside. People who have to use a car for work, which happens to be inside the cordon who are effectively taxed an extra twenty five to fifty pounds a week. I mean, those sorts of issues are going to make the current scheme that Ken's been offered by government very unattractive indeed. I will make a prediction - I don't actually think it's going to happen this side of the re-election of the Mayoralty. KRAMER: Congestion charging was a central part of Ken's platform, it was a central part of my platform, I see it as the only way in which you are going to actually get people into a situation where they can move around this city, never mind sort of improve the quality of life, air, to deal with congestion those kind of things. BILLINGTON: Ken Livingstone's made promises on policing too. Promises, though, are easily made and just as easily dropped. This week he told Assembly members he's not shackled to manifesto commitments and is happy to implement more practical alternatives. But some of his pledges offer the opportunity for a conflict with the government on a popular issue, but that won't mean more police on London streets. Ken Livingstone's promised to recruit two-thousand extra police officers. Experts reckon that would cost between seventy and eighty million pounds a year. He's also backed the Metropolitan Police Federation's pay claim of two-and-a-half thousand pounds for every police officer. That'll cost about the same amount of money. The only way he can raise it, is by adding it to the council tax bills of Londoners - he'll have to persuade them and the government that it's a good move. TOBY HARRIS: I hope he's not going to just play games about police numbers in London and try and pick a fight with the Government. The reality is that the Metropolitan Police Authority is independent of the mayor, it's independent of the Home Office it's independent of the police service. We've got the responsibility of making sure that proper priorities are set for the Metropolitan Police, priorities that are consistent with what Londoners want. Now how we achieve that is going to be working with the police service working with Government and trying to make sure we end up with a budget which makes sense and makes sense for London and Londoners. LEE JASPER: Well very simply London contributes in excess of 20 billion pounds, over and above that which it utilises from the Treasury in terms of its income generation and its contribution to the wealth of the nation. Seventy or eighty million, out of a final figure of 20 billion that we contribute to the economy of the United Kingdom is a very small amount of money in that sense and we would be making that case as a rationale for why and from where the Home Secretary maybe able to get these additional resources. BILLINGTON: Lobbying for more money for the boys in blue? It hardly sounds like the Red Ken of old ... but it might be the kind of issue that offers him an opportunity to take on the government and portray himself as the champion of London. But will it get him re-elected? He needs to decide which strategy will be most successful in 2004 - to maintain his populist anti-government media image or to co-operate with the Labour leadership to deliver changes to Londoners. If he chooses an oppositionist stance rather than co-operation, London may be the loser and he could pay the political price. TRAVERS: The evidence of the weeks since he's been elected is of a period of amazing silence by Livingstone's standards suggesting again that he's trying, and his advisors are trying, hard not to court controversial issues. And I think this is partly deliberate, partly the time it's taking to do these things. Now whether they'll be able to go on resisting this only time will tell, but for the time being it all seems to be aimed at winning again in 2004. PHILLIPS: As long as what he does makes sense, you know we'll be out there, we'll carry him, carry him in triumph around town. If what he does are things which are harmful to the interests of Londoners, we'll kick his ass. BILLINGTON: And so too will the voters. The smiles, the waves and especially the votes won't come as easily if there's little to show for his time in office. It'll take more than warm wit and empty promises to convince Londoners a second time round. LIVINGSTONE: Wow, didn't I say that when I was Mayor the sun would shine.
NB. This transcript was typed from a transcription unit recording and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.