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.