Ken Livingstone has effectively begun a four year campaign to be London’s next Mayor, having turned himself into a one-man unofficial scrutiny committee of the new Johnson regime. He says that he will confirm his decision to run once Labour opens the nomination process in 2010 (though he has shown before that this might not be his only possible route to City Hall).

It is not difficult to see why running again appeals to Ken. It offers not the prospect of avenging his defeat to Boris Johnson and being back in office for the 2012 Olympics too. Were Livingstone to win the Mayoralty again, it would demonstrate political stamina and bounce-backability which might well be unparalleled in democratic politics.

But there’s the rub for Labour. Livingstone may now have his sights set on outlasting both Thatcherism and New Labour. But will the party want to run a candidate in 2012 who would not just be re-fighting the election of four years before, but who first held the leadership of the Greater London Council more than three full decades before?

Should Livingstone maintain his interest, he would certainly prove a formidable opponent for anybody else in a contest to be Labour candidate. Right now, he must start the favourite, not least because it will probably remain difficult to guess who the other candidates will be until after a General Election in 2010.

Livingstone would not be popular with the party leadership but his distance from New Labour combined with executive experience could add to his appeal to many London party members. His early declaration of intent could prove smart tactics, not least if it leads to a repeat of the history to half-draft a revolving series of unwilling ‘anybody but Ken’ candidates to joust for the Labour banner.

The experience of 2000 provides a warning to the Labour leadership of how trying to block or outmanouvere Ken could backfire. However, Labour does not need a stitch-up over its candidacy - but quite the opposite approach. Holding an open primary could help to maximise the party’s chances in the next Mayoral race.

There is little reason to fear that such a vote could in practice be sabotaged by political opponents. And, with the preferential voting system, Labour will need votes of progressives from other parties and none to regain the Mayoralty. While this would be new territory for the party, it could help the party to start facing out to the electorate earlier.

This could prove an idea which Livingstone supporters would have reason to welcome. He would start with a strong advantage in name recognition, which could prove an even stronger asset with a broader franchise than in a party-only ballot. And, if a high turnout could be achieved, it would help to test the electorate’s view of a Livingstone third act in an attempt to select the candidate with broadest appeal.

But Livingstone’s combination of high positives and negatives is a reminder of how, while both candidates were successful in mobilising their own vote in the London race of 2008, ’stop Boris’ did not have the potency to outweigh the calls of ‘time for a change’ and an ‘anybody but Ken’ feeling among the voters who decided the election. Even if Johnson is perceived to have struggled or failed in office, offering a re-run of the 2008 race could again play into the Conservatives’ hands.

A weekly roundup of publications, reports, events & articles from the leading UK think tanks.

Even although I’m now having to leave out as much as I’m putting in (see below) I’m conscious this is still quite a lengthy read (certainly by the standard of most blog posts). So each week I’ll flag a ‘must read’ item for those who don’t have the time to read the full post let alone the content it highlights - an entirely subjective choice on my part of course but I’ll endeavour to be as fair and non-partisan about that choice as I can.

This week it has to be the Joseph Rowntree paper “A minimum income standard for Britain: What people think”, touching as it does on issues of relative v’s absolute poverty and making judgements about income levels needed to ‘participate in society’. donpaskini blogged about it on LC here.
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Below are some details of the conference on the 12th : Women in Struggle! Left Women’s Network Conference

The Left Women’s Network (LeftWN) is the women’s section of The Labour Representation Committee, an open democratic organisation committed to the development of a radical policy agenda for the Labour Party, the trade unions and the wider labour movement. Since 2007 we have been successful in bringing women together from within The Labour Party, trade union movement, campaigning organisations and the wider labour movement.

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As promised last week I’ve ditched the classification into left & right and decided to break things down slightly differently into three sections - I’ll highlight any formal reports and publications issued, articles / briefings or blogposts from their own sites or in the MSM and finally public events or debates that might be of interest.

If there are any significant personnel changes among the major players I’ll highlight those as well.

Reports & Publications…

• The Centre for Policy Studies published a paper by Tony Lodge, ‘Wind Chill’, on the limits of wind power in terms of plugging the UK’ energy gap.
• The Institute of Economic Affairs published ‘Sixty Years On - Who Cares for the NHS’, a fascinating paper on the risks politicians face proposing anything remotely radical about the NHS - “Elite opinion does not, as yet, warm to a free market in healthcare. Although aspects of a market-based system are accepted, ideas of ‘market failure’ loom large - especially amongst the political class. Nevertheless, the author shows how some groups of opinion formers are prepared to be more radical. These groups, she believes, may in time be effective in promoting a vision of a market in healthcare that is free from government interference and from the stifling power of government-granted professional monopolies”
• The IPPR published a paper by Jane Midgley on ‘How the UK should respond to food policy challenges’
• Two publications from the New Local Government Network worth highlighting. The first - “Healthy Places: Bonds that bind local government and primary care trusts” looks at the options for further devolution within the health service and how it could improve service delivery. The second - “Directly Elected, Direct Results” - calls for an expansion in the directly elected mayoral model with powers over local police, transport and health services. (joint venture with the IPPR)

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Whilst the Tories squeal and bicker over one working woman’s pay-packet, let’s talk about some practical feminism happening in London right now.

The cleaners of the London underground work through the night to keep the city’s vascular system pumping and sanitary. Most of them are women with families. Many of them face abuse and sexual harassment every day from loutish travellers as a part of their work.

On top of wiping up our vomit and newspapers and taking crap from our scum, they have to struggle with shockingly low pay, on-the-spot third party sackings, little to no sick pay and a measly 12 days’ annual leave. And they’ve had enough.
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Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.

More about all this at the Coalition for Choice website.

So what did you do for St George’s Day, then? It was on Wednesday, in case you weren’t looking. I found myself down the pub in Exeter that evening, watching the football (or the absorbing chess match, as it turned out) between Manchester United and Barcelona.

The place was as ethnically unmixed as the southwest can be, and draped in red and white crossed flags. When one of Barca’s black players was fouled early in the second half, a man wearing a St George hat duly yelled, “What’s wrong with that? First the ball, then the nigger!”

There were general giggles of amusement, and to my shame I decided against marching across the room and verbally jousting with half the bar. I try to challenge racism whenever I can. But the atmosphere around that remark was more than casually threatening.
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So glad to hear that the world can’t get enough of the mayoral election, but I for one am finding the whole scene awesomely depressing:

It’s a cold little night in Bethnal Green, and yours truly and about 20 other people - mostly OAPs, it appears - are sitting in a near-empty hall in Oxford House on Derbyshire street, readying ourselves for a London assembly candidates‘ hustings.
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Damn and blast! IPPR are hosting a brilliant event tomorrow with Simon Rosenberg speaking. Rosenberg is billed as president and founder of New Democrat Network but it is a bit more complicated than that. NDN is an organisation supported by some of America’s wealthiest liberals (meaning left-wing in the American sense) to fund a Democrat / left-wing resurgence in the US. The NY Times magazine published this article in 2004 on where it all started. Over Christmas I read and reviewed a book called ‘The Argument: Billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake Democratic politics‘ for Renewal magazine and that has much more on where NDN is at now.
In other words, the talk should be a very insightful look at what is going on in the States to develop and fund a left-wing message machine and counter the strong presence of the Republicans. I’m due to attend another conference so will find it difficult to make this unless I can sneak out temporarily. If you can, do go and see what Rosenberg has to say, and contact me if you want to blog about it after.

It’s common knowledge on the left that Christmas is a pernicious racist-imperialist construct, an unholy alliance of Catholicism, Coca Cola and capitalism whose only function is the exploitation and repression of the international working classes. Well, bollocks to that. Christmas is a right laugh, a time for family, friends and frolicking whether you do the God thing or not.

But if we want those doey-eyed little ones looking up at us to have a future free from acid rain, hurricanes and summer floods, it’s time for a festive fightback. No, I don’t mean making common cause with the fundies, but what better day than the feast of Santa Lucia to publish a cut-out-and-keep guide to an enlightened Winterval.

Here are fifteen ideas to get us started; feel free to add your own below.
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The Fabian Society is hosting a major lecture by Bill Rammell MP, Minister of State for Further and Higher Education, on Tuesday 27th November. He will discuss the trade-offs that all Universities need to make between liberty and control if they are tackle extremism.
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