Ken And Barbie

Matters of British politics are not my usual fare on this blog, but permit me this one blemish.

Boris Johnson. Even before Boris acquired national fame as a comedy turn, I was aware of his reputation for being somewhat shambolic, and once witnessed it first hand. Exiting Oxford Circus tube station, and this would have been in the mid 90s, his mobile went off. Boris was wearing a sort of brown trenchcoat affair, all yards of textile and pockets. There was a frantic effort to search for the phone which should have been easily located as, in those days, mobiles were the size of house bricks and weighed as much. But, with much muttering and cursing to say nothing of the thousands brushing past him and into him, the hunt lasted a considerable time, and a considerable comedic length of time at that. It was a striking image as Boris is a striking figure. Even among the bustle of Oxford Street, he stood out a mile, this rather eccentric figure with hair and tie skew-whiff apparently in blissful unawareness of the extent to which he instinctively advertised himself; it was to be a few years before he translated this into the successful pursuit of an image, a brand if you will, known by the name "Boris" .

Ken Livingstone. Ken ran a wacky and lunatic administration at the old Greater London Council in the 80s, and the only way he could be stopped was to abolish him and the authority, which Margaret Thatcher did. I was furious. Not only was Ken wonderfully mad, he was - in my opinion - a real figure of London. Campaigns like "fares fair" for cheaper public transport brought with it a sense of London identity that had been missing under the previous administrations. Ken was a good Trot, well versed in the Soviet art of the putsch, exiling Andrew McIntosh to Westminster Palace where some years later I met the by then Lord McIntosh but dared not to ask him about the whole period. Hindsight suggests that Ken's time at the GLC was one marked by recklessness; the "Evening Standard" made it out to be so at the time, Simon Jenkins continues to say so and, in truth, it probably was. But one had to have lived in London then to have appreciated the degree to which Livingstone created a purpose in and to the city; that his administration may have been barmy is beside the point. He was the obvious eventual choice as mayor, but he is no longer.

Boris and Ken, though cut from very different stone, are very similar. Both have the hint of the maverick, both are amusing, and both are generally pretty honest. They are both endearing in their contrasting ways. They made for ideal mayoral election fodder in that their fame and even notoriety placed the election firmly in front of what is otherwise an electorate suffering from ennui - the London electorate and indeed the whole British electorate. In that either can be said to truly represent Conservative or Labour values (whatever those are these days), they gave the two-party system a much-needed shot in the arm, or rather gave the voter the needle in the vein. There was something un-British about the whole election; it was quasi-presidential and it was, most obviously, an example of how direct democracy at a local level can inspire an otherwise moribund franchise.

It is a leap of some imagination to compare the London mayoral election to Mallorca, but there is a comparison in that here local democracy does operate, and the mayors are voted in or out. Neither of the two local mayors, Ferrer in Alcúdia or Cerdà in Pollensa, can claim much in the way of personality when set against a Johnson or a Livingstone, but - dull though they may well be - they are at least democratically elected. Spanish, Mallorcan democracy is devolved to the local level. People may not like their local mayors, but they have been given the chance to say yes or no to them. There are lessons for the UK in how local politics work here and in how it does engage the local community, and London has shown it can be done.


QUIZ
Yesterday's chain - Bob Marley to "I Shot The Sheriff" to Eric Clapton to Cream and therefore Jack Bruce. And today, how do you get from Jack Bruce to Bruce Springsteen (apart from the obvious name link)? Yesterday's title was Coldplay.

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