… in the battle for London

Charlatan, fornicator, liar, inebriate, pugilist, Marxist, anti-Semite; Ken Livingstone has been called many things but never a writer. Actually, that’s a shame because his words following the 2005 London bombings were brilliantly defiant; perhaps the most powerful speech by a British politician in the last decade.

He can be witty — the former leader of the Greater London Council abolished by Margaret Thatcher began his speech accepting the Mayoralty with the words: ‘As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted 14 years ago …’ Even Tony Blair, who effectively forced Livingstone to leave the Labour party in order to stand, eventually admitted his misjudgment.

Livingstone’s election in 2000 caused the first breakdown of the seemingly unstoppable New Labour spin-machine. Reading this book, you quickly realise why. Triangulation, dividing lines and regimented campaign management — all those techniques adopted from US pollsters by New Labour — had been perfected by Livingstone much earlier during the left-wing blood feuds of the 1970s.