The London mayoral election will be a battle between whatsisface and whatsisname

London, 2012. It’s Olympic year, and east London is sprouting anew, and our city feels like the capital of the world. And on this mighty, epoch-making canvas, two political heavyweights do battle. In the blue corner, Boris Johnson, the incumbent, and perhaps the most recognisable politician in the land. In the red, Ken Livingstone, his predecessor and opposite in almost every way, except for the reputation for shagging.

He’s a little tarnished by now, Ken, true, a little old, a little Jew-hatey and yesterday-ish, but he still stands for something that Boris does not. His is a fiercely multicultural London, a little dirty, perhaps, but vibrant and arty, too; a bubbling pot of culture and faux-socialism (fauxialism?) into which the suburbs slink each morning, warily, to earn all the money. Boris’s, by contrast, is a place of leafy suburbs, and inner-city glass and steel. His ethos, if he has one, is that the higher that glass and steel stretch, the more the grassy foothills will be borne skywards, too.