Ken Livingstone’s attacks on Boris Johnson seem to conceal admiration
How does Ken Livingstone think he is going to beat Boris Johnson in the election for Mayor of London to be held next May? When I put this question to Ken, he launched into an almost admiring denunciation of his opponent: ‘He’s Britain’s Berlusconi. He just gets away with things nobody else could. And like Berlusconi he doesn’t really do the day job either.’
At the risk of undermining my hard-won reputation for impartiality, I ventured to suggest that Boris works quite hard. But Ken accused Boris of not being a full-time mayor: ‘The fact he carried on the Telegraph column. The fact he took an awful long time off to write the book. I don’t know if you’ve read his book. It really is dire.’
As it happens, I enjoyed reading Boris’s book, which is called Johnson’s Life of London, and I doubt whether it took all that long to write.
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