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Change Your Life! |
London voters cast ballots for capital's first elected mayor |
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News
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May 6, 2000
LONDON, MAY 5 (AP) - Londoners chose their first elected mayor Thursday, with the man Prime Minister Tony Blair clumsily tried to sideline - political outcast Ken Livingstone - the apparent winner, according to exit polls.
The British Broadcasting Corp. polls projected Livingstone as the victor with 51 percent, followed by the Conservative Party's Steve Norris. |
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As he voted in his north London neighborhood on a cool, drizzly day, the man popularly known as "Red Ken" for his leftist views complained he had been the target of an "absolutely vile campaign from start to finish."
But, if elected, he later told the BBC, he would work with the Blair government.
"People say a lot of silly things during an election campaign and then afterwards they have to work with the reality of what voters have done," said Livingstone, who was ousted from Blair's Labor Party after he entered the race as an independent.
Livingstone ran the capital's metropolitan government before it was disbanded in 1986 by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government. Under his administration, the Greater London Council had declared the city a nuclear-free zone, supported gay rights and cut subway fares.
To Blair, Livingstone is a reminder of the party's deep splits of the 1980s, when the left was in the ascendancy and the party was unelectable. Today's Labor Party rose to record popularity by hugging the middle, and Blair has referred to Livingstone's supporters as a "ragbag of Trotskyists and Tory newspapers."
Last week, polls showed Livingstone with 51 percent support, so far ahead of Norris' 17 percent that one major betting agency stopped taking wagers. Labor's candidate, former Health Secretary Frank Dobson, had 14 percent in those polls, just edging out Liberal Democrat Susan Kramer.
Across England, voters also were deciding 3,337 seats on 152 local councils, with the results serving as a barometer of public opinion of Blair's 3-year-old government. Early returns showed the Conservatives making gains, largely at Labor's expense.
"I think martyrdom is still the most attractive party," said Norris, the Tory mayoral candidate, crediting the tussle between Livingstone and Labor with hurting Blair's party nationwide. "Practically every decent person in the country felt some sympathy for Ken. Labor will bear the consequences of that."
The London mayor will serve as an ambassador for the capital's 7.25 million residents, oversee a 3.3 billion pound (dlrs 5.3 billion) budget and assume responsibility for the police, transportation, fire and emergency services, but will have only limited tax-raising powers.
The position and a new 25-member London Assembly, also elected Thursday, supplements a system of governance by 32 individual boroughs and several citywide authorities. Blair created the structure as part of his program of returning some powers to regional and local governments.
Though most fiscal authority remains with the national government, that has done little to allay the fears of business leaders about a Livingstone victory. In an interview last month, he compared international financial institutions to Adolf Hitler, saying 15 million to 20 million people die each year in developing countries because of the debt burden. "But at least Hitler was mad, you know," he added.
To help ensure Dobson clinched the Labor nomination, Blair had scrapped the system of a straight vote among London party members - which Livingstone contends he would have handily won - and created a complicated electoral college divided into blocs of party members, unions and Labor lawmakers and candidates.
"There are a number of voters shocked, horrified and turned off by the way the Labor Party arranged the candidate selection," said Patrick Dunleavy, government professor at the London School of Economics. "It's nothing short of a scandal."
Dunleavy said how Blair's administration treats a potential Mayor Livingstone could affect Labor's traditional power base, and even sow the seeds for an alternative party.
"There will be this sort of dance in the next year whether he's let back in the party," Dunleavy said. "The big problem for Blair is that if he keeps Livingstone outside the Labor Party, the mayor could become a focus of left-of-Labor sentiment."
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