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Wednesday 30 April 2008

Johann Hari: It's the policies that count – and that means Londoners should vote for Ken Livingstone

When Londoners stream into the polling booths tomorrow, they won't just be picking between Boris and Ken. They will be picking between two different ways of doing politics.

Do we want to risk having a mayor elected by the white outer suburbs who has repeatedly called black children "piccanninies" (and not just in spoof articles), tells a black presenter "you can't out-ethnic me", and responded to the 7/7 massacres by attacking the Koran and announcing "the problem is Islam" because it is "the most viciously sectarian of all religions"?

Ken Livingstone – with his adenoidal, amphibian populism – is the most successful left-wing politician in Europe today. Born into the white working class in the rubble of post-war London, he has helped steer the transformation of this city through an amazing flourishing of sexual freedom and immigration – and faced down Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair on the way.

At a time when most politicians cower beneath a lightning-storm of opinion polls and focus groups, he pushes politics forward in quantum leaps – on talking to the IRA, on gay equality, on the environment. Whenever he has the power to, he ploughs money into services – like buses – used by the poorest. If Londoners replace him tomorrow with the political love-child of Margaret Thatcher and Billy Bunter, we will have four long years to stop seeing the funny side.

To read the rest go to http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-its-the-policies-that-count-ndash-and-that-means-londoners-should-vote-for-ken-livingstone-818003.html

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