"Red" Ken?

Ken Livingstone is a politician who has the remarkable ability to be all things to all people. One consequence of this is that just as he has very wide support in London, so he has very varying opposition.

This morning I came across this deeply embarrassing website, RedKenIt appears to mostly consist of wealthy people from Kensington & Chelsea complaining about the congestion charge - even though they can of course all afford to pay it. Perhaps most amusing of all is the forum poster who criticises Livingstone "for being a Communist". This might be news to transport workers in London, who may well remember "Red" Ken not only denouncing their industrial action in June 2004 but calling on people to scab during it. Strange words from a communist!

There are of course plenty of things Livingstone can be criticised for. Saying he would only serve one term, then going on to seemingly take root in County Hall, re-joining the Labour party when it is was at its most right wing and reactionary time in its history, greatly increasing public transport fares having said he would no such thing, his grovelling support for Sir Ian Blair after the murder of Jean Charles De Menezes, his failure to properly address London's housing crisis, his attempt to take over the 2004 European Social Forum for his own ends - I could go on, but you get my point.

Despite this it is one of the most obvious failures of the "last century left" that no matter what Ken Livingstone does, they rarely seem to see through him. One of the last things Socialist icon Paul Foot wrote before his death was a deeply embarrassing pamphlet about the Respect coalition where he encouraged "socialists" to cast their first preference Mayoral votes for Ken Livingstone. A vote for the Independent Working Class Association or even the Greens would have been more logical, but the old left simply could not break its emotional attachment to Labour. Websites like "RedKen" in fact add to Livingstone's appeal, helping to convince liberal and left-leaning Londoners that Livingstone is in some way radical, or even dangerous to the upper classes.

This is nonsense. Politicians should be judged by their records in office. On that mark alone, Livingstone is deeply flawed. Whatever colour he is, it is certainly not red.