Ken Livingstone: Spineless Shit

In a staggering interview with The Observer yesterday, Ken pretty much offered Boris a job after next Thursday's election. Audacious stuff. It is a bit like Hillary Clinton offering Barack Obama the vice-presidential slot on the Democratic ticket (which she has actually done). The Observer notes:

“Ken Livingstone yesterday offered to give his Tory rival a job and train him as a future mayoral candidate, in an extraordinary last-minute bid for Tory votes.”

This is the same Boris Johnson that Ken ripped into in a piece for The Guardian:

“The second, conservative, coalition behind Boris Johnson is symbolised by its support for the Iraq war and indifference to environmental issues. Its immediate practical expression is its record of running down London's public transport, talking about crime while cutting police numbers, opposing measures to provide affordable housing and indifference to the problems facing ethnic minorities or women. This coalition has recently acquired a sordid, if uninvited, partner through the BNP calling for a second-preference vote to the Tory candidate.”

From that sort of comment to offering the man a job – Ken has managed a U-turn that would make Gordo himself proud. But his opinion of Boris has clearly radically changed:

'I think Boris is a person of huge potential, but he's never been involved in detailed administration of anything. I would genuinely want Boris to come in, take a job and get some experience.'

Ken goes even further; at one stage, he talks about grooming (don’t tell the News of the World, they’ll probably mis-interpret it) Boris to be a candidate for Mayor in 2012. This is the same Boris who warranted this comment from Ken not so long ago:

Johnson says he considers Margaret Thatcher the greatest 20th-century peacetime prime minister - Thatcher who abolished London's democratic city government and brought the city's public services and infrastructure, and therefore quality of life, to their knees.

There we have it. Ken is prepared to support someone who he believes would bring Londoners to their knees for the purposes of political expediency. Ken is prepared to embrace the man who is his ideological anathema if it helps put him over the top with votes on Thursday. Difficult to know whether Ken is a spineless weasel or a shameless, self-serving cunt. Either way, his sudden unseemly attempt to jump into bed with Boris Johnson should lose him, rather than win him, support.

Still, this being Red Ken, he doesn’t just stop at the controversy of embracing your opponent in a crucial election just days before the ballot boxes open. No, he also has a pop at his own party:

I think people are genuinely thinking "who do I want to win London?", rather than "I want this to be a referendum on the government". If it was a referendum, I wouldn't have a chance.'

I agree – if people were voting based on the record of the national government, then Ken should be looking at the job ads in The Guardian. Still, nice of him to add to the government’s problems by shunning them at a time when the party is asking government ministers and, in particular, the Prime Minister to stay away from the campaign. But as his job offer to Boris shows, Red Ken is out for Red Ken – and no-one else.

This total lack of loyalty and ideological commitment from Ken makes me hope that Boris is offered a job on Thursday – not by Ken, but rather by the voters – and I hope it is Ken’s job.