Livingstone jokes that Eddie Izzard should poison Boris

By Tim Montgomerie
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Fresh from backing the Euro, Gordon Brown and AV, Eddie Izzard is backing Ken Livingstone. Nick Ferrari had Messrs Izzard and Livingstone on his LBC programme this morning. Livingstone joked that the man with the reverse Midas touch should take Boris Johnson out for a drink and poison him...

Nick Ferrari to Eddie Izzard: Eddie do you have any political ambitions?

Izzard: I would like to run for Mayor or MP in 2020.

Ferrari: If you could go for a drink with Ken, Boris or Brian Paddick who would it be?

Izzard: Ken.

Ken Livingstone: But you could take Boris and put poison in his drink.

This mayoral race will be fun...

Livingstone: Boris is like Hitler. Vote for him and go to hell - where "your skin will be flayed for all eternity"

By Paul Goodman
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Here is the full quote from Amber Elliot's trailed interview with Labour's Mayoral candidate in Total Politics:

"Asked why people should vote for him, Ken jokes: "It's a simple choice between good and evil – I don't think it's been so clear since the great struggle between Churchill and Hitler… The people that don't vote for me will be weighed in the balance, come Judgement Day. The Archangel Gabriel will say, ' You didn't vote for Ken Livingston in 2012. Oh dear, burn forever. Your skin flayed for all eternity.'… I'll come round with a serious pitch nearer the time."

Boris has made claims about his rival that are no less extravagant.  At a ConservativeHome rally last year, he told those present that:

"The forthcoming London Mayoral election will be "between Hercules and the Lernean hydra, Holmes and Moriarty, Harry Potter and Voldemort".

Is there a difference?  I think there is.  Boris's comparisons are all drawn from myth or fiction.  This somehow deflates any nastiness from his attack.  Livingstone's is drawn from real life, and risks Godwin's law by invoking Hitler.  I'm not at all bothered by that but I am struck by the horrible skin-flaying image.  It somehow pumps unpleasantness into the joke.

UPDATE: How the Evening Standard covers the story:

Ken Livingstone has shown he is unfit to be London's Mayor

By Tim Montgomerie
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Labour's leader and deputy, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman (whose own Peckham constituency has been affected by the disturbances) are also returning from holiday. They need to get a grip on some elements of their party. We've already had Chris Williamson, Labour MP for Derby North, blaming the Tories' "disastrous policies" for these riots. Another left-wing Labour MP, John McDonnell MP lost control last night too:

Worst of all though has been Ken Livingstone. Yesterday he said that “the economic stagnation and cuts imposed by the Tory Government inevitably create social division.”*

Mr Livingstone is no ordinary Labour figure. He's Labour's candidate for Mayor and he's making excuses for the criminality we are seeing on the streets of the city he seeks to lead.

For the third year running the state is spending more than 50% of British national income.

How big does the state have to get to satisfy the left?

How much do we have to borrow from China, sending £40 million of interest payments overseas every day, to satisfy their hunger for an ever bigger state?

How many more taxes need to be levied on exhausted mums and dads so they are always out at work, unable to be the kind of parents and neighbours they would prefer to be?

The idea that cuts are to blame for last night is preposterous. Yesterday Nick de Bois talked of yobs using Golf GTIs to move from trouble spot to trouble spot. The Left can dismiss him as an eyewitness if they like. He's a Tory MP, after all. But a BBC reporter at the start of this morning's Today programme said he was an eyewitness to people in large, expensive cars going to looted electronic shops to collect stolen flat screen TVs. This is criminality, plain and simple.

Mr Livingstone also said that the rioters "feel no-one at the top of society, in government or City Hall, cares about them or speaks for them.” Is the man living on the same planet as the rest of us?

The vast majority of law-abiding Londoners are the ones who feel no-one cares for them. They are watching police officers taunted by rioters and doing little in return. On Sky News a retired Met Commander said that police constables don't take tough action against rioters because they fear legal repurcussions for strong policing more than they fear anything else.

Youths on London's streets don't fear the police. They don't believe that there's any strong likelihood that their actions will have consequences. That's the problem in Britain. Whether it's crime, drug abuse, abandonment of your children or an unwillingness to work, fecklessness has no consequences and the ordinary taxpayer picks up the ever growing bill.

* Source: The Express.

If Ken Livingstone is really refusing to take Bob Crow's money, why won't he condemn his RMT strikes?

By Jonathan Isaby
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During Ed Miliband's Q&A on Twitter yesterday, one of my questions the Labour leader refused to answer was whether he was happy for Ken Livingstone's 2012 mayoral campaign "to be bankrolled by the militant, striking and disruptive RMT".

As I say, I didn't get a response, but Tory pressure on the Labour machine over the matter now appears to have forced Livingstone to distance himself from the militant trade union.

Nic Cecil of the Evening Standard is reporting this afternoon that Livingstone will shun the offer of cash from Bob Crow and the RMT (with Crow having said on LBC radio earlier in the week "Give us a shout Ken when you want some money"):.

“We have not received any donation from the RMT, have received no offer of a donation and as the RMT is not affiliated to Labour will not be doing so as it does not arise,” is what his spokesman is reported as claiming.

It does of course remain to be seen whether Livingstone finds some way of weaseling his way around that statement.

However, here's the next question: if Livingstone is accepting that he doesn't want to be tainted by RMT cash, why will he not condemn the RMT's irresponsible strikes, the latest of which are planned to coincide with the Wimbledon tennis championships?

Labour voices begin to distance themselves from Ken Livingstone after Mladic smear - but what will Miliband and Co. have to say about it?

By Jonathan Isaby
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On yesterday's newslinks I included the story about how Ken Livingstone had likened Edward Lister, the former Wandsworth Council leader and now chief of staff to Boris Johson, to Ratko Mladic.

Livingstone, who will of course be challenging Boris for the London mayoralty again next May, was first reported by Guardian blogger Dave Hill earlier this week as describing Lister as "the Ratko Mladic of local government".

The comment by Livingstone, which surely rates at least similarly in offensiveness to likening a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, is all the more stark, after seeing the pictures of Mladic at the court in The Hague this morning being charged with eleven counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Today, Lister has described Livingstone's comment as “pathetic and offensive” and has not ruled out legal action.

Livingstone himself remains unapologetic, with a spokesman laughing off the episode, saying that "Ken's phrasing is always colourful".

But the indefatigable Andrew Gilligan at the Telegraph has been challenging Labour figures to give their reaction.

As he seemingly U-turns on the Congestion Charge extension, Ken Livingstone proves again that he simply cannot be trusted

By Jonathan Isaby

It would appear that Ken Livingstone thinks he will have a chance of being returning as London Mayor next year if he manages to spout entirely contradictory policy positions to different audiences over the next thirteen months.

His official transport policy document - still available on his campaign website as a pdf - makes an unequivocal statement:

Yet today's Evening Standard carried a piece headlined "Ken Livingstone: I won't bring back the C-charge extension if I'm Mayor" in which the former mayor said that given the cost of re-introducing the Western Extension of the Congestion Charge,

"I'd much rather spend that money on front-line policing and keeping the fares down."

And in a piece of rank hypocrisy from the man who increased the cost of the GLA year after year (in contrast to Boris Johnson who has been freezing the GLA precept on the council tax), Livingstone added:

"That's the single most important thing at the moment, to not do anything that takes money out of Londoners' pockets."

Excuse my cynicism, but with his record I simply don't believe him. Indeed, when asked how he could afford his various plans by MayorWatch in March, he explicitly said he would not be revealing his financial strategy, saying to the interviewer "On the morning after the election I'll let you know," with a customary chuckle.

In other words, on the Congestion Charge, as indeed for any area of policy, Livingstone simply cannot be trusted.

Labour MP refers Ken Livingstone to Labour's NEC over his behaviour in Tower Hamlets

By Jonathan Isaby

Still no reaction, let alone action, from Ed Miliband or anyone else in Labour's leadership team over Ken Livingstone's campaigning for the Independent candidate - against Labour's nominee - in Thursday's mayoral election in Tower Hamlets.

However, the two Labour MPs in Tower Hamlets, Jim Fitzpatrick and Rushanara Ali, have condemned the London Mayoral candidate for his actions, both appearing in the BBC report below on the outcome of the election.

In fact, Fitzpatrick reveals that he has asked Labour's powerful National Executive Committee to examine the matter (next scheduled to met on November 30th, I gather).

Will they act against Livingstone in the way that they would against any rank-and-file Labour member supporting another candidate? I'm not holding my breath.

> Today's Guardian reports that eight Labour councillors and three other members are facing suspension for appearing to support the victorious Independent candidate.

Ken Livingstone has form when it comes to backing candidates standing against Labour

By Jonathan Isaby

On Tuesday night Jeremy Brier wrote this CentreRight post flagging up the fact that Ken Livingstone, now Labour's official candidate for the London Mayoralty in 2012, was actively campaigning for the Independent candidate in yesterday's Tower Hamlets mayoral election. As it happens, the Independent, Lutfur Rahman, beat the Labour official candidate, but, unsurprisingly, it was a breach of Labour Party rules for Livingstone to support him and other Labour members have been expelled for doing the same thing.

This is not a first for Livingstone.

I noted here just before the general election that leaflets were being distributed by George Galloway in Poplar and Limehouse and by the Green Party's Tony Juniper in Cambridge, both featuring photos of the respective men with Livingstone, by whom they appeared to be endorsed.

Livingstone laughed those incidents off at the time when I challenged him, saying:

"Of course, I'm supporting the Labour candidates everywhere, but it would be churlish of me to deny others the pleasure of looking at me."

What he has been doing now in Tower Hamlets is even more blatant and without question in breach of Labour Party rules. If Labour HQ do not take any action against him, it shows not only weakness on the part of Ed Miliband, but that Red Ken is, once more, simply out of control.

Talking of which, Harry noted here yesterday morning that Livingstone is now backing a tax on peeople taking more than one foreign holiday a year...

Ken Livingstone plans to brand the Government's cuts as "Boris's cuts"

By Jonathan Isaby

Tim noted on Sunday that it will not be easy for Boris Johnson to win a second term as London Mayor, not least because the election will come in May 2012 at a time when the Coalition Government's cuts are biting and anyone donning a blue rosette is liable to suffer the traditional mid-term backlash against a governing party.

We already have evidence that Boris fully intends to continue being a voice for London who will challenge the Conservative-led Government at Westminster rather than act as a cheerleader for it.

However, it is not entirely surprising that ex-mayor Ken Livingstone - the frontrunner for the Labour nomination - seems to have every intention of pinning every difficult decision made by the Government as coming from Boris's friends at Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.

And yesterday Livingstone published spurious clams that every Londoner will be £5,625 worse off as a result of Whitehall cuts over the next mayoral term.

He told the Evening Standard:

“The scale of the Government's cuts is breathtaking. Their agenda is entirely ideological —there are alternatives that do not involve slashing services, jobs and pay, and risking pushing us back into economic downturn.

“These will be cuts at a level far worse than those introduced by Margaret Thatcher. Thousands of Londoners of all backgrounds are going to be worse off. Boris Johnson will do everything humanly possible to avoid culpability. But the Government's cuts are his cuts.”

If he wins the nomination, I fully expect to hear that refrain ad nauseam.