The Beaver the newspaper of the LSE Students' Union

Last Thursday, Ken Livingstone, former London mayor, reaffirmed his intentions to run for the post in 2012.

In a speech to the LSE Politics Society, he criticized the current mayor, Boris Johnson, as “someone with no political ideology” who “is doing nothing about anything”. He said that Johnson’s only aim was to replace David Cameron as Conservative leader at the next possible opportunity in order to fulfill a life-long ambition to become British Prime Minister.

“[Johnson]’s completely inauthentic…but he has a good chance of becoming Prime Minister compared to grey heads like [George] Osborne,” said Livingstone.

Livingstone stated that he felt he had no competition in securing the Labour party’s nomination for the next mayoral elections. “Who wants to be Frank Dobson 2?” he said.

He also praised Eastern governments, especially the Chinese government, with whom he worked intermittently during his time as mayor between 2000 and 2008.

“[The Chinese government] think 50 years ahead, whereas our politicians only think ahead to controlling tomorrow’s news agenda.”

Addressing a question about recent allegations made by Observer journalist Andrew Rawnsley regarding Gordon Brown’s conduct towards civil servants, Livingstone said there might be truth to the stories.

“I think the public perception of Gordon is accurate. Although I haven’t always agreed with [Rawnsley’s] interpretations, in the past they have always been broadly fair.”

The former mayor had no regrets over an economic partnership by Livingstone fostered with Venezuela and his friendship with the country’s President, Hugo Chavez. Livingstone sees him “as a kindred spirit” and feels that people “basically recognize that he’s decent; [in Venezuela] they have 100 per cent literacy.”

He still feels that his consultation with the IRA when leader of Greater London Council in the 1980s was the right thing to do.

“We couldn’t kill the IRA. There had to be political negotiation. 10 years later, another 1,000 people were killed,” concluded Livingstone. “I think I was morally justified.”

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