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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Mr.Livingstone, you presume

Not even for a fleeting moment do I believe that President Bush and his cabinet need me to jump their defence. Indeed, jumping to the defence of any politician is not an activity that generally sits well with me.

However, I am prepared to set aside my customary reluctance in the case of George Bush but only because he seems to have become an Aunt Sally for every loud-mouthed class-war agitator who is looking to make a name for themselves with the woolly-hatted, mushy-brained, stapled-face brigade.

A case in point is the current (and I am so ashamed to have to type these words) Mayor of London, Mr.Ken Livingstone. Livingstone is veteran political shape-shifter who has spent the last thirty or so years hitching himself to every po-mo leftist bandwagon that rolled into town and maybe even invented a few of his own. Having been shoved back under his rock by the Thatcher government of the eighties, wily old Ken has since re-invented himself as a cuddly ‘man of the people’; an image that he has assiduously cultivated as a base from which to launch a political resurrection.

Thanks to his favourable media coverage and a severe outbreak of Memory Deficit Disorder (a condition endemic to this country) ‘Ken Il Sung’ managed to get himself elected to this high-profile office that enables him to regale the world with what I suppose he regards as his words of wisdom:

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, was widely condemned yesterday after comparing George Bush to Saddam Hussein.

Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from comparing George Bush to Hitler.

The Left-winger described the American President as a “coward” who was at the head of a “venal and corrupt administration”.

Anyone who accepted large sums of cash from Colonel Qaddafi in order to set up a trotskyite newspaper has got some nerve calling other people ‘venal and corrupt’.

Addressing an audience of schoolchildren…

I don’t suppose adults would want to listen to all his tiresome bollocks.

“This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.”

Yes, which is why ‘cuddly’ Ken was at the head of every ‘Stop the War’ march.

Mr Livingstone is used to courting controversy. Shortly before being elected mayor he appeared to endorse anti-capitalists rioters when he said: “Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two. But at least Hitler was mad.”

But, Ken, Hitler’s views on the ‘international financial system’ were remarkably close to your own. What are you trying to tell us?

Yesterday he played down his latest remarks, saying that he had made the same point at an anti-war rally in February and that no one took much notice.

No doubt because they were all stunned to hear that you wanted Saddam Hussein ‘overthrown’. You did tell them that back in February, Ken?

Asked about the row, Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush’s spokesman, said: “I’ve never heard of the guy.”

The perfect response. Ken Livingstone: the nobody’s nobody.

10 comments to Mr.Livingstone, you presume

  • David Packer

    Livingstone also harped on the old refrain of the legitimacy of Bush’s election.

    I make no comment on that itself (apart from noting that Gore was relying on the votes of folk too stupid to make a hole in a piece of paper), but I would like to draws people’s attention to Livingspart’s own track record in such matters.

    As I remember it, Livingstone first came to public prominence in 1981 when he took control of the old Greater London Council (GLC) by means of a “palace coup”, only hours after the people of London had elected the moderate Labour man Andrew McIntosh by a narrow margin.

    The “Newt King” is hardly the man to lecture us on the democratic legitimacy of others.

    The success Red Ken has had in hoodwinking many good, sound, people into thinking he is some sort of reasonable human being is astounding.

  • “Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two. But at least Hitler was mad”?

    Is this old wives’ tale still doing the rounds? Time to take the shotgun and put it out of its misery

    Jean-Francois Revel: La Connaissance Inutile, 1988:
    “[in 1981, the leading French socialist MP Louis Mermaz] called on the press to “denounce the monstrousness of the capitalist system which is world famine, which kills 50 million people every year, including 30 million children.” […] In 1984 Le Nouvel Observateur dedicated an issue to a vast “inquest” into famine in the world, which opened with the phrase: “The last world war caused 45 million deaths (*); just as many men, women and children die of hunger every year.” I am taking these quotations from the French media, but I’ve often heard figures of a similar order in debates on the Third World in the United States, South America and Scandinavia […]

    “As any qualified demographer could point out to the curious, every year there die, in total, throughout the whole planet, about 50 million human beings. Not all of them can die of famine, nor can 60% of them be children, nor can they belong exclusively to the Third World. At the time these declarations were doled out to the right-thinking public, global population amounted to around 4 billion 700 million people, with a mortality rate of 1.1%, all causes, all regions and all ages included. Within this total, deaths as a direct result of starvation wavered between 1 and 2 million, according to the year. During the decade 1980-1990, almost all these victims were to be found in Africa, in countries provided (or afflicted) with Marxist regimes: Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Angola, to which we must add Sudan, which is non-Marxist.”

    (* Actually the figure is now generally thought to be higher. Revel gives 60 million, the most common one I’ve seen is 50-55 million-CB)

    Pascal Bruckner, Le Sanglot de l’Homme Blanc, 1983:”50 million people die of famine every year, claim the Third Worldists. But, in Le Monde of March 24, 1982, Joseph Klatzmann explained that in 1981, in the entire world, 48 million people had died, all reasons included…”

    Capitalism: so deadly it kills more people than die every year…

  • Byron

    As for Livingston, all you really need to know is the US Embassy’s response to his rant:

    “Mayor Livingstone’s opinions about the United States are a matter of complete indifference to the American embassy, the American government and the American people.”

  • Liberty Belle

    Seems the Americans have abandoned the oleaginous diplomacy of Slick Willy’s administration and taken to talking Texan: Blunt. I love it! Old Europe! Axis of Weasels! The pensées of Mayor Livingstone are a matter of complete indifference … I’m just waiting for the day Donald Rumsfeld tells us what he really thinks of Tony Blair. In fact, I think I’ll put some champagne on ice in anticipation.

  • I’m just trying to sell an article to The [UK] Spectator about Ken, actually. Even if he’s no-one in the States, in London you might think they should care about him, a bit….

  • mark,

    Sadly, Londoners do seem to care about him. I wholly expect that this ‘man of the people’ will get resoundingly returned to Office next time round.

    In fact, this latest outburst might well have been an attempt to shore up his lefty/Muslim support in advance.

  • Well, I think KL has good odds on being next leader of the Labour Party on his image-management form so far, which is probably not cause for either particular rejoicing or gloom for us on this list.

    I must bashfully admit, David, I meant ‘care’ about Ken’s supple manoeuvrings in the rather selfish sense of “care enough to help me sell my article”.

    Given the quietness from the Spectator, I think I’ll offer the piece this week to the Telegraph instead.

  • G Cooper

    David Carr writes:

    “In fact, this latest outburst might well have been an attempt to shore up his lefty/Muslim support in advance.”

    A very astute remark, if I may say so. Livingstone may be an odious little creep, but he is not stupid. My guess is you are quite correct. This was a calculated pitch for the Left and Muslim votes in London.

  • Andrew X

    One has to wonder what would happen if Ken Il Sung became the leader of Labour, and possibly PM, while Bush got re-elected, the latter being more than likely at this stage.

    It is worth noting that, for all that Bush has done that Euro-Lefties hate (how dare he?) he has never, certainly not in public, and not really in private unless someone wants to give examples otherwise, he has never launched the kind of vicious, deliberate, personal attacks on any European or Canadian leader that we Americans hear, time and time and time again from prominent politicians in Europe and Canada, including this one from Kenny the Commie. (New slogan, “One Hundred Million murders just AIN’T enough!”)

    Not once has Bush made these kind of attacks. Not once. And I really don’t think American politicians do this either, with rare exception. Even France is the target of our wrath, but I don’t seem to see acid-dripping contempt for Chirac. It’s more of the “roll-the-eyes” type of thing.

    If Kenny succeeds in getting enough votes to become PM, it will prove unequivicably to many Americans that the division of the West, and that is what we are talking about, will have originated not with US “unilateralism”, but with the genuine, bone-deep, and up front contempt of the Euro Left for the US in general, our society, our people, our philosophy of governance, the whole smack, and not any particular President. That is not a contempt that has come from our side, until very recently, post 9/11, when the steady drip of acid upon us reached critical mass.

    And that will be a truly tragic day for planet earth.

  • Guy Herbert

    Why look to the left for paranoid fantasies, when we can manage so well on our own?

    I’d like to reassure Andrew X that while Ken may be a nuisance to us sane Londoners for some time to come. There is _no_ chance of his becominng PM–or even rejoining Labour. If he were ever allowed back in, he’d never get nominated for any kind of seat or candidacy again.

    Both the rejoining Labour and the very carefully timed anti-Bush outburst are indeed parts of his mayoral campaign strategy, intended to take support from the official Labour candidate among the (very Left-wing, in London) party faithful. But the speech is probably more about ensuring that his application to rejoin the party–due for review shortly–fails, than for its direct benefit in anti-capitalist votes.