Ken Livingstone is surely unelectable now, sez one of the sinister faceless committee/gaggle of sockpuppets attached to Daniel Davies that is Aaronovitch Watch. Jesus, I hope not; the prospect of Boris Johnson being put in charge of London is too much to contemplate. Consider this; Ken brought a load of old hard-left mates with him to City Hall as advisors, many of whom have done the old Stafford Cripps/Ernie Bevin trick of shocking with your politics while impressing with your abilities as a technocrat. Personally, I hope to make this the subtitle of my life, so you can see why I’m sympathetic.
However, can anyone imagine the kind of rightwing maniacs and snake oil merchants piccaninny boy will bring in with him? I have a horrible feeling about this; but at least there is a reasonable chance the mayoral feedback loop is short enough to deal with him, thanks to all the Tory-invented ways of harassing members of local government that don’t exist at Westminster.
National government, not so much; it seems to be unavoidable that once you’re in, you’re in for 10 years, which means that you can do so much damage that it’s arguable voting at all is irresponsible. And even the blogosphere doesn’t look likely to mobilise to the degree it did in 2005; the degree of participation and anger of the late 90s seems a million miles away. From road protestors to rate tarts was only one election. Maybe I’m getting old, but I’m struggling to prepare my personal culture for the prospect of a Tory administration, especially after all the effort I put in since 2003 to demonise this lot.
Still, there are small wins; the Respect Unit bites the dust, as does e-voting. And the government’s astonishing informational incontinence is helping. A lot. But whether there’s any hope for a basically decent government is another matter. Perhaps I’m going to go through the rest of my life stacking up yet more unresolved injustices; hell, the list already goes back 20 years.
Unfortunately they are still going to use e-counting for the London elections. The Open Rights Group have warned them not to do it and have signed up as election observers on the day. Despite the Open Rights Group’s recommendations, London Elects have declined to include a sample manual recount of some percentage of the e-counted ballots in their process on the night. So its going to be next to impossible to certify the result of the election.