Ken's red rep has started to fade
Friday 11 May 2012
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EmailKeith Flett (M Star May 10), cites three reasons why Boris Johnson won the mayoral contest in London and not Ken Livingstone, but he missed out number four, or at least an addendum to three, when he says: "This was not the radical Livingstone of 2000 - voters were not engaged and they will now pay the price."
Keith could have added that this was also not the Livingstone of the GLC in the early '80s when the defeated Labour candidate seriously talked about working-class representatives living on an average of a workers' wage.
It surely it was no insignificant matter that rightwingers like Andy Gilligan in the Standard could accuse Ken of using a legal but contradictory device for an avowed socialist to avoid paying the full tax on his income.
It was pretty obvious to me, and I'm sure to others on the left, that an established and popular spokesman for his class like Livingstone and an advocate of radical reformism under capitalism was leaving himself wide open to attack by right wing opponents and his own class.
People who represent our class at the highest levels should in my opinion live on the wage of their class as an average of a skilled workers wage with of course verifiable expenses for themselves and their staff.
WJ Brunt
Manchester
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