Ken's London

New Statesman Special Supplemet

It is two years since London regained its dignity as a world-class city and once again elected its leader. Ken Livingstone began his acceptance speech: "As I was saying,before I was so rudely interrupted 14 years ago ..." It was a good line, but the truth is that Mayor Ken has only a shred of the powers that GLC Leader Ken once enjoyed. He even said recently on Have I Got News For You: "I have no powers to do anything whatsoever."

No other great world city would tolerate its own elected leader being reduced to joking on TV panel shows about his own political impotence. Londoners are still run largely from Whitehall and Westminster, not from the offices of the mayor. Even in France, the most centralised state in western Europe, the mayor of Paris is more powerful than London’s. It is a sign of how important the job of mayor is that Jacques Chirac took the role after being prime minister of the Fifth Republic, and then used it as a stepping stone to the presidency itself.

This situation cannot continue. London deserves better. As this supplement shows, the capital has a distinctive, vibrant politics quite separate from the rest of this rainy little island – and it needs separate, powerful political structures to reflect that. The story about Livingstone’s reported fight at a party has prompted Londoners for the first time in ages to think about Ken – but many had forgotten that the Greater London Assembly even existed in the first place?

To read the New Statesman special supplement on Ken's London click here.

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With thanks to Thames Water