Ken Livingstone lost it completely in the last Mayor’s Question Time. Putunder what I thought was relatively mild pressure by a very basic questionover his plans for the proposed New Year’s Eve party Ken lost the plot, thenlost his rag – and then lost it altogether.

I was surprised because, apart from having an a tough time during theCongestion Charging scrutiny which I chaired, he has until now consistentlykept up the cheeky chappy act, – whether attacking the government over itsplans to privatise the tube (quite rightly), planning the demise of pigeonsin Trafalgar Square (quite rightly), championing the Euro (quite rightly) orbatting away questions at Mayor’s Question Time (Assembly must do better atputting him on the spot next time).

Ken’s explosion in the Assembly was quickly followed by a strong reluctanceto attend an evidence session of my scrutiny of the Mayor’s Draft TransportStrategy – the early blueprint for all of transport and traffic plans forLondon. In the event, he did attend to answer the panel’s questions. Thenature of this line by line scrutiny is to find the weaknesses so that theMayor can take on board the advice we give and amend the document, before itgoes out to public consultation in January.

During the session, when questioned over why there were no targets fortraffic reduction, the Mayor admitted that there would not be a reduction -there would be a reduction in traffic growth – but still an overallincrease. I pointed out to him that in his manifesto he had promised toreduce actual traffic by 15%. And then he said basically that manifestosdidn’t matter because you made lots of promises in them and they had nolegal basis. Well – it’s true that they don’t have a legal basis – but I dothink it’s a bit of an expectation between the people and the person thatthey elect that they will at least make a decent effort to keep theirpromises. Not surprisingly – that news was all over the front page of theStandard. And I don’t suppose Ken was very happy about that!

This was shortly followed by the announcement that the Mayor had cancelledthe London Summit (major event) and was cancelling everything to concentrateon the tube/privatisation issue. It’s a key issue in London – so I am gladhe is going to focus all his energy on that. Labour’s plans to privatise ourtube system will be a disaster. Sadly, Labour doesn’t seem to have learntanything from the mess the Tories made of privatising our railways – nordoes Labour seem willing to head the warnings of tragedies such as theHatfield crash. The only thing rarer at the moment than a train running ontime is a transport expert who hasn’t come out against Labour’sprivatisation plans. Expert after expert has condemned the plans, but whywon’t Labour listen?

I also wonder about Ken. The pressure is enormous. Peoples’ expectations areenormous. The structure of the Mayor and Assembly is such that whatever hedoes must face scrutiny. And when he’s under close scrutiny, his talents atpolitical spin and good one-liners don’t help much. And I think herein liesa difficulty for the Mayor. He is charming and witty and more able than mostpoliticians I have met – but an executive Mayor makes all the decisions andis accountable for those decisions.

And it’s proving tougher than he thought.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2000