A mayor for Whitehall

Siobhan Benita’s sanctimonious and mystifying bid to run London

Ken Livingstone wept last week at the launch of his election broadcast, but when it comes to narcissistic self-pity, he’s been outdone by Siobhan Benita. ­Benita’s the other candidate in the London mayoral contest, the one who isn’t Boris or Ken or Brian or that Green woman. A former civil servant now running as an independent, she’s spent the last month wailing about lack of coverage. She claims she is the victim of a media ‘blackout’ — excluded from televised debates and banished from the airwaves. So great is her fury that she has even demanded a meeting with BBC executives. ‘I feel I am banging my head against a brick wall of institutions that are averse to change,’ she says.

But Benita’s pose as a British Aung San Suu Kyi could not be more wrongheaded. The mystery isn’t why she’s had so little attention, it’s why her candidacy has been absurdly puffed up by the press in recent weeks. Acres of newsprint have been devoted to her; countless flattering profiles. ‘It’s her passion and sincerity that really radiates,’ said the Guardian. Treated with indifference? Nonsense! Benita has a string of celebrity endorsements: Sir Richard Branson; Tom Conti, former BBC reporter Martin Bell and former civil service head Gus (now Lord) O’Donnell, who was her boss for much of the 15 years she spent in Whitehall.

Never in the field of electoral conflict has so much praise been lavished by so many on such a pointless candidate. Benita has never held elected office, nor has she ever run a major organisation or enterprise. She seems to have spent most of her time working for O’Donnell dreaming up new diversity projects or producing politically correct propaganda, the two favourite activities of the modern British state machine.