Leo McKinstry

A working-class villain

Leo McKinstry on Andrew Hosken's biography of Ken Livingstone

issue 26 April 2008

Leo McKinstry on Andrew Hosken’s biography of Ken Livingstone

One of Margaret Thatcher’s more bizarre achievements during her premiership was to have transformed Ken Livingstone from municipal hate figure into popular folk hero. When she embarked on her campaign in the mid-Eighties to abolish the Greater London Council because of its perceived inefficiencies, Ken Livingtone, the GLC’s leader, was probably the most despised politician in Britain, reviled for his infantile gesture politics, extravagance with public money and noisy support for violent Irish Republicanism.

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