The rival

Ken Livingstone’s attacks on Boris Johnson seem to conceal admiration

How does Ken Livingstone think he is going to beat Boris Johnson in the election for Mayor of London to be held next May? When I put this question to Ken, he launched into an almost admiring denunciation of his opponent: ‘He’s Britain’s Berlusconi. He just gets away with things nobody else could. And like Berlusconi he doesn’t really do the day job either.’

At the risk of undermining my hard-won reputation for impartiality, I ventured to suggest that Boris works quite hard. But Ken accused Boris of not being a full-time mayor: ‘The fact he carried on the Telegraph column. The fact he took an awful long time off to write the book. I don’t know if you’ve read his book. It really is dire.’

As it happens, I enjoyed reading Boris’s book, which is called Johnson’s Life of London, and I doubt whether it took all that long to write. But I did not want to break Ken’s flow for a second time. He had launched into a riff about Boris having the second-best job in politics, but spending all his time trying to get the top job.

Ken predicts future greatness for his opponent: ‘He will be the next leader of the Tory party even if I beat him.’ According to Ken, Boris has a 70-to-30 lead over George Osborne among Conservative activists.

Once again, I thought I detected an undertow of admiration in Ken’s attack. He covered himself by lamenting that politics has become so ‘ideology light’ and obsessed with celebrity. But later that evening, as he addressed an audience of about 600 Labour activists beneath the lofty dome of the Camden Centre, he assured them: ‘This Tory mayor is more Tory even than Cameron and Osborne.’