Maverick Bolts Labor Party to Run for London Mayor

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s “new Labor” Party faced its most serious challenge yet Monday when dissident member Ken Livingstone announced that he will run for mayor of London against the party’s official candidate.

Livingstone, a popular London native who represents Labor’s socialist roots, will campaign as an independent against Blair’s handpicked candidate, former Health Secretary Frank Dobson.

The Conservative and Liberal Democratic contenders to become the first popularly elected mayor of London welcomed news of the Labor division, while Blair went on the offensive, insisting that election of Livingstone would be “a disaster” for the capital.

Livingstone, 54, is starting out as the front-runner in the bid for London’s approximately 5 million votes. The winner of the May 4 election will have the largest personal mandate in Britain, which has a parliamentary system, and one of the largest in Europe.

A loss in the capital would be a huge embarrassment for Blair, whose policy is to devolve power to London and the other regions of Britain while maintaining support for Labor candidates. It also would damage the image of invincibility he has managed to retain during nearly three years in office.

Livingstone made the announcement in the Evening Standard tabloid two weeks after narrowly losing out to Dobson, 59, in a party electoral college vote that he said was rigged against him.

“I have been forced to choose between the party I love and upholding the democratic rights of Londoners,” Livingstone said in the paper and at a subsequent news conference.

“I have concluded that defense of the principle of London’s right to govern itself requires that I stand as an independent for London mayor on May 4,” he said.

He denied that he had threatened to split the Labor Party, saying that he did not want to see anyone follow him out of Labor or to create a new national party.

As the leader of the Greater London Council in the 1980s, Livingstone was nicknamed “Red Ken” for slashing subway fares and holding talks with then-outlawed political leaders of the Irish Republican Army.

To Blair, Livingstone represents the old Labor Party, which was too far left to win the support of “middle England” and therefore allowed the Conservatives to remain in national power for 18 years, until Blair’s victory in May 1997.

Aware of Livingstone’s tremendous popularity among the rank and file, Labor officials decided to pick their mayoral candidate with an electoral college heavily weighted with members of Parliament and the Cabinet who would be loyal to Blair’s candidate, Dobson.

Even so, Dobson won just 51.5% of the vote to Livingstone’s 48.5%.

“There has never been anything like this here before in terms of breaking with the party system,” said Jonathan Freedland, a political commentator for the Guardian newspaper. “This kind of independent candidacy is new, especially one that does have a chance of winning in a one-off race. It’s uncharted territory for us.”

The office of a directly elected mayor who will wield power and a budget of $5.3 billion is also new to Britain. Previously, the mayor’s job has been an appointed ceremonial post.

Livingstone will have to raise funds and run a campaign without a party machine behind him. He also will come under more rigorous scrutiny now as a declared independent candidate.

“Until now, the debate was all about his right to stand, which everyone could support. Now it will be about whether he is fit to be the mayor,” Freedland said.