Hustings was a huge success

This morning's Mayor of London hustings, organised by Stonewall, was packed - nearly 400 people were there to hear Ken, Boris, Brian speak alongside Sian Berry from the Greens and Lindsey German from Respect - The Left List.

Both the female candidates impressed the audience with their common sense answers and general demeanour. Sian, only 33, is particularly highly thought of not just in the Green party but among political watchers of all shades. I do hope she wins a seat on the London Assembly.

I was chairing the event, which was daunting, but I think it turned out OK in the end. At least the crowd was mostly well-behaved, with just a handful of people shouting out from the crowd. What is it with these people? How is shouting at people acceptable? It is just rudeness in my opinion.

Anyway, there was very little of that, though one person did shout at me at one point, accusing me (at the end) of not picking any black people. She didn't even mention Asians or other minorities. Racist.

Boris had an interesting time - both charming the audience and failing to convince them that he never really supported Section 28. I tackled him about his infamous comment piece where he compared civil partnerships to "three men and a dog" getting married, but he would not apologise.

Ken was in his comfort zone. I thought he dealt well with accusations about corruption - there are seven police investigations ongoing, apparently.

Anyway, I have chaired my first hustings, and I liked it. I guess I will only have to wait until 2012 for the next one!

Ken tours Soho in search of pink votes

It was a surreal moment in an already bizarre election; Ken Livingstone standing at the bar in Comptons, chatting happily to bears about his plans for London if elected for a third time as the city's Mayor.

Ken's whole Soho walkabout was part farce, part hard-nosed politics.

With Brian Paddick, the only openly gay candidate, attracting a respectable number of LGBT voters, Ken was out to remind people he was fighting for gay rights when his opponent wasn't even out.

Of course, he got stuck into Boris at every opportunity.

Ken, a man with acute political antennae, knew better than to attack Mr Paddick. He brushed away questions from PinkNews.co.uk about whether the 49-year-old Lib Dem was challenging for the pink vote.

Gay MP Chris Bryant was Mr Livingstone's guide round the area. He confided that he has a flat "near here" but added he doesn't spend much time in the gay ghetto. He certainly seemed to know where he was going.

Ken's cavalcade of press photographers, journalists, members of LGBT Labour and other supporters began at Comptons in Old Compton St and finished up at Heaven.

The nightclub's VIP room was bedecked with some very fetching images of Red Ken from the days when he sported a neat moustache, several drag queens and some of the prettier Labour supporters.

But back to the walkabout. Scrums of photographers followed the Mayor from the Admiral Duncan, up Dean St and across Soho Square.

In that time about two voters spoke to Mr Livingstone, a gang of camp, annoying teenagers joined the throng and several people shouted obscenities at the candidate.

The press were relieved to reach Profile, where canapes, cocktails and champagne were laid on.

Topless waiters presented Mr Livingstone with a thick, sludgy beverage which I was informed contained brandy and cream, and possibly champagne. I spilt a cocktail on my notes so I can't be sure.

I asked one of the waiters if they are normally topless, or if it had been laid on for Ken.

In a delightfully impregnable Brazilian accent he informed me they do "no top" on Fridays and Saturdays. And sometimes Mondays.

Famed journalist A.A. Gill was there to observe the scene - he is to write a piece on Mr Livingstone for The Sunday Times. He seemed amused by the whole experience.

After this short respite Ken was back on manoeuvres.

"Oh, this is fun!" he exclaimed as he and his posse of press and leaflet-wielding supporters made their way into The Yard, where he was warmly received by patrons.

As he trolled past Comptons for the third time, he popped in for a drink, and was greeted with cheers. They like the older gentlemen at Comptons.

Moving finally towards the river, there was a touching moment when a young, frail homeless girl, who looked about 17, a dirty blanket wrapped round her shoulders, pushed herself forward.

As Ken leaned in to listen, so did the press. I was too far out to hear what she said, but I noticed that Ken was holding her hand, looking into her eyes, and I heard him promise that someone would "come back for her and find her."

Among the jollity, the camp boys at G-A-Y and the drunken secretaries shouting “KEN!” as if they were at a hen night and he was the stripper, it was a sobering reminder that the gay village is also filled with the desperate and despondent, the ones London fails.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE.

Stonewall hustings event names chair

And it's me!

Yes, yours truly will be on stage at BFI Southbank (formerly the National Film Theatre) on FRIDAY 19th APRIL from 11am.

The whole thing is booked up, which is a bit scary, as is the prospect of trying to keep the peace between Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, Brian Paddick and Lindsey German, the Respect - The Left List candidate.

It will be the last hustings before voters go to the polls on May 1st, so the candidates will either be particularly combative or dog tired, we will just have to see.

boris blears and the BNP

The Secretary of State for Communities has said that the Tory candidate for Mayor of London will "depend on attracting support in second preferences from BNP and UKIP supporters" to win the May 1st election.

Hazel Blears, who is in charge of the Labour party's local election campaign, made her assertion in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph in which she characterised the council elections as vital for David Cameron.

Labour is braced for considerable losses in the 4,500 seats up for election across England and Wales, with party insiders predicting as many as 250.

The party could lose control of Sheffield to the Liberal Democrats. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is an MP for the city.

It is Gordon Brown's first major electoral test since becoming Prime Minister last year. In cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Sunderland, and 73 English district authorities, one third of the council seats are up for election.

Seven English district authorities will elect half of the council while in Wales all councillors in all 22 councils will be elected.

The Prime Minister already faces unrest among his own MPs about plans to extend detention without trial for terrorist suspects and the abolition of the 10p tax band, which took effect last week.

Meanwhile Tory leader David Cameron will be hoping to pick up support in northern England, particularly cities, where his party is currently absent.

"Cameron needs to show he can get real support in the North of England and Wales, beyond his political comfort zone in the shires. Not just a few gains here or there," said Ms Blears.

Her comments about Conservative candidate for Mayor of London Boris Johnson indicates that the battle for City Hall is set to remain ill-tempered right up until polling day.

"The London Mayoral will be very close, given the resources the Tories are ploughing into the capital," she told The Sunday Telegraph."

Success for Boris Johnson will depend on attracting support in second preferences from BNP and UKIP supporters, I am afraid."

Labour candidate Ken Livingstone, seeking a third term in office, has used the threat of a BNP candidate winning a seat on the 25-member London Assembly as a late theme in his campaign.

"Like all fascist parties the BNP seek power with populist policies but their aim is to divide communities and foster hatred and violence," he said last week.

"We have to get across one simple fact: there's only one way to stop the BNP, which is by actually going out to vote against them. A low voter turnout will help the BNP get elected."

He was speaking after the fascist party had called on its supporters to cast their second preference vote for Mr Johnson – an endorsement he utterly rejected.

"In this race, the Tory clown Johnson is a lesser evil than the Marxist crank Livingstone, so replacing the latter with the former would, on balance, be an improvement for the majority of Londoners," the party said in a statement on their website.

"Even if Johnson condemns the BNP a second choice vote for him gives you the chance to vote BNP as your first preference and still vote to get Livingstone out of office."

Ms Blear's advisers later said she had not mean that Mr Johnson was seeking the votes of BNP members, but he rejected that position.

"Regardless of whether or not she meant to suggest I was deliberately courting BNP votes, this is yet another cynical attempt by Labour to play politics with an issue on which all the mayoral candidates are united," he said.

"I have said before that I don't want the second preference vote of any BNP supporter.

"I believe my message of a fresh approach and new ideas for London will resonate with all voters."

For more click here.

Interview with UKIP's candidate for Mayor of London

The UK Independence Party is misunderstood and misrepresented, their candidate for Mayor of London tells me when we meet.

Gerard Batten is a somewhat unusual politician, in that he is a member of a parliament that he desires to have no power over the lives of his constituents.

As an MEP for London since 2004, he spends his days in Brussels trying to think up new ways to discredit and dismantle the European Union (or "ferment rebellion" as he describes it).

For a long time UKIP was seen as something of a joke by the political establishment, flirting with Robert Kilroy-Silk and appealing to the sort of voter who thinks the Tory party is full of bleeding-heart liberals.

They weren't laughing so hard in 2004, when the party took more than 16% of the vote in the elections for the European Parliament.

The party now has 10 MEPs, 30 local councillors and two members of the House of Lords who defected from the Conservatives.

Perhaps that is why David Cameron felt moved to refer to them as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists."

UKIP was founded in 1993, a year after Tory Prime Minister John Major signed the UK up to the Maastricht treaty.

Its aims and beliefs are simple: full withdrawl from the EU and the return of sovereignty to Westminster, the maintenance of the union between Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland and an end to the present immigration arrangements.

Batten descibes the party as "libertarian" and denies they are racists. No one can deny that their message resonated with some Londoners – in the 2004 Mayoral elections UKIP candidate Frank Maloney came fourth, winning 6% (115,665) of first preference votes and 10% (193,157) of second preference votes.

Batten, a founder member of the party, is their candidate for Mayor of London in the May 1st election.

While unlikely to either unseat Labour's Ken Livingstone or defeat Tory candidate Boris Johnson or the Lib Dem's Brian Paddick, the party could win a seat or two on the London Assembly.

Though it should be noted that UKIP, who have nearly 17,000 members, advocate abolishing the Assembly.

Batten, who will be 54 next month, worked as a salesman for BT for 28 years before being elected as an MEP.

In person, he is fluid and likable, if somewhat exercised about the direction of the UK, and at times is reminiscent of Ricky Gervais in his tone and delivery.

His references to the views of cab drivers can seem more like Jim Davidson, but there is no doubting he is sincere in his beliefs.

A report in the Evening Standard last month claimed that Batten would end funding for Pride London and his comment that incumbent Mayor Ken Livingstone's distribution of funds to gay and ethnic minority events is "cultural Marxism" piqued my interest.

Batten contacted us to say he had been misrepresented, and we decided to speak to him about his policies on immigration, race and the politics of Europe.

PinkNews.co.uk: Let's start with the charges that UKIP is racist and has an agenda similar to that of the BNP.

Gerard Batten: We have people from different races and nationalities running for UKIP and among my friends who advise me on the Islamic issue, one of them is actually an ex-Sharia lawyer who converted to Christianity.

We don't have a problem with foreigners or people of other races. You can have a multi-ethnic society and it can work so long as people feel like they belong to the same society. What doesn't work is multiculturalism.

It creates division and especially when you've got now the idea of introducing Sharia law to the country. The whole thing is crazy. You can have a country where people have their own culture and their own customs but they've got to sign up to one legal system, one political system.

We want controlled immigration. The BNP have another agenda, which is ethnic cleansing, and if you talk to any of their activists that's what they want. I know that because that's what they've told me.

They were regretful about it but they had to explain to me that my wife and family would have to be deported at some point in the future if they ever came to power. My wife comes from the Philippines.

I don't understand their obsession with us, because they do seem to be totally obsessed with us. The kind of people that join UKIP wouldn't join the BNP. We get the occasional person who would go off and defect but they are possibly in the wrong Party to start with.

Read the rest of the interview here.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/opinion/2005-6891.html

My interview with Brian Paddick, Mayor of London candidate

Pubished on Monday on PinkNews.co.uk

Brian Paddick is enjoying running for Mayor of London.

The Liberal Democrat candidate may be a distant third in opinion polls, but he has one distinct advantage in this race – lots of people know who he is.

The 2008 Mayoral election is already the most exciting contest since the post was established at the turn of the century.

Incumbent Ken Livingstone is facing a concerted (some would say co-ordinated) barrage of negative press on everything from cronyism to his alcohol intake.

After eight years of his rule London's main newspaper, the Evening Standard, has gone into anti-Ken overdrive.

The election is further enlivened by the presence of one Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate. He is no stranger to the press or the voters.

A journalist, broadcaster, columnist, scallywag and sometime Member of Parliament, he has been happily knocking lumps out of the Mayor and banking on his unique personality appealing to London's voters.

Faced with those rivals, even the most exceptional third party candidate would struggle to make his voice heard.

Paddick, who is 50 in April, does not have a track record as an elected representative, only rejoined the party he now represents two years ago, and he talked to the Tories about the possibility of representing them.

So why would not one party but two want him to run for Mayor? As a career Metropolitan police officer, he first came to the attention of the press over cannabis policy in the London borough of Lambeth.

For operational reasons, he took the decision as borough commander to concentrate resources on hard drugs. That meant cautioning instead of arresting people caught with amounts of cannabis small enough to be considered for personal use.

The fact that he was openly gay only gave the right-wing press more to be unhappy about. His career at Scotland Yard proved even more controversial, and he earned a reputation for honestly over the Jean Charles DeMenezes affair.

His account of when senior police officers knew that the man they had shot at Stockwell tube station in July 2005 was not a terrorist but an innocent electrician was at odds with that of the Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.

It is no secret that Paddick had professional ambitions beyond the role of Deputy Assistant Commissioner, but he left the force at that rank in 2006, after 30 years service in the Met.

When asked about his lack of experience as an elected official, he claims:

"In terms of politics, there is nothing more political than the eighth floor of Scotland Yard."

He says that running for Mayor has allowed him to speak more freely than he ever could in uniform.

"It is a bit like being a senior officer again," he says of the campaign.

"Morning, noon and night it is TV and radio and newspaper interviews, so I am very comfortable with it. But it has the bonus that I can say what I want.

"It took a while for me to convince myself that I wasn't going to get hauled in front of the Commissioner every time I gave an interview, which was the situation it had got to in the police.

"So it's quite liberating. I am in my comfort zone.

"If Ken and Boris keep taking lumps out of eachother like they are now then I might be the last man standing."

To read the rest of the interview click here.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/politics/2005-6813.html

The cabal around Ken

Although I think he has done his fair share of bad things, I am a bit of a fan of Ken Livingstone.

Why?

Because he is a proper Londoner. He likes a drink of whisky when he is answering Assembly questions? Good lad.

He accurately reflects the cheeky, lairy and cocky instincts of many of us in this city.

Channel 4 did their best with their expose documentary about Ken to dig some serious dirt, but I have to say that if all they could find after eight years in office was a bit of boozing, a streak of arrogance and some dodgy loans to dodgy community projects, then Ken must be cleaner than I thought.

The most hilarious part of the "expose" however, was the revelation that Ken had surrounded himself with a cabal of former Socialist Alliance comrades and - get this - employed them AND paid them salaries.

As I lay in bed this morning listening to Ken on the Today programme, I was amused by the thought that, in adopting the same alarmist tone that Martin Bright did in his Channel 4 hack job, you could make anyone sound sinister.

"A member of a tiny elite who think they are born to rule, he siezed control of the Conservatives when they were at their lowest ebb.

"Vandalising this once-great party, he moved quickly to surround himself with like-minded cronies.

"Committed to fanatical market solutions, he has learned, at least in public, to temper his hard Thatcherite views.

"However, with his gang, their committment to capitalism and the overthrow of the Blair/Brown consensus remains undimmed.

"There is Boris, a fellow member of the secretive Bullingdon Club, on over 60k a year in a sinecure job for life as MP for Henley.

"Two-brains Gove, feared for his ability to rip opponents apart.

"The intimdating figure of Nick Boles, a man who manipulates policy to suit the new, rightwing agenda.

"All of these men were close to Cameron as he plotted his rise to power, most of them given highly-paid jobs at Westminster, the better to advance their leader's cynical agenda."

Easy.