Despite Ken Livingstone's campaign website and literature trying to gloss over and hide his links with the deeply unpopular New Labour regime (no "red" imagery anywhere), The Guardian reports:
Livingstone's unlikely secret weapons: Tony Blair and Alastair CampbellMatthew Taylor and Patrick Wintour
The Guardian,
Thursday April 24 2008Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell have both been giving advice to the campaign working for London mayor Ken Livingstone's re-election, the Guardian can reveal.
The former prime minister and his media strategist had been among Livingstone's most trenchant critics in the past, and he had derided them for being the architects of the New Labour project. However, with the race against the Tory candidate Boris Johnson on a knife-edge, Livingstone's team has sought their expertise, and also the advice of Philip Gould, New Labour's pollster and focus group adviser.
None of them is formally involved in the campaign,
Presumably, because they know that they are despised by many people, across the whole of the political spectrum.
but Tessa Jowell, the Olympics minister brought in by Downing Street to coordinate the effort to secure Livingstone's third term, yesterday described them as "the best in the business".Blair has privately advised the team the election is very winnable. Despite the rancour that once existed between them, he describes Livingstone as a man who can transcend traditional politics in a way that few others can. But he says he must align his experience with a vision of how he and Londoners will together continue to create the greatest city in the world.
Blair warns that Livingstone cannot win solely on the basis of his record,
Livingstone's record of broken election promises, his mockery of public consultation processes, and his besmirching of the Office of Mayor of London with his refusals to apologise for his arrogant insults, and his incompetent or corrupt political appointees, have even enraged many of his former supporters, let alone the vast majority of the electorate who did not vote for him the last time.
and must be unambiguous that he will continue to attract private sector investment to the capital.
What sort of "private sector investment" has Livingstone actually attracted so far - foreign dictators, corrupt Russian oligarchs, corrupt Indian billionaires, corrupt Chinese communists, property speculators and money launderers ?
[...]
Labour says it is focusing heavily on the issue of second-preferences. It argues that many Liberal Democrat and Green supporters do not understand that they will be throwing away their second preference if they do not vote for Livingstone, since it is certain that only he and Johnson will be in the final round of counting
We wonder how many of the people "on the left", who claim to be opposed to the war in Iraq etc. will be fooled into giving their second preference votes to Livingstone, the favoured candidate of the architects of the repressive New Labour government, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and Philip Gould ?
