Buffoon vs Boffmeister vs The Man Who Should Have Been Expelled For Five Years

There's no point in trying to hide the fact - the London Mayoral election is going to cause me a bit of a problem.

It's not too bad right now, while I can focus on the "struggle" between the two intellectual giants of the election contest - Boffmeister of the Fourth Estate and Boris "Buffoon" Johnson, or "Pride" and "Prejudice" as they are popularly known. As far as the latter is concerned, I only need to emphasise the extent to which the Old Etonian MP for leafy Henley and former member of the Bullingdon Club ("The Bullies") will really understand the problems facing Hackney and other inner city boroughs. Boffmeister, editor-in-chief of Dalston's rag mag, tree-planter (carbon offsets for his magazine waste paper!) and constant harpie attacker of Hackney Council from the left (eh? - is that right, Linda?) may know a bit more about Hackney, but he's just as easy to ridicule. Boffie is a man whose personal vote is such that he lost Hornsey and Wood Green to Labour in the 1992 General Election with a stunning 3.8% drop in the Tory vote, at a time when Labour nationally increased its vote by only 3.6%. And, of course, we gave him a good stuffing last May.

Andrew Boff, the openly homosexual candidate

Boris Johnson, the openly heterosexual candidate

Suggestions that something very strange happened to Boffmeister's votes in the council and mayoral elections made in the so-called independent report on the elections are, of course, nothing but a pile of sour grape flavoured horse manure. No, as you've already guessed, my problem won't be campaigning against the Tory candidate. My problem will be canvassing for the Labour candidate. My love for Red Ken dates back a very long way, to a time when I was still in nappies. But it hit the media headlines in 1992 when the attempt by Linda and myself to unseat Livingstone by improperly obtaining the Labour Party membership list and handing it to Dobbo was uncovered by investigative journalists and revealed to the world on BBC Panorama. Now let's not get all this out of perspective, just because I wrote one teeny-weeny little letter to The Grauniad arguing for the traitor Livingstone to serve a full five-year term of expulsion from the Party.

That hardly justifies my spoofster publishing all of these attacks on our good Mayor, childishly pretending to be me in his pathetic attempt at satire: "So Ken Livingstone has won his High Court appeal against the Adjudication Panel for England's finding that he brought his office into disrepute over 'unnecessarily offensive' and 'indefensible' comments made to Jewish journalist Oliver Finegold. But as far as I know he has never been investigated by the Labour Party over whether his unnecessarily offensive and indefensible comments brought the Labour Party into disrepute, an offence under Party rules. To the extent that they may have turned many Jewish voters off voting for a Labour Mayor of London, it looks like prima facie there is a case to be investigated." "...anointed by Ken Livingstone, who is also above reproach and never, ever, stood in an election against any Labour Party candidate, particularly not one of Jon's other parliamentary nominators [my attempt at being facetious]." "Highlight for me was falling asleep during Ken Livingstone's speech. I woke up in time to hear that the GLA (and presumably the London precept on my council tax) are funding a festival of Cuban culture next year to celebrate 50 years of the revolution. I restrained myself from using the Q&A to ask if the festival would mention Cuban democracy and human rights (or lack thereof)." "It was all over the press at the time of Ken's readmission. It had a lot to do with Livingstone having repeatedly whilst a backbencher attacked Brown's record as Chancellor." "As far as I know Ken has never been a member of SA [Socialist Action] - but he is strongly supported by it and several of his key advisers are leading figures in SA. I don't think any of this is a big secret or new accusation - as far as I know Livingstone is quite proud of his association with this organisation." "Now I started with an ambivalent opinion of Len [Duvall] anyway, him having been appointed to the MPA by Livingstone (I'd rather slit my own wrists than take any job in that man's gift)." "However, rather than focussing [sic] on this kind of disgusting bigotry, anti-racists are busy attacking each other - see Ken Livingstone's bizarre series of attacks on Trevor Phillips. Ken - hint - on this issue your enemies are Bob Spink and the BNP not Trevor and the CRE." "I was sad to see that Roy Shaw is standing down from Camden Council due to ill health. Roy was a good friend and wise adviser to me when I started working for the Labour Party in Holborn & St Pancras back in 1996... He was Leader of Camden in the late '70s and early '80s, fighting running battles with Ken Livingstone who was his Chair of Housing and led a rival leftwing faction in the Camden Labour Group." "The Guardian carries an obituary of Reg Freeson, Housing Minister under Wilson and Callaghan. Freeson was a Labour leftwinger, but, like Frank Dobson, this did not stop him being knifed by Ken Livingstone who had him de-selected to create a parliamentary vacancy in Brent East for Ken to fill. It's a shame that someone who made a fine contribution to Labour as an MP and Minister is now mainly remembered for the humiliating and gratuitous way they were shoved aside to make way for Livingstone." "You are also wrong about double standards in welcoming back 'prodigal sons' - Blair, in one of the few decisions he has taken which I have disagreed with, welcomed back Ken Livingstone. The list of leftwing splitters: Scargill, Tatchell, Livingstone temporarily, Liz Davies, Galloway, perhaps Short now matches the SDP in scale, though it has been a drip-drip process rather than all in one go." "Much as I disagree with Frank on many national issues I still think he would have been a better Mayor than Livingstone." "It [Student Broad Left] is the lineal descendent of the IMG (International Marxist Group) which entered into the Labour Party in the early 80s as Socialist Action and several of whose leading members are close allies of Ken Livingstone." "...there is one Rulebook for Ken and another for the rest of us who hold public office..." "Ken Livingstone for proving why he should never have been readmitted to the Labour Party with his remarks about Trevor Phillips." "A 'militia' is of course an old Leninist demand popularised by Ken Livingstone's economics adviser John Ross (like most of Ken's kitchen cabinet a former member of the central committee of the International Marxist Group which subsequently entered into the Labour Party as 'Socialist Action')." "Some sections of the left of the party (not all) also fail to recognise the boundary between democratic and revolutionary politics, and believe organisations which profess to want political change through violent revolution, and are therefore in my view plain evil, are legitimate political allies (e.g. Ken Livingstone's relationship with the leading figures in what was the International Marxist Group." "[young professionals] ... are saddled with unacceptable, inflation-busting tube fare hikes thanks to Livingstone..."

There is clearly no sense of balance here. Only a month ago I wrote in glowing praise of London's Mayor, this time correctly quoted by my spoofster: "I arrived [at the Compass Conference] in time to catch the end of Ken Livingstone's plenary speech - the bit I heard was eminently sensible stuff about tackling climate change through city-level measures." And I've made it amply clear that I expect Ken to win in 2008 and would like him to make way for Tony Blair to take over in 2012 in time to reap the rewards of the Olympic Games. However, there are plenty of Party activists ready and willing to get out on the door knockers across the capital.

Ken with international revolutionary hero Hugo Chavez

As far as Linda and I are concerned, I think we may just head off with Augustus to campaign for one of the other Labour challengers, in Torbay, Middlesborough or Hartlepool. Somewhere not too far from a beach. Shame they don't have an elected Mayor in Castle Point.