There are probably very few times when Bill Clinton has looked at Ken Livingstone with envy, but as the left-wing Londoner pursues his fresh mayoral ambitions, the two-term president must wish he could jump back into the ring.
Back in 2003, Clinton called for an end to the ban on serving more than two terms as president. The rule should be amended, he suggested, to a ban on more than two consecutive terms.
His rationale was that people now live longer than in decades past. Certainly, Livingstone’s enduring lust for the mayoral life is a fascinating insight into the appetites of the political animal.
At the age of 65 he has won re-selection, beating the youthful and centrist Oona King. Instead of jumping onto the velvet sofa of a happy retirement he wants to take on the job of leading a city of 7.5 million people – more than twice the population of Wales.
Livingstone’s two-term tenure, from 2000 to 2008, coincided with Britain’s boom years. Londoners seemed to relish the mischief of electing a socialist icon to run a capitalist megalopolis.
In a further move of irony, they put a Conservative in the office in the same year the international banking system, which had fuelled the City’s extraordinary wealth, unravelled.
If Livingstone is able to win re-election in 2012, he will discover that the role of mayor is starkly different to the one he so enjoyed. Instead of being cheque-signer in chief, he will be dealing with cuts and pacifying outraged interest groups.
Who would want such a job? Does Livingstone want to be tested in a political gale? Perhaps he sees this as a chance to show to the world that left-wing policies not only have a place in the 21st century, but can shield the vulnerable during the most terrifying storms?
In an age of austerity, the question of what government should do and how it should spend taxpayers’ money has the potential to electrify cash-strapped voters.
It will excite Londoners in 2012, and if the National Assembly had tax-varying powers it would define next year’s election. Rows over spending priorities may yet widen the left-right divide in Welsh politics.
First Minister Carwyn Jones is now the most senior elected Labour politician in Britain. As the party crafts its manifesto, he has the opportunity to demonstrate what a left-of-centre response to the social and economic challenges of modern Wales looks like.
A work of real imagination might win the admiration of colleagues across the Severn Bridge – and it is not hard to envisage the most striking ideas appearing in a mayoral manifesto.
A Saturday column
Monday, September 27, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Before the Fall
It was probably a few weeks early to go to Westonbirt, which is said to be supernova of colour in autumn, but the 18,000 trees welcomed us as their band played for the summer's last dance.
The arboretum is just a short drive from Castle Combe; the perfect way to spend time in a chocolate box without a sugar rush.
The arboretum is just a short drive from Castle Combe; the perfect way to spend time in a chocolate box without a sugar rush.
Two Pairs of Miracles
Nick and Jen have amazed me as long as I've known them.
But they have just orchestrated an altogether higher feat of wonder!
My word, the world is in the realms of new.
Aren't they extraordinary?! In arriving in the cosmos, Nina and Pippa have just transformed it.
But they have just orchestrated an altogether higher feat of wonder!
My word, the world is in the realms of new.
Aren't they extraordinary?! In arriving in the cosmos, Nina and Pippa have just transformed it.
The Big Reformation
The papacy appears one of the loneliest of the world’s great offices.
The holder, by definition, does not have a spouse or children to brighten old age and ecclesiastical politics can be every bit as Machiavellian as the skullduggery which takes place in the darkest of Westminster’s corridors.
Any semblance of private life evaporates when someone is chosen as the leader of the world’s largest denomination, and the Pope must even shed his own name.
The arrival of Benedict XVI on the world stage necessitated the exit of Joseph Ratzinger. A sharp-minded, duelling, frequently fascinating but quite uncuddly theologian suddenly had to step into the shoes of Pope John Paul II.
His predecessor had Ronald Reagan’s knack at spotting a photo-op but it is fair to say 83-year-old Benedict XVI is not the man Simon Cowell would choose for such a public role.
When behind the walls of the Vatican or the barriers of a security cordon, he may well nod in agreement at Mother Teresa’s observation that “the most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
He has also had to say goodbye to the freedom he once had to challenge ideas with provocative, intellectually pugilistic prose. A careless phrase can set off riots around the world and put the lives of Catholics and other Christians at risk.
And yet he is at the head of a church – into which more than a billion people have been baptised – that needs leadership and is beset by crises. It is a global organisation which, when at its best, sees both the millionaires of Wall St and orphans of Calcutta neither as shareholders nor customers but as created beings of eternal significance.
Ratzinger made his reputation with his 1968 classic An Introduction to Christianity. Written at a time when Maoists and Marxists were jostling for prominence in university movements, it declared: “[The] Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us.”
Amid the exhausting pomp of state visits and the grinding horror of successive scandals, can this elderly man escape the isolation of his office and work to reform and redeem his institution so it can transmit hope?
In this final act of a tumultuous life he may find courage and inspiration. As he said in his 1968 book: “Loneliness is indubitably one of the basic roots from which man's encounter with God has risen.”
He has seen Europe’s people of faith confront Nazism and Stalinism and he now has the challenge of tackling abuse in a work of reformation which could result in deep and lasting renewal.
A Saturday column
Postscript! Saw this in London on Tuesday.
The holder, by definition, does not have a spouse or children to brighten old age and ecclesiastical politics can be every bit as Machiavellian as the skullduggery which takes place in the darkest of Westminster’s corridors.
Any semblance of private life evaporates when someone is chosen as the leader of the world’s largest denomination, and the Pope must even shed his own name.
The arrival of Benedict XVI on the world stage necessitated the exit of Joseph Ratzinger. A sharp-minded, duelling, frequently fascinating but quite uncuddly theologian suddenly had to step into the shoes of Pope John Paul II.
His predecessor had Ronald Reagan’s knack at spotting a photo-op but it is fair to say 83-year-old Benedict XVI is not the man Simon Cowell would choose for such a public role.
When behind the walls of the Vatican or the barriers of a security cordon, he may well nod in agreement at Mother Teresa’s observation that “the most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
He has also had to say goodbye to the freedom he once had to challenge ideas with provocative, intellectually pugilistic prose. A careless phrase can set off riots around the world and put the lives of Catholics and other Christians at risk.
And yet he is at the head of a church – into which more than a billion people have been baptised – that needs leadership and is beset by crises. It is a global organisation which, when at its best, sees both the millionaires of Wall St and orphans of Calcutta neither as shareholders nor customers but as created beings of eternal significance.
Ratzinger made his reputation with his 1968 classic An Introduction to Christianity. Written at a time when Maoists and Marxists were jostling for prominence in university movements, it declared: “[The] Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us.”
Amid the exhausting pomp of state visits and the grinding horror of successive scandals, can this elderly man escape the isolation of his office and work to reform and redeem his institution so it can transmit hope?
In this final act of a tumultuous life he may find courage and inspiration. As he said in his 1968 book: “Loneliness is indubitably one of the basic roots from which man's encounter with God has risen.”
He has seen Europe’s people of faith confront Nazism and Stalinism and he now has the challenge of tackling abuse in a work of reformation which could result in deep and lasting renewal.
A Saturday column
Postscript! Saw this in London on Tuesday.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Thursday, September 09, 2010
American DNA
It is just 597 days since George Bush walked out of the White House for the last time as president and said goodbye to a Washington swirling with excitement about his successor.
Not enough time has passed for memories of the Bush era to start to glow in nostalgic hues.
Nevertheless, in recent weeks anyone who considered his presidency a nightmare has caught a glimpse of how it could have been much, much worse. And, in fact, the former Texan governor may have held back destructive forces of division.
On September 17, 2001, days after Muslim extremists brought the World Trade Centre crashing to the ground, a president famed for wearing cowboy boots stood in his socks at the Islamic Centre of Washington and declared: "Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace, they represent evil and war."
Bush, widely mocked for his fondness for phrases that seemed more suited to a campfire than the Oval Office, actually had a knack of communicating with simple precision to a country which could have been once again ravaged with lynchings.
But now, less than a decade later, there is furious opposition to building an Islamic centre two blocks from the former site of the twin towers and a cab driver has been slashed across the neck, allegedly after being asked if he was a Muslim.
The pastor of a small Florida church has grabbed worldwide publicity by pledging to stage International Burn A Koran Day on Saturday. This has the potential to trigger waves of violence which could eclipse the furore which followed the Danish publication of the Muhammad cartoons in 2005.
We now have the extraordinary spectacle of General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, urging the organisers not to go ahead with this categorically inflammatory event.
Just 46% of Americans approve of Obama’s performance so far, and it is clear that his election did not neutralise or vanquish the right-wing forces which caused mayhem throughout the Clinton years.
Up to 450,000 people gathered around Washington’s Lincoln Memorial at the end of August to hear firebrands Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin call for a restoration of national honour.
Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush Jr corralled America’s assorted libertarians and religious and fiscal conservatives into supporting the Republican establishment but these legions no longer look to the princes of the Washington Beltway for leadership.
Bush sought and failed to reform the immigration system but Arizona is now pursuing a law which could lead to mass detentions.
The adventures of self-publicising demagogues and huckster politicians are dividing a nation that both Bush and Obama pledged to unite. If they disable its formidable ability to accommodate diversity they will have unthreaded the DNA of America.
A Thursday column
Not enough time has passed for memories of the Bush era to start to glow in nostalgic hues.
Nevertheless, in recent weeks anyone who considered his presidency a nightmare has caught a glimpse of how it could have been much, much worse. And, in fact, the former Texan governor may have held back destructive forces of division.
On September 17, 2001, days after Muslim extremists brought the World Trade Centre crashing to the ground, a president famed for wearing cowboy boots stood in his socks at the Islamic Centre of Washington and declared: "Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace, they represent evil and war."
Bush, widely mocked for his fondness for phrases that seemed more suited to a campfire than the Oval Office, actually had a knack of communicating with simple precision to a country which could have been once again ravaged with lynchings.
But now, less than a decade later, there is furious opposition to building an Islamic centre two blocks from the former site of the twin towers and a cab driver has been slashed across the neck, allegedly after being asked if he was a Muslim.
The pastor of a small Florida church has grabbed worldwide publicity by pledging to stage International Burn A Koran Day on Saturday. This has the potential to trigger waves of violence which could eclipse the furore which followed the Danish publication of the Muhammad cartoons in 2005.
We now have the extraordinary spectacle of General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, urging the organisers not to go ahead with this categorically inflammatory event.
Just 46% of Americans approve of Obama’s performance so far, and it is clear that his election did not neutralise or vanquish the right-wing forces which caused mayhem throughout the Clinton years.
Up to 450,000 people gathered around Washington’s Lincoln Memorial at the end of August to hear firebrands Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin call for a restoration of national honour.
Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush Jr corralled America’s assorted libertarians and religious and fiscal conservatives into supporting the Republican establishment but these legions no longer look to the princes of the Washington Beltway for leadership.
Bush sought and failed to reform the immigration system but Arizona is now pursuing a law which could lead to mass detentions.
The adventures of self-publicising demagogues and huckster politicians are dividing a nation that both Bush and Obama pledged to unite. If they disable its formidable ability to accommodate diversity they will have unthreaded the DNA of America.
A Thursday column
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