LONDON, June 22 (UPI) -- America and Americans, policies and people played a surprisingly large role in the elections for the executive mayor of the four-year old Greater London Authority earlier this month.
This new type of city leadership was set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and was a huge departure from traditional British practise. The London Mayoralty is based on the American model of the big city boss. Blair got to know America when he was a junior politician. He traveled extensively around America on a State Department visitor program in 1986 and 1992 before becoming leader of Britain's Labour Party in 1994.
Blair's original hope was that a high-profile or independent business personality would become the Mayor of London. But none was willing to do the job. Instead, an old enemy emerged, Ken Livingstone, a highly controversial figure in British politics for the past three decades. But he was prevented from being the Labor candidate at the inaugural elections of the new mayoralty in 2000. However, Livingstone then stood as an independent and beat Blair's official candidate into a humiliating fourth place.
When Livingstone led a previous form of London government in the 1980s he was reviled by one leading tabloid newspaper as "the most odious man in Britain" because of his hard-left policies and, in particular, his links with Sinn Fein at a time when its paramilitary wing, the Irish Republican Army was still bombing London and trying to assassinate British politicians.
Despite his hard-left stance, Mayor Livingstone appointed American transport executive Bob Kiley as London's main transport supremo. Kiley was a CIA officer who infiltrated student movements around the world for the agency before entering the transport industry where he was credited with the successful running of transit systems in Boston and New York.
Kiley brought several other American transport executives with him to run London's creaking transport system. The London subway boss is Tim O'Toole, a Philadelphian who led a multi-billion dollar U.S. railroad company.
Kiley has himself been a controversial opponent of the British Government's decision to impose its partial privatization of the London subway system on the elected London authority.
Kiley was also an issue in the June London elections. Livingstone's main Conservative opponent, Steve Norris told me that "Kiley would go on day one. He is utterly useless, being paid a huge amount of money and achieving nothing. He's turned the whole organization into chaos, morale is appalling."
Norris lost. But even he would have also imported policies and personnel from New York. He visited the Big Apple to study the city's policies of zero tolerance pioneered by former Mayor Rudi Giuliani and pledged to hire
Giuliani's team to cut crime in London.
American foreign policy was also a hot issue in the election because Livingstone has been a fierce opponent of the US/UK invasion and occupation of Iraq. Livingstone hopes that President George W. Bush will be "consigned to the dustbin of history" in the presidential elections. Bush could then be "prosecuted for the war crimes he has overseen and unleashed."
Livingstone also says in relation to the Kyoto Treaty on greenhouse gas emissions that, "Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."
Lvingstone's opposition to the war echoed majority opinion in the British capital. None of the main candidates supported the war in Iraq but they criticized his political grandstanding over the issue. Livingstone's striking victory suggests that the controversy did nto hurt him.
Another common issue between New York and London is the possibility that London will one day import a variant of New York's ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces. A similar policy has this year been introduced into the Irish Republic and has faced minimal resistance and enjoyed maximal compliance. It is probably only a matter of time before London follows both New York and Dublin.
But the policy traffic is not all one way. The central achievement of Livingstone's first term of office has been the introduction of a daily $10 congestion charge on automobiles and trucks in Central London. It was a politically risky move but is widely seen as having successfully reduced both traffic and congestion and is being examined by cities around the world, including in America.
However, this transatlantic synergy has its sharp edges too. Livingstone leads a city that has lost many of its old-style manufacturing jobs and is increasingly dependent on financial and business services for employment.
London must defend its competitive position against cities such as New York, by accommodating finance capital.
Livingstone may have been an old-time liberal but he knows that he needs to make life sweet for finance capital and therefore he has decided to imitate the American model by encouraging high-density office and residential accommodation.
Livingstone will allow one year skyscraper in each of the next 15 years. The skyline won't dwarf some of London's more famous sights and won't approach Manhattan proportions but American lessons will be clear.
London and New York are also in competition to win the 2012 Olympic games. Until recently, the American entrepreneur Barbara Cassani led the campaign for the London bid.
But for all his popularity and political independence, Livingstone still
has far less powers than an American Mayor. Government in Britain is highly centralized and devolved institutions such as London's are largely subordinate to central government.
Livingstone is seeking to wrest new powers from the government in the hope that the New World's models of governance can help rescue Old World London from decay. So it's safe to safe that American policies and personnel will continue to play a pivotal role in London.
(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
