Ken Livingstone

Do you think, are we going down the pathway of paying for our health and our treatments?

I remember about 20-odd years ago, was it Ken Livingstone? Do you know what? I'd remember that, and I don't.

There was a politician who was asked a similar kind of question.

And his response was, I think you'll see tanks in the street before you see a pay for NHS.

As you say, you were the Tory candidate for London mayor.

And then it was Stephen Norris and Ken Livingstone won that initial election and was reelected.

Is there a world, is there a parallel universe out there where you become London mayor and things would have been different? I mean, how do you think London would have been different had you won the election?

I'd have captained the England cricket team.

But no, I'm not.

I'm not Ken Livingstone.

I'm more West Ken than Red Ken.

Quite frankly, for those Londoners watching, you'll understand that reference.

They were all, driven from the perspective of what is the best thing we can do here for legacy? You know, should this venue be a temporary venue or should it be a permanent venue? And if it is a permanent venue, what does it need to do to be a permanent venue? And how do we make sure that that's built into the investment for games? And it was sort of, it was a really very, very rigorous and quite incisive approach because it was driven partly around the How do you facilitate the best outcomes for the future? Given that the mayor had basically said, right, the Games is coming here because I want this part of London to have equal opportunities to the western part of London.

Ken Livingstone had a very clear vision about that.

And so that was really instrumental in all of the decision making.

And it's transformed the way in which Olympic Games are now run across the world.

And my third guest is Dee Corsi, the chief executive of the new West End Company, which represents hundreds of businesses in the area and has long backed plans to make Oxford Street traffic free.

Indeed, these plans date all the way back to 2006 when then Mayor Ken Livingstone had the plan to close Oxford Street vehicles and to put in a new tram service.

Thanks for joining us, Dee.

Thanks, John.

I think they are two separate points, although Paul's absolutely right to hold us to account and ensure that we're factoring in some of the concerns that are being aired and surfaced.

We've spent decades discussing this principle.

I mean, we've on this podcast mentioned since the days of Ken Livingstone.

I remember doing my geography GCSE and reading the Buchanan report published in 1967, which started talking about actually how do we change Oxford Street moving from being a traffic corridor.

What did you find?

Well, there was quite a lot of political opposition, you know, of the GLC under Ken Livingstone and John McDonnell, who's still around.

It was really interesting.

This goes back to one of the things that really resonated with Michael's example of the US Institute for Peace and people looking at how you describe a programme and just saying, Why would you do that? Private aviation.

That's an interesting one with Sadiq.

Is there going to be a bit of Khan fatigue as there was a bit of Ken fatigue? In 2012, certainly, I think, and 2008 with Ken Livingstone, would he be able to excite the Labour vote as he has done in the past? And the third condition is that the Conservative candidate, who would be the chief rival, I think, doesn't have a lot of crossover appeal.

Now, of course, the classic example of a Conservative candidate who did have a lot of crossover appeal was Boris Johnson.

There were some other circumstances that helped him, particularly in 2008, as you'll remember.

Has your politics ever been shaped by animals, Will? Because I tell an anecdote in the column that my first ever vote, I was first eligible to vote in the London mayoral election in 2008.

And I'm ashamed to say that I did not vote for Ken Livingstone, not for any strongly held ideological views, but because he was the one who got rid of the pigeons from Trafalgar Square.

And I loved going to feed the pigeons on Trafalgar Square.

A terrible confession.

Jeremy Corbyn is also English through and through.

Okay, then you've got Ken Livingstone.

These people are awful, and they hate this country.

Then you've got people like Zia Yusuf and Suella Braverman, who might not be ethnically Anglo-Saxon English-