This one should be obvious, shouldn’t it?

But I don’t think so. Not Gordon Brown, who is in a distinctly lamed position after the thorough mauling. Not, as Ali suggests, Tessa Jowls, who somehow managed to fail to secure re-election for a controversial but popular mayor facing a clownish opponent who did not even live in the city. Not even Ken himself, who has no further aspirations or hopes of a political life save perhaps in the instance of a Boris-triggered implosion beyond the salvation offered by the super-heroics of even Brian Paddick.

No, I would suggest that the true loser of this election was none other than Nick Cohen.

He took the anti-Livingstone line in this election, hardly much of a surprise to anyone who read his book “What’s Left” where he wrote of how Ken spoke at the funeral of the leader of the Worker’s Revolutionary Party. Cohen managed to defend the unusual position of being an open leftist attacking the most powerful progressive in the country when a blundering reactionary stood to gain by advocating a 1st choice vote for Brian Paddick. In a move that doubtless made political scientists the nation over saturate their newspapers and computer screens with spurted tea he wrote numerous articles to the affect of ‘Robocop’ Paddick being in with a chance of triumph.

This was at least a tad better than Andrew Gilligan, who offered no real excuse for his assault on a politician he agreed with, seeming to operate entirely out of dedicated malice, most likely inspired by the thorough trashing delivered to him by the Hutton Report. Understandable though his annoyance is with the Labour Government his actions doubtless contributed substantially to the victory of Johnson. They also meant that Cohen’s contrarian fluster was stolen by a man who had attempted to destroy the case for war that had been meticulously constructed by the Labour party and firmly defended, most notably, by Cohen. The two men were brought together in their efforts to eject a left politician in favour of a Tory.

Funny how these things work out.

Regardless of the sense behind this sordid little escapade it was certainly a success. Well, in so far as the singular socialist success story of this decade in this country was ended and a wealthy Etonian & Oxbridge old boy came to power and thus paved the way for his friend of identical credentials to take power.

If Paddick had not been around then perhaps this would not have been the case. He certainly did Livingstone few favours by the constant attacks. Worse still the focus of the debates was reduced by his very presence and it is unquestionable that more screen time would have provided more rope for him to hang himself with, not to mention the power of a direct and uninterrupted comparison of the two contenders almost certainly favouring Livingstone. This is not to say that Paddick had no place in the race, but simply to emphasise that with his share of the votes he would need to have done around four times as well to reach the second round.

Perhaps Cohen knew this. He is certainly not an unintelligent man and must have read the polls. It may have been quite simply an exercise in assuaging the guilt of his leftist audience. What I suspect that he did not know was Paddick’s second preference. Which was, in case you were unaware, for the anti-war, anti-Zionist
anti-American, highly sectarian, old school Trotskyite socialist SWP-front Left List, who are usually one of two parties referring to themselves as Respect and would have been in these elections had that been legal after a messy split involving esoteric accusations of “Communalism” and complaints about Democratic Centralism.

Yes, Cohen’s Livingstone loathing led him not only to join in a toad alliance with the man who exposed the central lies of the case for war in Iraq but also to repeatedly advocate electing instead a man who voted for the epitome of everything he dislikes about the left.

Ah well, at least Red Ken and his plans for affordable housing aren’t around anymore.