Ken Livingstone is playing the Tories at their own game

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/10/ken-livingstone-tories-mayor

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"What is Ken Livingstone playing at?" whisper some Labour voices quietly. Is he trying to throw the London mayoral election just when things look like they're going his way? Livingstone has never been one to mince his words or shy away from a media furore. So when the latest opportunity came along in an interview with the New Statesman, he let rip at his traditional foes: Margaret Thatcher, greedy bankers and, yes, rightwing attitudes to homosexuality.

This week the Conservatives could not fall over themselves fast enough to condemn him for his apparently homophobic comments – he said the party was "riddled" with gay people who hid their orientation. Oh, and he said that gay bankers wouldn't want to move to Dubai because they would "get their penises chopped off". Move beyond the un-PC language and none of this is untrue. Faux-outrage coming from a party that is currently resisting giving gay people the right to be married would be considered chutzpah, even if you were trying to be generous. But this doesn't so much hurt him as do his job for him.

Consider this: Livingstone has two key difficulties to overcome if he is to win the mayoral election in May. He has to look and sound independent – speaking his mind and standing up for what he believes in – and be visible in the national press as a force to be reckoned with. He is finding it difficult to position himself against the Labour party because, well, he likes Ed Miliband. So he has to find other ways to make some noise and get Londoners to remember he still has the capacity to push the envelope.

Just a few months ago the Evening Standard, which had it in for Livingstone even at the last election, splashed on the revelation that he had compared Boris Johnson to Hitler. Tories were outraged – it was a light-hearted joke, of course, spun by both the Tories and the press as a bizarre slur. Londoners shrugged it off; Livingstone has risen by about eight points in the polls since then. Who knew they were more interested in issues such as transport and policing?

Once, Johnson and his team loved riling up the so-called political correctness brigade. They were the outriders willing to say it like they thought. But no longer – they've become the cautious incumbents. And so the only alternative for them now is to try and spin Livingstone as a gaffe-prone bumbling fool. In the latest bout of interviews, Jemima Khan remarked that she found Johnson remarkably "boring" and guarded, while Livingstone was happy to talk freely.

Keep in mind that Livingstone has been doing this for decades; he is the master of reinvention, perhaps only second to Madonna. Only a fool would think he wouldn't realise how his words get twisted and sensationalised into a controversy. He could very easily end up having the last laugh.

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