[lbo-talk] Red Ken calls 'em as he sees 'em

Colin Brace cb at lim.nl
Fri Mar 31 00:46:23 PST 2006


Livingstone should guard his tongue but not spare his language

When politicians stop talking like ordinary people they stop being democrats and turn into oligarchs

Simon Jenkins Friday March 31, 2006 The Guardian

Sticks and stones may break bones, but words these days are killers. In parliament an honourable gentleman may commit a terminological inexactitude. In Ken Livingstone's City Hall he is a lying, cheating scumbag whose kinship to a rat is an insult to honest vermin.

On balance I prefer City Hall. Modern political language is wholly out of touch with ordinary speech. The 18th-century circumlocutions of parliament are like its costumes and procedure, as far from the average London bar as a Pickwickian club. Even John Prescott, the Coleridge of codswallop, cannot puncture its politesse and is reduced to gibberish.

Livingstone has been struggling for years to bring political discourse closer to the common man. He uses the tube, gets drunk, shouts at his girlfriend and accuses reporters of being Nazis. He finds that it bonds him with the civic polity. Earlier this month he was faced with the nuances of high finance in Stratford-atte-Bow. Rising to the occasion, he told two bankers from Bombay to go back to Iran where they belonged. This week he turned his legendary charm on the United States ambassador to the Court of St James. In a dispute over a congestion-charge penalty he called him a used-car salesman and "chiselling little crook".

As elected monarch of the world's greatest capital, Livingstone has long left something to be desired. He has the diplomatic skills of Attila the Hun. I understand that members of his staff are worried that he may be in need of men in white coats. If so he has my sympathy and I hope he gets better soon. But I have to report that his remarks are not greeted with dismay on the terraces at Highbury or in the dives of Hoxton. Here Livingstone is regarded as saying it more or less as it is, which is why London keeps voting for him.

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full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1743556,00.html

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Colin Brace

Amsterdam



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