(posted 7886 days ago)Independent
Tony Banks: Cheeky chappy ready for a dirty fight with chirpy Ken
By Sean O'Grady16 September 2002
I am running late for my appointment with Tony Banks, the last declared candidate for the Labour nomination for mayor of London. I hop into a black taxi at Charing Cross station and ask for the House of Commons. As we skirt around Trafalgar Square, now in the process of being pedestrianised by the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, my cabbie makes his views on the increased traffic congestion abundantly clear.
In fact he grows so angry that he cannot bring himself to utter Mr Livingstone's name – "you know who I mean" – even though he voted for him. So I ask him who he'd vote for next time. "Banks," is the unhesitating and unprompted reply. He hasn't heard of the other main runner, the deputy mayor, Ms Nicky Gavron ("Who's he?"). I didn't trouble him with the third Labour aspirant, Bob Shannon, a former leader of Harrow council.
All of which brings a smile to the surprisingly youthful, cheeky chappy, face of Tony Banks. (He is knocking on 60 but looks at least a decade younger.) "I hope you'll put that in your article." Happy to oblige, but Mr Banks knows that winning the cabbies over is only a small part of the challenge he faces.
The problem, of course, is how to beat a seemingly unassailable Mr Livingstone, who has been notably bitchy about Mr Banks, once a close political ally at the Greater London Council, until that body was abolished by Margaret Thatcher in 1986. In a recent interview with The Independent, he said of Mr Banks: "I don't think Tony will be the Labour candidate. Tony is clearly very bitter and I don't think that's simply about me. I think that's exactly what's wrong with British politics, that someone like Tony, who has real ability and devotes his life to politics, comes to the end of their political career and they are able to look back on two years as chair of the general purposes committee of the GLC, two years as chair of the arts committee and two years as sports minister. That's six years in relatively minor roles."
Mr Banks is a tad more generous. He acknowledges that the Mayor is a "huge character nationally", but quickly focuses on Mr Livingstone's central weakness, the question of trust: "I haven't changed, Ken has changed. It's as simple as that. I speak much more in sorrow than in anger about Ken. Ken was someone that I stood up for and said should be leader of the Labour Party and I said I would devote myself to working for him if he did become leader. But although Ken's an exceptional politician, there's something missing from his make-up, and that's loyalty, either to individuals or institutions.
"He did his time on the GLC and then walked away from it. He did virtually nothing inside Parliament, and indeed was going nowhere until Tony Blair picked up on this idea that I put forward in 1990 to have a directly elected mayor. Otherwise Ken Livingstone would probably still be doing game shows. He owes everything to Labour and he walked out of the party. There's no climate of trust between Ken and government ministers because you don't know what Ken's going to do next.
"The one thing you can be certain of is that if it's in Ken's interest, he'll do it. Ken is just a guy who has some exceptional talents but spoils them by being untrustworthy. If the result isn't what Ken wants then he'll turn over everyone and everything."
It all points towards a rather personalised, bitter campaign until polling day in May 2004. Mr Banks wants to see the issue of trust in terms of how it damages the mayoralty rather than the mayor. He wants to see the institution being given more powers because "if the mayor doesn't get more powers it will never effectively work". And he asks who is likely to win those powers from sceptical ministers: the untrustworthy Mr Livingstone or Mr Banks himself who can, in his words, "work with government, but not be a stooge of government".
But what would Mr Banks use his extra powers for? On policy he is sketchy. He wouldn't have introduced the congestion charge because it is an "unfair tax" but he won't abolish it, promising instead an "immediate review". Similarly with the PPP for the London Underground: he was opposed and agrees that "Ken had some good arguments", although he couldn't deploy them as Mr Livingstone spent his time "abusing Gordon Brown and saying the PPP will end up with dead bodies all over the place".
Mr Banks hopes to do better than that, but how? He promises that he has some "alternative ideas" that he will be "sitting down and discussing quietly" with the Treasury over the next 18 months or so. Again, no detail and, as yet, no clear water between him and the incumbent; just the hope that because Mr Brown doesn't actually hate his guts he might be persuaded to loosen the purse strings a little.
A symbolic break Mr Banks would like to see would be a move for the London Assembly and the Mayor from their new building next to Tower Bridge – the so-called "glass testicle" – back into the historic home of London government, County Hall on the South Bank. Now converted into a hotel with an aquarium and a McDonald's attached, this could only be considered if it was "at nil cost to Londoners", he says.
This early in his campaign Mr Banks is not going be "jumping fully armed like Pallas Athena from the head of Zeus", as he puts it. However, he does favour banning smoking in restaurants. There goes the Ab Fab vote, darling.
Where Mr Banks has been fully armed and dangerous for many years is in the war against blood sports. Mayor or not, he is as determined as ever to end hunting with dogs. He is equally clear, and again not a million miles away from Mr Livingstone's positions, on some of the big international issues. He has an honourable record going back to the 1980s of fiercely attacking Saddam Hussein but remains to be convinced in the current debate about military action. "If Saddam is a genuine security threat to London or New York, say, then let's see the evidence, because I'm deeply uneasy about what's going on at the moment. Does he have the capacity to hit London? Give us the evidence. In the meantime, go through the United Nations. There is no room in this world for unilateral action. If the UN sanctions it, I'm in favour of it."
And on the other great historic question – Europe – Mr Banks is again plain-speaking. He is more than happy with the notion of a "United States of Europe" and suggests that it is "inevitable". "Why not? Who's to say that the nation state is the end of development?"
Who indeed? Not Mayor Livingstone, another ardent europhile. Mr Banks' problem – or opportunity – in this campaign may be that his views are so close to Mr Livingstone's that he is regarded as a sort of "Livingstone Lite". That's good if Mr Banks can persuade Londoners that he wants the same sort of things as Mr Livingstone does, but is less extreme and has a better chance of persuading Mr Blair and Mr Brown to give him the money to achieve them. It's bad if Londoners think that, as with Frank Dobson before, Mr Banks wouldn't stick up for the capital and that his loyalty to Labour would make him a soft touch for ministers.
Mr Banks says the choice is between "a mayor who can do a deal for London or a nice chirpy fella who is independent but in the end can't deliver. If you want the chirpy fella, vote for Ken". Ken the chirpy fella versus Tony the cheeky chappy: it's going to be a dirty fight.
Anthony Louis Banks: The CV
Born: Belfast, 8 April 1943
Education: St John's School, Brixton, London; Archbishop Tenison's Grammar School, Kennington, London; York University (BA); London School of Economics
Family: Married to Sally Jones, no children
Career: Greater London Council: Member for Hammersmith (1970-77) and for Tooting (1981-86);
Labour MP for Newham North West (1983-97);
MP for West Ham (1997-);
Opposition spokesman for pensions (1990-1991); transport and environment (1992-1993); junior minister, Department of Culture, Media and Sport (1997-1999)