Please share this link with those who might be interested.

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/mybook2.html

P.S. The book is waiting for a reviewer

Draw your own conclusions.

Well setting aside the fact that his campaign manager was the distinctly un-trot Tessa Jowell, this is utter bullshit. I’m no fan of some of Ken’s gesture politics, or his courting of weirdos like Qardawi, but such factors were correctly largely irrelevant in the election. There were tactical errors in that campaign – they shouldn’t have bothered with the Boris is extreme right-wing, but concentrated on the fact that he’s a buffoon who could fuck up a pot of tea, as he has proved to be.

“I talk to people in Labour…” Well done. I’m actually a party member, and a lot of people I know were actually quietly appreciative of the canvassing the trots did, and quietly pessimistic that the sort of high-profile candidate Millbank might tout next time would mobilise the same level of support. Occasionally people say HArriet HArman, for a laugh.

*checks Boriswatch*

Yep. It must be a law or something.

No idea, I just make the coffee.

The accusations of sectarianism should be made against Ken

You can make all the accusations against him you like. But the reality is that London Mayoral politics is Ken V Boris. If there was another figure with anything like Ken’s popularity amongst ordinary Londoners then it might be worth a gamble putting him up as Mayoral candidate. But no such figure has appeared and anyone else will lose. So the way it looks to me at at the moment without Ken the Labour party might as well not bother.

Graham: “I’m afraid in this case I’d have to agree.”

How come Benji’s allowed to post again? Mind you, he agreed with me the other day, so that’s obviously a sign of increasing maturity of opinion.

Anyway, I completely disagree. I think David’s ongoing campaign agaisnt Ken in the pages of this blog actually during the election was overly sectarian (though I understand where he was coming from), but why not warn the party that some of its supporters will baulk at backing Ken again?

The accusations of sectarianism should be made against Ken – some of us despised him for his thumbing his nose at the moderates in the party and his constant fondness for the Trot-ish grand gesture. His whole approach was to slag off the government for Iraq and anti-terrorism and being generally too right wing and then expect its supporters to lap it up and back him and the tiny clique that he imposed on the London Labour Party, despite his extremist paranoid ramblings. (And that, of course, is what lots of us did.) Deeply sectarian stuff.

Problem with that is that he is the only London politician that the tories fear (which is why you get comments like the above.)

Its personality politics. Ken has one and so does Boris. Where are the realistic alternatives?

Ken still lost. Not that good an asset, then.