Giiligan on Livingstone

Curses. Compelled to acknowledge that Andrew Gilligan, the journopuke who vaulted to celebrity by dropping the late MoD leaker David Kelly in it, has published something in the Telegraph that badly needed publicising.

The egregious Ken Livingstone, Edward Heath-like in his inability to accept that his time has passed, is basing his campaign to be the Labour party candidate for mayor of London on the support of the troglodyte trades unions whose lack of concern for the public good is fully reciprocated by a public that wishes them ill.

His campaign office is located within the Euston headquarters of the Transport Salaried Staff Association, which is due to bring the London underground to a halt from 2100 hrs tonight. Funding for his campaign has come from the notorious Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (the name alone speaks volumes about how forward-looking they are) and Unite, the behemoth that has gathered together the shrunken remains of many of the unions that made life so miserable for Brits back in the 1970s.

So - he's Labour. What do you expect? I think Gilligan is overly sanguine in thinking that being in the pocket of the trades unions will count against Livingstone in either the Labour party selection process or in the 2012 mayoral election. The hard core of envious yellow-dog Labour supporters in London will exult in the disruption, and some prosperous suburbanites may vote for him as the candidate most likely to bring it to an end.