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Eccentric duo battle in London vote

  • Story Highlights
  • Londoners voting for the city's mayor Thursday in a tightly contested election
  • Mayoral contest could help decide result of the next General Election
  • Ken Livingstone has been London's only mayor and is seeking a third term
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From Robin Oakley
CNN European Political Editor
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- The contest to be London's mayor, running a city of about 13 million people, has come at a crucial moment in British politics. It could help determine the outcome of the next general election.

Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson are in a fiercely fought contest to be London Mayor.

Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson are in a fiercely fought contest to be London Mayor.

But the contest is essentially one between two highly individualistic, maverick politicians who are in no way typical of the parties whose colors they bear: Labour's Ken Livingstone and the Conservatives' Boris Johnson.

Both are "love them or hate them" personalities with a flair for publicity that has made them better-known to the British public than most Cabinet ministers.

Greater London has had an elected mayor (not to be confused with the more ceremonial figure of the Lord Mayor of London, representing the interests of the financial City of London) for only the past eight years.

For all that time, the job has been held by Livingstone, who is seeking a third term. He has the backing of Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but it was not always so.

A quirky left-winger known in the days of the now-defunct Greater London Council as Red Ken, Livingstone was opposed by his party's hierarchy and won the job the first time only after resigning from Labour and running as an independent.

Realizing that they were better off rejoining him than trying to beat him Tony Blair and the Labour leadership later took Livingstone -- whose "cheeky chappie" anti-establishment approach has appealed to many outside his own party -- back into Labour's ranks.

After a search for a "personality" candidate to take on Livingstone, which took them up some bizarre alleys, the Conservatives, or Tories, finally settled on Johnson, an MP for an out of London parliamentary seat, a prolific journalist and a gaffe-prone exhibitionist whose life is never a quiet one.

He was dropped as a front bench spokesman by a previous Tory leader after lying about an extramarital affair. During his editorship of the Spectator right-wing political magazine, Johnson accused the people of Liverpool of "reveling in victimhood" over the death of Iraqi hostage Ken Bigley. He was promptly dispatched there by his party chief leaders to apologize. He also upset others by writing about "piccaninnies" -- a racially offensive term -- waving to the queen. Video Watch Johnson arrive to cast his vote. »

But somehow, wit and charm carry him through. With a certain amount of bravado. In trouble again for calling citizens of another town "fat," he was seen on a car roof declaiming: "It is a great joy to be here in Swindon, one of the few places in the British Isles I haven't yet insulted."

His unruly mop of blond hair gives image-makers sleepless nights. His lack of political correctness on TV chat shows, which has made him one of the country's best-known lawmakers without holding any significant office, is legendary.

But the importation of Australian polling guru Lynton Crosby and a team of professional image-minders has seen Boris the joker become Boris the policy-maker, with plans to tackle London street crime and replace the unpopular "bendy buses," even if he can't remember sometimes whether that will cost £8 million ($16 million) or £100 million.

Livingstone, under pressure from sections of the media for personal aggrandizement, cronyism and political posturing with taxpayers' money, has against this phenomenon chosen to run on his record, insisting that although his opponent may have his attractions as a candidate, he could never run London.

Livingstone's record includes the imposition of a congestion charge on bringing cars into the capital to thin London's traffic, the provision of more buses and police and a role in helping bring the 2012 Olympics to London.

The two are, of course, faced by eight other candidates, including gay former assistant police commissioner Brian Paddick for the Liberal Democrats, Sian Berry for the Greens and Richard Barnbrook for the hardline anti-immigrant British National Party, which is hoping to win its first London Assembly seat in the concurrent Assembly elections.

For the media, though, it has all along been little more than the Boris and Ken show. And the result will be crucial not just to their personal political fortunes but to the parties they represent.

Since he took over for Blair less than a year ago, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has seen his and his party's opinion poll ratings tumble, especially after his team talked up and he then ducked a general election last autumn. Party morale is visibly disintegrating while the Tories are gaining in confidence.

If London's voters oust Livingstone and install Johnson, however untypical both may be of their parties, the skids will be seen to be under Labour, and Brown will face bitter internal wrangles in a despairing party. Restoring Labour's poll lead before the next general election will become a superhuman task.

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Meanwhile, the Conservatives under David Cameron, who attended exclusive Eton College alongside Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, will begin to believe that they are within striking range of regaining national power for the first time since 1997.

No wonder that Cameron insists of Johnson: "underneath that somewhat disheveled exterior, there is someone with real drive, real passion and real commitment." E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

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