Yesterday morning I watched Livingstone’s runner-up speech (you can see the whole five minutes here). Although there were moments when it was difficult not to feel human sympathy with a man confronted with the humiliation of what was an extremely personal defeat, at the same time it seems that his extraordinary lack of self-awareness stayed with him till the last. In the middle of the speech, he pulled out this gem:
“…and I think how different the result might have been, if the BBC hadn’t cancelled that Question Time debate, and stopped candidates being interviewed on the Today programme.
But, irrespective of bias in the media…”
No words of apology to the thousands of London activists for the things done or said in a disastrous campaign which was patently thrown by the candidate himself. No, instead – and you really couldn’t make this up – the traditional attempt to make himself the victim of antipathic media, a reflexive tactic used throughout the last forty years of his career. And how wonderfully ironic that he should pick the one outlet which is regularly accused of being full of woolly lefties.
Ah, it was all the BBC’s fault. The terrible, nasty, right-wing BBC.
My fourth piece at the New Statesman, on a more important way in which Livingstone was affected by the media, is now up here.
Livingstone lost the election himself. Not due to Bozza being a better candidate.
Yup.