SIMON JENKINS
"He just cannot kick the habit, familiar to lapsed leftwingers, of loving those with money."
The Guardian, September 28 2007
JESSE JACKSON
"Mayor Livingstone does not just follow public opinion, he moulds public opinion. He is a leader and his record in office speaks for itself."
June 8 2004
TONY BLAIR
"I believe passionately - I may be wrong, but this is my genuine belief - that he would be a disaster for London... But at least, in a sense, he's not my responsibility anymore."
The World Today radio programme, Australia, March 7 2000
PETER TATCHELL
"Ken Livingstone has sided with male Muslim misogynists and homophobes against women and gay Londoners."
July 12 2004
HUGH MUIR
"Imagine being a Premiership football club, condemned to the fate of playing Chelsea every week. Or a tennis player who is always drawn against Federer. Imagine trying to outrun a turbo-charged Porsche when all you have is an Astra... This is what it is like at the moment for Ken Livingstone's political opponents."
The Guardian, October 6 2006
MICHAEL STONE Loyalist paramilitary who came close to assassinating Livingstone in the mid-1980s
"A legitimate target... He was on his own, with a kind of attache case slung over his shoulder. I thought that's how I would do it. I'd clip him on the steps of the Tube."
October 2006
DAVID HIRSCH
"Livingstone is part of a political project that aims to make the visceral loathing of Israel respectable in British society and on the British left."
The Guardian March 22 2006
BORIS JOHNSON
"I can think of plenty of things for which I would like Newtzilla to apologise - the £900 annual cost of the congestion charge for families dropping their kids at school; his evil bendy frankfurter buses, which are a menace to cyclists; his cheerleading for anti-Semitic Muslim clerics such as al-Qaradawi, who supports suicide bombers and the beating of women; the fact that the escalator at Highbury Corner has been unmended for so many months."
February 17 2005
KEVIN ROWLAND
of Dexy's Midnight Runners
"I know one thing... Ken Livingstone is a folk hero."
in the song Reminisce, Part one
MICHAEL PORTILLO
"I saw him enchant a lunch at the Chelsea Flower Show with a speech about his love of newts. Over the starched linen and cut crystal of the capital he won over the Establishment, but without making any concessions to it."
The Times, February 20 2005
FERDINAND MOUNT
On the congestion charge
"The Mayor of London has thus emptied the streets of the capital more effectively than anything else in history except perhaps petrol rationing and the Black Death."
The Times, June 8 2003
"A much flakier figure than is popularly believed."
- Andrew Gilligan
KEN LIVINGSTONE Mayor of London
"This man is to the right of Norman Tebbit; he makes Norman Tebbit look like a cuddly liberal."
the Today Programme, August 2, 2007
DAVID AARONOVITCH
"I originally thought Ken would be a lousy mayor... But it didn't happen. Instead we got the congestion charge, the most successful and courageous attempt to turn back the inevitable gridlock to which the city was condemned. The Mayor got Londoners back on buses, Tube and bicycles. Ken also helped to win London the Olympics, one of the most important and sought-after honours that any city can attain. Far from alienating the bankers and industrialists, Ken wooed them when necessary. Ken, wrong on all the things that don't matter in a London mayor, has been right on almost all the things that do."
The Times, March 11 2008
PETER RIDDELL
"What on Earth did they expect? Ken Livingstone has always been a loudmouth, making outrageous remarks which offend people. And he does not do apologies. In all that, he is like other populist politicians from Silvio Berlusconi to Robert Kilroy-Silk... An inability to control his tongue is part of the Ken package, alongside more positive features such as courage and a willingness to defy the conventional wisdom on policy."
The Times, February 17 2005
ANATOLE KOLETSKY
"Mr Livingstone has proved himself to be Britain's most effective politician since Margaret Thatcher: a man who identifies a problem, reduces it to manageable proportions, decides what to do about it, explains his plans to the public and then carries them through, regardless of opposition."
The Times, June 10 2004
NICK COHEN
"To understand why Ken Livingstone is unfit to be the Labour candidate for Mayor of London, you have to grasp that he has never moved away from the grimy conspirators of the totalitarian left, who have always despised the democratic traditions of the Labour movement."
The Observer, January 20 2008
POLLY TOYNBEE
"Livingstone has earned respect with the bravery and skill of his congestion charge, his London bus revolution and his imposition of 50 per cent affordable housing on every development."
July 17 2007
FIRST POSTED APRIL 21, 2008
