BRITAIN:The duel between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson could be mean and bitter - but also hilarious, writes Frank Miller, London Editor
Both men enjoy first-name recognition in households across Britain, and their battle for power will be monitored carefully for any national implications beyond their immediate constituency.
Boris Johnson versus Ken Livingstone is hardly on a par with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Indeed, as the Democratic Party giants battle for the right to fight John McCain for the leadership of the free world, many Londoners remain unconvinced about the Blairite initiative that gave them an elected mayor in the first place.
Yet with Britain's political classes transfixed, like the rest of us, by America's dramatic presidential election, the foppish old Etonian's challenge to "King Newt" at least promises respite from the current tedium of a Brown-Cameron contest that could run to 2010.
Livingstone will be at the Irish Embassy next week for a reception unveiling plans for London's annual St Patrick's Day Festival. The next day, March 18th, is earmarked for the formal launch of campaigns for the May Day poll.
Livingstone, then an MP, originally described the idea of an elected mayor as "barmy". However, that didn't stop him seeking Labour's nomination and then quitting the party to defeat Frank Dobson and claim a position many Londoners plainly thought made for him.
Having predicted Livingstone would be a "disaster" for London - and plainly impressed by his now-famous congestion charge - Tony Blair bowed to the inevitable, saw one-time "Red Ken" readmitted to the party, and campaigned for him last time out. The intervening years saw the mayor spectacularly rise to the occasion and speak for the great majority of Londoners in the potentially dangerous and divisive aftermath of the 7/7 bombings. And this year will see prime minister Gordon Brown equally energetically endorse the Livingstone candidacy, notwithstanding his opposition to the Iraq war and the Bush White House.
Much so-called conventional wisdom would suggest the prize is Livingstone's to lose, and that David Cameron's resurgence in and around the capital might be halted by the Conservative Party's choice of a television "celebrity" candidate whose self-deprecating style and capacity to entertain unfortunately also reinforce doubts about whether he is actually a serious contender for high public office.
However, even previously sceptical Tories say they are convinced the outcome will be knife-edged. And the latest opinion polls likewise point to the closest contest yet since the office was created. One poll this week would have pleasantly surprised Boris Johnson, giving him a five-point lead. However, a second fitted more sober Tory assessments of the likely current position, giving Livingstone a two-point advantage in a final run-off.
The second preferences of voters backing Lib Dem candidate (and former metropolitan deputy assistant police commissioner) Brian Paddick could be as crucial as they are impossible to predict, in what in many respects may reflect an inner London-outer London battle. As one Tory strategist puts it: "You can see Lib Dems in Sutton and Cheam, or Bromley, transferring to Boris, but then in places like Hackney and Lambeth they'll go to Ken."
Johnson knows after 20 years opining in the columns of the Daily Telegraph and Spectator that the mayor, as Boris put it recently, enjoys "hordes of taxpayer-funded spin-doctors who have been trawling through every word I have ever written in the hope of finding something discreditable". And Livingstone has already had the Tory hopeful on the defensive over an article some years ago in which he described African children as "piccaninnies" and their parents as having "watermelon smiles". Johnson insisted his comments had been taken out of context and that racism is simply not in his heart.
Some opponents on the left, meanwhile, have grown increasingly irritated by Livingstone's tendency to brand critics as racist or racially motivated and by controversies such as those surrounding some of his highly-paid advisers and the distribution of funds by the London Development Agency to some community groups allegedly without proper scrutiny.
So this election has the potential to prove mean and bitter - and, also, hilarious and more than a bit ridiculous. Johnson's team suspected dirty tricks after learning Scotland Yard was to investigate the alleged theft of a cigar case he had cheerfully admitted taking from the home of Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's former deputy prime minister, in Baghdad.
With home secretary Jacqui Smith afraid to walk the streets of the capital after dark, Livingstone would presumably agree that his friend Sir Ian Blair's men in blue have better things to be doing with their time.