How not to beat Ken

The Tory campaign against Ken Livingstone ahead of next year's mayoral election has been stunningly inept. They haven't got a candidate, and have been making sure that the process of finding one is as drawn out and humiliating as possible. They seem to want to fight the election on the issues of scrapping free bus travel for pensioners and young people. And now they've voted in the House of Lords to try to limit the number of terms the Mayor of London can serve - preventing Ken from standing.

This plan wouldn't be so bad if it had the slightest chance of working (abolishing the GLA may have made Ken very popular, but at least they managed to pass it under Maggie Thatcher), but it will obviously be thrown out by the House of Commons. The plan of trying to stop Ken via what is seen as an undemocratic stitchup hasn't been awfully successful in the past when tried by a variety of his opponents.

Bit of bad planning to try this stunt the day after David Cameron announced that he believed in devolving power, localism and more elected mayors. For some reason he didn't mention the bit about the Tory plan for the Lords to have a veto on any candidates who the Tories hate but can't beat.