Anti-PC maverick mayor could have a dangerous appeal here

Who stands a chance of beating Ken Livingstone in the mayoral election in two years' time?

I don't know, but I do now know the job specification. The candidates should have money, charm and a raffish private life. A taste for flamboyant publicity would help. They should be outspokenly liberal on drugs, sex and gay rights, but in other respects Right-wing. He or she should be a fierce London " nationalist", seeking to protect Londoners from unfair taxes, meddling bureaucrats, the European Union and, wait for it, new immigrants. A strong appeal to the "darker side" of the old Labour vote would be a particular advantage against Mr Livingstone.

In other words, the candidate would be a facsimile of the murdered Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn. Openly gay and unashamed to flaunt his chauffeured cars, Mr Fortuyn built his core support around the squalor and crime which, he claimed, resulted from Dutch cities being "too overcrowded". He was not a racist and detested Jean-Marie Le Pen, though he disliked those Muslims who described his sexuality as "worse than that of pigs". He simply wanted no more newcomers.

Mr Fortuyn and his fledgling party came from nowhere this March to take 37 per cent of the vote in the Rotterdam city elections, capturing a third of the council seats. He was predicted to take over a quarter of the seats at the national assembly elections later this month. His party may do equally well in his absence.

Could such a message catch on here? Perhaps not in Britain as a whole. Such a complex brew of interest and prejudice might be too rich for the conservative British voter to stomach. But London is a different matter. First, it has direct elections. The vote goes to a name not a party. And the name, not the party, takes executive office. Unlike a constituency MP, the candidate has the responsibility, and some power, to deliver on his or her mandate.

London is a modern city, like Rotterdam only more so. In electing Mr Livingstone, Londoners showed themselves ready to defy party politics and vote for a mildly eccentric personality. Might they now be ready for stronger medicine?

Citizen Ken made much of being all things to all people. He pieced together his version of a "rainbow coalition", composed of ethnic minorities, public-sector workers, benefits claimants and students. It was a heady mix of affinity groups and the politically correct. It worked.

Fortuyn mobilised a different community. He appealed to the urban middle class, to gays and recreational drug users, to unconventional people who did not think of themselves as Right-wing, but who feared crime and valued the Dutch language and culture. America calls them "BoBos" - bourgeois Bohemians. Fortuyn then went beyond this group, reaching poorer voters whose jobs were threatened and neighbourhoods swamped by Holland's ballooning immigrant population. He called the bluff of political correctness. He called immigrants immigrants and many people breathed a sigh of relief.

Fortuyn also exploited something else. He took a leaf from the book that was sold to New York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani by the Manhattan Institute thinktank. They argued that citizens expect one thing above all of their mayor - security. Just as the first job of national government is defence, so too is it the first job of civic government.

Giuliani was told to "cleanse the streets". He was told to devote every resource to clearing away the muggers, the druggies, the beggars, the squeegy merchants, the graffiti artists. Don't argue, he told his police force, just get them out of sight and yourselves in sight. Police the pavements, the gutters and the walls. Zero tolerance of petty crime became visible. It raised the morale of citizens and of the law enforcers. It was a version of "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves". New York's streets should not "belong to the night", they should be reclaimed by the people who paid taxes to keep them clean.

This message is still ignored by London's Mayor, who does not want to upset the police, the toughest of all London trade unions. It worked for Giuliani and was electoral gold for Fortuyn. By allying an anti-crime message to his anti-immigrant stance, Fortuyn embraced the old Right without wholly alienating the new Left. He fiercely denied he was racist, just against "any more people" in overcrowded Rotterdam.

This is potent politics. Unlike the watered-down "social Thatcherism" of the Blairites, it is direct, clear and raw. It makes Mr Livingstone seem hippie-ish and old-fashioned. It wants to protect a city's existing citizens, whatever their colour, and does not mind saying so. It calls a spade a spade and jeers at media commentators who tut-tut: "Oh my goodness, you can't say things like that." You can say what you like if you do not have party whips round your neck. Out there in the street, people like politicians who speak their minds.

It may not be my mind. I do not believe urban politics should be based on hostility to newcomers. A great city is wholly dependent on them. As young people grow up and move out, immigrants must take their place - immigrants from somewhere and anywhere. Poor migratory workers in the black economy are needed to do jobs indigenous people will not do. They clean, drive buses and work late in shops. A quarter of all Londoners were not born in the city. Without them London would be impossibly expensive, a sort of offshore Switzerland. That, too, is calling a spade a spade.

But I do not live in a part of London whose estates, schools and hospitals now feel under siege from the currently unregulated inflow of migrants. People in these neighbourhoods also have democratic rights. They are entitled to be represented by someone who expresses their point of view. They may yet turn to nastier characters than Pim Fortuyn. I would not vote for such candidates. But I would like the chance to vote against them.