Give London a new choice - not just the same old rivals

The race is on. The line-up is awful. Something must be done. Nominations close tomorrow for Labour's candidacy for the mayoral election in 18 months' time. The present incumbent, Ken Livingstone, has no intention of standing down.

In today's Standard, the first on-line poll of the new political season has him well ahead of any likely rival. This has already scared off one Labour challenger, Trevor Phillips, and one Tory hopeful, Sebastian Coe. Mr Livingstone remains the man to beat. Please God, let someone try.

Yesterday the veteran MP, Tony Banks, entered the lists. A former colleague of Mr Livingstone, he is that no longer. A dark curtain has come down between the old comrades. Revenge is in the air. This will vastly increase the entertainment value of the campaign, if not its worth to London.

Mr Banks saw service on Lambeth Council in its most lunatic era, a fact now omitted from his Who's Who entry. As an MP, he was briefly a culture minister but is now back in the wilderness. To win the nomination he must defeat the declared candidacy of the Deputy Mayor, Nicky Gavron. That should not be hard. Mr Banks will have wide support among the Livingstone-hating Labour loyalists. He will shatter Mr Livingstone's " sweetheart" strategy, which was to welcome Ms Gavron as his rival on the first ballot but accept her recommended second preferences on the second. In return Mr Livingstone would keep her as his deputy.

I imagine Mr Banks would rather give his second preference votes to a fox-hunting, biblebashing monarchist than to Mr Livingstone. He might even have in mind the result he may well achieve, which is a split vote on the left which lets in the likely Tory candidate, Steve Norris. Mr Banks's announcement is the best news for the Tories in years.

It will not be so easy. Since no one is likely to win on the first round, these elections are about second preference votes. Mr Norris will need a harvest of these, and from the centre-left. That is why he is out for all the Liberal Democrats, Greens, gays and ethnic groups he can muster.

He is broadminded to a fault on social policy. He is sceptical on Iraq. We will see no embraces between him and his leader, Iain Duncan Smith, now returning the Conservatives to the Dark Ages on drugs. Mr Norris has to convince a million voters under 35 that he is no Tory at heart.

So there we are. Four years of the mayoralty and we are faced with another trio of parliamentary re-treads. Who knows but Lord Archer, too, may be out of jail by polling day in 2004, the beaming candidate of the ex-cons? All are within hailing distance of 60. The prospect is grim.

Today's poll shows that Mr Livingstone has almost nothing but a glitzy office and a few more buses to show for his mayoralty. There has been little of the dynamism shown by other independent mayors, such as Ray Mallon of Middlesbrough and Stuart Drummond of Hartlepool, both proving remarkably effective. Labour ministers at Westminster have starved Mr Livingstone of electoral sustenance. They have massacred his Transport Commissioner, Bob Kiley. They have flogged off his Tube.

Today the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, will strut the streets of south London arminarm with the police chief, Sir John Stevens. They will boast that although police are supposedly under the Mayor, it is Tony Blair who has brought street crime under control. The snub for Mr Livingstone is crude, even though he found the extra police and his voters paid for them.

Meanwhile, the one policy which the Mayor has made his own, congestion charging, has yet to hit the public in all its potential chaos. What possessed the anti-privatisation Mr Livingstone to put it in the hands of Capita plc, which last week delivered us the teacher vetting fiasco? Congestion charging will be in full flow next summer. With the mayoral campaign under way, London will be flooded with cameras, fines, invoices, curses and traffic jams.

Critics need to remember that congestion charging remains popular. But the Mayor's competence rating is plummeting and most Londoners believe that movement in the capital has worsened severely on his watch. He must mobilise those who halflike his policies more than Mr Norris mobilises those who hate them.

Ken Livingstone deserves credit for putting the mayoralty on the map. He has staged a passable parody of New York's earthy former Mayor Ed Koch. It is inconceivable that a government will ever again strip the capital of its elected ruler. But the Mayor has not been able to convert popularity into influence and influence into making a difference. As today's antics from Mr Blunkett will show, he has not risen above the impotence of office to dominate civic government. He always seems a man with his face pressed to the outside of the window, complaining, whingeing, pleading.

At which point we cry out for something fresh. Where are the Richard Bransons, the Bob Geldofs, the Greg Dykes of three years ago? There must be a new Dick Wittington dreaming in some office block, brooding in some commuter train, plotting in some Islington bar. In a London so full of success, there must be talent up to the challenge of civic leadership. Other cities manage to find it.

Remember, this game is possible. Ken Livingstone proved that an independent can win without party backing. If Mr Norris is to succeed, he, too, must give party a wide berth. Aversion to conventional politics in Britain is deep and fierce. Independence is a spring waiting to be tapped. The London mayoralty is its opportunity.