Speak up for London, Ken

Tonight yet another Tube strike descends on the unfortunate people of London. Will their elected Mayor express his anger? Will he declare his solidarity with those of us who'll be struggling to find a bus on a dark night or an autumn morning? Of course not. He resolutely refuses to blame the strikers, and when invited by the Evening Standard to condemn the strike, adroitly shifted responsibility to London Underground who, he said, had "obstinately" refused to participate in an arbitration process. There is time today yet for him to change his mind, and issue a condemnation. It ought to be at the heart of his job. But his record says he won't.

Livingstone was elected as mayor for a ragbag of reasons. But one of the main hopes was that he'd be a voice for London and for Londoners. Refusal to speak out looks like final confirmation he's abandoned any such role.

We may need a new catchphrase for Mayor Livingstone. "Red Ken" is past its sell-by date: he glad-hands City capitalists and property developers. Considering the evasive way he's behaved over today's strike, his new moniker should be "Ken the Silent".

On his day, of course, Livingstone rattles away merrily. He stands there, head on one side, in his strange-looking suit, like Ken Dodd but with better teeth. He loves to hold forth on subjects that are outside, or marginal to, his remit. This is the man, after all, who has pronounced with gravitas on matters as extraneous as the state of the stand-off between the Russian parliament and presidency - albeit on the losing side. But when it comes to subjects that matter to Londoners, like today's politically motivated stoppage - evasiveness.

The two unions involved, Aslef and the RMT are targeting the Labour Party conference, which opens at the weekend. That's fine by Livingstone. He got a bloody nose in his campaign to avoid the part-privatisation of the Tube. He's happy to conspire in a little light revenge - even at the expense of the rest of us.

On the surface, Red Ken has changed. But old Ken and new Ken are brothers beneath the skin. The idea of an elected mayor was strongly based on analogies with New York. But Livingstone is no Ed Koch or Rudi Giuliani. Both tried to be spokesmen for ordinary New Yorkers, trapped between hidebound city authorities and pressure groups. Not so, Livingstone. Most of the time, he speaks only for himself.

The Mayor has two obsessions: confrontation and selfpublicity. He doesn't speak out against Aslef and the RMT because they're allies in his confrontation with Blair. Yet his battle against the Government over the Tube was a ruse all along. The legislation made it clear that the Tube wouldn't be handed to the Mayor until after the contracts were signed. After millions in legal fees, and two and a half valuable years wasted, the courts confirmed what was obvious from the start.

Livingstone, sulking in his tent, still doesn't accept that he's lost. He never drew the obvious conclusion from his defeat by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. If you insist on taking on the state direct - as he and Arthur Scargill did - you'll lose. Will he gain, eventually, from giving Aslef and the RMT his silent endorsement? No. Part-privatised or not, the Tube won't improve till the unions' numerous "Spanish practices" go. London Transport lacked the courage. It's now clear that Livingstone is just as weak.

An A4 envelope, which came through Londoners' letter-boxes from City Hall this summer, contained Livingstone's so-called "annual review". The hagiographic text was adorned with 11 photographs of the great man. His passion for self-publicity fuels his addiction to confrontation. Near the top of the ostentatious new City Hall is a fine room, looking out across South London: the best space in the building. The architect intended it for public gatherings by Londoners. As soon as Livingstone saw it, he said he wanted it for his press conferences. It had to be rapidly "retro-fitted" before the Queen came along for the official opening. Ken the Silent is always ready to speak up on his own behalf, if not on anyone else's.

Sometimes I think he won't be happy till he's set up Radio Ken, broadcasting his idiosyncratic views direct from City Hall to the rest of us. Come to think of it - I don't want to be churlish about his talents - he'd make an excellent DJ: then the gap between what he says and whether or not he delivers anything more than traffic jams wouldn't matter at all.

One of his more bizarre pronouncements is his so-called London Plan, published in June. The consultation period ends next Monday. It comes with a self-publicising preface from Livingstone, headed "My vision for London". As I ploughed through its 402 pages, I wondered what, exactly, qualifies Livingstone to tell the rest of us how we should live.

The document - which manages to be both physically weighty and intellectually weightless - is laden with eco-rhetoric and political correctness. Mostly it is mere wishful thinking. Fortunately, down the centuries, London has shaken off many attempts to tell it how to develop. It thrives on anarchy; that is its life. It will shake off Livingstone and his plan also.

Meanwhile, however, we are stuck with him. A man who never knows the right moment to open his mouth. His silences are only interrupted by effusions of hot air. Sitting in an hour-long jam at 9.30 last Saturday night - in Shoreditch, which is hardly the hub of busy London - I noted that it was caused, here as in so many other places, by the ludicrous Livingstonesponsored combination of rephased traffic lights with road-works to narrow the highway.

So the Mayor is against all car travel, as someone who has said that he "hates" cars. Doesn't he grasp that buses get caught up in the same jams as the cars? There were half a dozen, all trapped beside me. Yet buses are supposed to be the solution to all our transport troubles - including those we'll have today and tomorrow. Some hope.

He's a Mayor who stays silent when he should speak out. When he does speak, he's unfocused and, often, plain silly, as if he were on a permanent Parkinson Show, rather than at City Hall. In his election campaign he held out the vision of a city leader who would never be distanced from Londoners, never wrapped in the self-regard that disables so many politicians. From this high ground, he's failed to deliver the goods.

Get back to basics, Ken.