London, Ken’s day but the abstention wins

LONDON – Europe’s largest constituency, five million eligible voters, chose the first directly elected American American mayor yesterday. If the polls have not blatantly wrong (they gave him a 34 point advantage over his direct competitor), Ken Livingstone will have taken his revenge this morning: against Thatcher, who had dissolved the city council of which he was the leader 14 years ago; and against Tony Blair, who, in order to get the extremist wing out of the Labor Party, had managed to make him lose the party’s internal primaries. “Ken the Red”, a kind of populist with a sympathetic smile and a ready, relentless critic of Blair’s moderation, he ran as an independent and was expelled from the party, in order to conquer London. Everything was new in this vote: the voters had the opportunity to indicate on the card also a second choice, which becomes decisive if none of the candidates wins an absolute majority of votes. And for the election of municipal councilors a proportional quota was also introduced. Despite the great efforts to bring the Londoners to the polls, opened longer than usual and served by an electronic voting system, it seems that the turnout was not much greater than the extremely disappointing one of the last administrative elections: only a third of those entitled would have voted.