Red Ken Decongested

Well it looks as if the London air will be a heck of a lot cleaner now that Red Ken Livingstone has gone down to defeat in that city's recently concluded mayoral election. As CNN reported: " Conservative lawmaker with a knack for offensive remarks ousted the left-wing mayor of London in an upset that capped the ruling Labour Party's worst local election showing in four decades."

Now New Yorkers are familiar with Red Ken, a man who got his moniker from a long association with noxious radical political groups, for his championing of congestion taxing. His deputy was even brought to NYC to give an international flavor to the mayor's huckstering on this silly tax scheme. Not content with an ever congestion fee, Livingston recently proposed taxing SUVs fifty pounds to enter London's CBD.

While we don't think that the congestion tax alone was responsible for the mayor's defeat, it useful to note the following from the London Daily Mail: "A massive turn-out in London's outer boroughs was said to be behind a victory that capped an already remarkable Tory success in the rest of the country." Sound familiar?

It is of course all of the outer borough voters, whether in London or New York, who have to pay the congestion tax for the right to go to work. It's too bad that Bloomberg didn't put this all to a referendum so all the carping about Shelly Silver could have been put to rest. The NY Sun's editorial on Friday captures the essence of this: "If the voters throw out Kenneth “Red Ken” Livingstone, it will be a repudiation of Mr. Livingstone’s congestion pricing scheme, which is similar to the one that Mayor Bloomberg tried to impose on New York City."

That being said, Livingston's defeat marks the departure of yet another anti-American European from the political stage. A defeat made that much more sweet because of the way all of the Islamic enemies of democracy tried to use the democratic process to proper Livingston back into office. As one conservative commentator put it: "This result isn’t just a wonderful victory for Boris and the termination of Livingstone. It’s also a defeat for the campaign – an exceptionally dirty one, at that - waged against Boris by a small band of separatists claiming to act in the name of all London’s Muslims...This campaign’s aim was to attack Boris as an Islamophobe; swing Muslim voters unanimously behind Livingstone; deliver the election for him; emerge, thereby, as a leading force in British Islam, and thus send an uncompromising message to the main political parties – follow our line, or there’ll be electoral consequences.

So in one fell swoop, congestion tax promoting and radical Islam loving got s*it canned by the voters of London. As Martha would say; "That's a good thing."