The Centre For Social Cohesion

It certainly makes a change to see the mayor, once excoriated for his ultra-left-wing antics when leader of the now defunct Greater London Council, now being heralded by such a respectable newspaper as the Times in his present carnation as London's mayor, as a paragon of capitalist virtue and dynamism.

As the newspaper puts it: ‘These days, Mr Livingstone comes across … like a chief executive…. Conversation is light on left-wing ideology, but littered with capitalist preoccupations such as productivity levels, global competitiveness and light touch regulation.’

One has to wonder quite just what lies behind the mayor’s apparent new-found faith in capitalism, as well as the newspaper’s apparent new-found faith in him.

So far as the first matter is concerned, the mayor is quoted in his interview as saying that: ‘The thing that defines London is that you can be yourself…. Across much of Europe there is a demand for conformity, emphasising national integration. We celebrate diversity.’

One has to wonder quite in whose name Mr Livingstone is speaking here. The well-attested recent phenomenon of white-flight from the capital suggests that not all Londoners have been as favourably disposed towards its increased diversity as the Mayor. Apart from him, those who have been have tended to be employers of the cheap labour recent large-scale immigration has made possible, plus the large number of African, Middle Eastern, and south Asian immigrants who have flocked to the capital in recent times, for it is their recent settlement that has primarily been responsible for its current unparalleled level of diversity. Of these non-EU immigrants, the vast majority have been Muslims, a religious minority whose integration has been lately proving especially difficult.

In numerous ways, Mayor Livingstone has gone out of his way to court this particular constituency, sometimes in ways that have antagonised other smaller religious minorities in the nation’s capital.

It is the mayor’s particularly favourable attitude towards the likes of Sheikh al-Qaradawi, and his correspondingly well-known opposition towards the state of Israel, that gives one cause to wonder just about what might lie behind the Times’ apparent new-found enthusiasm for this once widely reviled Mayor.

The newspaper is owned by News Corporation whose fourth largest voting shareholder is the billionaire Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Taleel. He is someone who has been quoted in the past as admitting to having used his influence at News Corporation to ensure that its media outlets provide a more favourable image of Muslims than they previously were.

It is significant in this connection that, just a few weeks ago, the Times carried a lengthy report about the supposed findings of a world-wide Gallop opinion poll of Muslims which had revealed, according to the newspaper, that the War on Terror had radicalised Muslims world-wide and boosted their support for al Qaeda, thereby implying the West had largely brought upon itself the present threat it faces from Islamist terror.

What makes this report so significant in the present context was its having omitted to mention that the world-wide study of Muslim opinion about which it was reporting had been under the supervision of an American academic whose university had received $20 million from Prince Alwaleed.

No less significant, perhaps, is the claim by the Muslim signatories to their petition against the proposed 70,000 capacity Olympic mega-mosque in Newham that Saudi funding had been behind those campaigning for its construction, and that, if constructed, it would promote the very divisive Wahhabi version of their religion.

As we all know, all things Olympic have no more fervent champion than London's present mayor. As the Muslim opponents of the mega-Mosque make clear, the form of diversity it would have promoted is one that Londoners could well do without.

So, one has to wonder just what lies behind the mayor’s enthusiasm for diversity in London, as well as what lies behind his opposition to the integration of its minorities. Equally, one has to wonder what lies behind the new-found enthusiasm for this mayor in certain otherwise not left-leaning sections of the press.