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Ken Livingstone and Emily Thornberry show off raffle prizes |
Ken returns for fish ’n’ chips and a vote of thanks
GORDON Brown bubbly, European Union champagne, £45 fish and chips and a Boris blunders quiz were ingredients of a fundraiser staged for the cash-strapped Labour Party in Islington.
Guest of honour last Thursday was a tanned Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London, who joined party supporters at the Fish Central restaurant in Central Street, Finsbury.
Visitors paid £45 for a plate of fish and chips, with proceeds boosting Labour funds. Raffle prizes included a bottle of Parliament bubbly signed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a special edition bottle of European Union champagne, Mr Livingstone’s signed biography and a signed Fish Central menu.
Between courses, a multiple-choice quiz challenged guests to complete a series of Boris gaffes, with the winning team walking off with a bicycle indicator light.
Mr Livingstone thanked Islington voters for their support. “I’m well rested,” he said. “If London had voted like Islington I’d still be mayor.
“Islington’s become a borough that’s quite comfortable with itself. People like their neighbours, irrespective of race or religion. There’s a good mix. There’s an improvement in GCSE results, people are really dependent on police and public transport.
“They thought this is a place that’s getting better.”
Giving his verdict on his successor Boris Johnson’s performance so far, he said: “It’s been everything we said it was going to be – a real mess. I had a team whose priority was London and everyone knew that. His problem is that he’s had this team parachuted in whose priority is serving David Cameron.
“All the great cities have had mayors that are really for the city but now the mayor’s there to serve the Tories for the next election.
“We left on his desk plans for bringing the Tube back into the modern era. He’s going to spend the next four years opening all the things we started. We still need to see what he’s going to start.”
Islington South and Finsbury Labour MP Emily Thornberry, who attended the dinner, said: “We wanted to thank Ken. We all worked really hard to get him
re-elected but clearly we’re disappointed he wasn’t.
“We also want to celebrate that we got the best result in 10 years. We came first in every ward in every vote in the whole of Islington and Labour didn’t do that anywhere else in London.”
She claimed the Labour Party in Islington had less money than the Lib Dems, who had had party coffers boosted by £224,000 since 2001 and £50,000 in 2007 alone. “They have a huge war chest,” she added. “They pay themselves the highest amount of money and then pay a proportion of it into a fighting fund.
“We’ve had £71,000 since 2001 and £4,000 last year.” |
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