Guest editorial: The mayor's way of saying welcome

And he did, telling an interviewer: "I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."

His dim view of the American president is not new. Earlier he had called Bush corrupt and racist and a coward.

That puts Bush in bipartisan company. Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council, which Livingstone chaired, to get rid of him. Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair expelled him from the Labor Party, whose platform Livingstone once dismissed as a "load of old guff."

Livingstone, a compulsive self-promoter, is what the Brits call a "cheeky chappie," one who endears himself to his supporters by affronting and offending the established order. It got him elected mayor in 2000 as an independent in a three-way race.

While gifted at publicizing problems as a gadfly member of Labor's "loony Left," as mayor he has proved rather less gifted at solving them. His signature accomplishment has been the controversial imposition of a daily $8 fee on cars entering central London.

There is an official U.S. view of Red Ken. According to the U.S. embassy in London, "Mayor Livingstone's opinions about the United States are a matter of complete indifference to the American embassy, the American government and the American people."

The respected British publication The Economist called Livingstone "one of the most friendless, least trusted politicians on the planet." You can see why.