On 4 May 2000, London held its first direct election for a city-wide mayor. The election was won decisively by the former Labour MP Ken Livingstone, who ran as an independent candidate after he was thwarted from becoming the official Labour nominee.

The election was conducted according to the supplementary vote system, whereby voters express a first and a second preference. Livingstone defeated the Conservative candidate, Steven Norris, by 57.9% to 42.1% in the second and final round of voting.

The official Labour candidate, Frank Dobson, was pushed into third place.

Livingstone secured 39.0% of first preference votes. Norris attracted 27.1%, while Dobson won just 13.1%. The Liberal Democrat candidate, Susan Kramer, finished fourth on 11.9%.

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The election followed the creation of the Greater London Authority (GLA). The Labour government, led by Tony Blair, restored a strategic authority for the capital for the first time since the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1986. A total of 72% voted in favour of the proposal in the 1998 Greater London Authority referendum on a turnout of just 34%.

The campaign was dominated by the fallout from Labour’s internal selection process.

Livingstone, a prominent figure on the party’s left and the former leader of the GLC, was a popular choice among party members but was distrusted by the New Labour leadership. Blair described Livingstone, a left-wing firebrand, as one of the Labour politicians who “almost knocked [the party] over the edge of the cliff into extinction” during the 1980s.

Blair said: “My problem with [Livingstone] is that while I was growing up in the Labour Party and he and Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn were in control of the Labour Party they almost knocked it over the edge of the cliff into extinction. It became unelectable.

“If that is the politics he still represents then… I am going to have to go out and fight for the Labour Party I believe in.”

Livingstone’s profile and political history conspicuously conflicted with Blair’s programme of “modernisation”. Livingstone, or “Red Ken”, epitomised Old Labour in Blair’s view of the world.

Livingstone was also no stranger to taking on prime ministers. He infuriated Margaret Thatcher as leader of the GLC, eventually moving her to abolish the authority in 1986.

Dobson, the health secretary, was regarded as the leadership’s pick. It came after the party centre had failed to persuade Mo Mowlam, the popular former Northern Ireland secretary, to stand in the contest.

For the internal Labour contest, an electoral college was constructed – whereby a third of the votes would come from the rank-and-file members, a third from the trades unions, and a third from MPs and MEPs. Livingstone, as predicted, won the vote among Labour members. But Dobson’s landslide victory among MPs and MEPs pushed his candidacy over the line. With the votes weighted by the electoral college, Dobson won by 51.53% to 48.47%.

Livingstone referred to the result and Dobson as “tainted”.

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On 6 March 2000, Livingstone declared that he would stand as an independent in the May contest. “I have been forced to choose between the party I love and upholding the democratic rights of Londoners”, he said.

The maverick politician added: “I have concluded that defence of the principle of London’s right to govern itself requires that I stand as an independent candidate for London mayor on 4 May.”

As a result, Livingstone was expelled from the Labour Party.

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Livingstone’s mayoral manifesto listed transport as the “single most important priority for the mayor and the Greater London Authority”.

His victory on 4 May 2000 was a clear personal triumph and an embarrassment to the prime minister. Reacting to the result, Blair said his view expressed in 1999 that Livingstone would be a “disaster” for London had not changed.

In the elections for the 25 Greater London assembly constituency seats, the Conservatives and Labour both won nine, while the Liberal Democrats won four.

Notably, the Green party picked up three seats.

During his tenure as mayor of London, Livingstone spoke at the famous anti-Iraq War rally held on 15 February 2003, when more than one million people marched through central London to protest against the prospect of military intervention

In January 2004, ahead of London’s second mayoral election, Livingstone was allowed back into the Labour Party. Blair conceded his prediction of a Livingstone-led “disaster” had been misjudged.

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Livingstone went on to win the 2004 London mayoral election as the Labour candidate.

But he could not secure a third victory in 2008, when he was defeated by Conservative candidate Boris Johnson.

Livingstone sought a return to City Hall in 2012 but was again defeated by Johnson.

In 2018, Livingstone resigned from the party – then under the leadership of his longtime comrade, Jeremy Corbyn – after a prolonged dispute over comments he made about Adolf Hitler and Zionism.

In a statement, he said: “After much consideration, I have decided to resign from the Labour party. We desperately need a Corbyn-led government to transform Britain and I’ll continue to work to this end.”

He added: “The ongoing issues around my suspension from the Labour party have become a distraction from the key political issue of our time – which is to replace a Tory government overseeing falling living standards and spiralling poverty, while starving our schools and the NHS of the vital resources they need.”