Obviously we did not win, but what was achieved in a very difficult national context was remarkable.

Overall my first preference vote increased by 208,239 - 30 per cent, over 2004 - increasing in every GLA constituency except Bexley and Bromley. In the context of Labour’s lowest national vote for some decades that was a remarkable achievement.

In the London Assembly Labour actually won an additional seat and performed better than the national average. In the Mayoral context, I polled nearly 14 per cent more than the Labour vote nationally and nine per cent more than Labour in the London Assembly who themselves polled above Labour nationally.

That achievement of our campaign could not overcome the scale of the swing to the Tories throughout the country and in some London constituencies, notably Bexley and Bromley, Havering and Redbridge and West Central.

The swing to the Conservatives was assisted by the collapse of the Liberal Democrats in London, in part due to the conservative nature of their London Mayoral campaign.

It is noteworthy that a number of parties to the right of the Tories notably the BNP polled much higher in the Assembly list than in the Mayoral vote, suggesting that some of their voters voted tactically for Boris Johnson. The BNP got 61,004 votes more in the Assembly list than in the Mayoral election, for example.

In the City and East division there was actually a 2.9 per cent swing to me in the Mayoral election.

Overall, with more than a million votes the election showed a powerful progressive alliance in London.

There is no doubt that the new Mayoralty will inaugurate decline and division.

I hope you will therefore share my view that progressive London should remain organised and ready to face the challenges to come - including a general election.

Yours sincerely

Ken Livingstone

Putting a brave face on it, it seems

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Well, at least that’s traditionally been the case. But no longer, because yesterday I took a wander through the high-class stores of Mayfair - strictly window-shopping, of course - in search of distraction. And I found that the stores of London appear to have gone quietly mental.

First up, I popped into the much-advertised new Abercrombie & Fitch flagship on Saville Row. You know the one - the adverts all over the buses feature a young, shirtless man whose jeans reveal an inch or two of carefully airbrushed buttock. Call me susceptible to advertising, but I thought I’d check it out.

Delicately rammed into a former townhouse, complete with period glimpses of ceiling between the tasteful wood pannelling, it doesn’t feel like a store from the start. The inside is kept dark, so the dedicated lighting can show the clothes to best effect.

Let’s be honest, though. Nobody visits A&F for the clothes, bland Hilfiger-lite as they are. No, A&F’s global domination is based entirely on its shamelessly enjoyable advertising: poster after poster of scuplted, half-dressed all-American youth. Legend has it that the firm send recruiters to midwestern colleges at the beginning of the year to lure excitable freshmen into becoming models. The firm’s notorious magazine A&F Quarterly typically contained pages and pages of nude- and semi-nude young men and (a few) women, with barely a shirt or pair of jeans in sight. As I walk into the store, two dashing young gentlemen are standing by the door, chatting, dressed top-to-toein A&F. They’re not security - they’re lurking inside the door, dressed in the conventional uniform. They’re not there to greet me, like at naffer, more traditional retailers. They ignore the customers completely. They’re just there to shoot the wind, and to look good, while slightly unaware, in their youthful innocence, of how good they look. It’s the A&F brand in a nutshell: a beauty so young and fresh it doesn’t even recognise itself.

Inside the store, and it’s clear the firm is taking the concept to its logical extreme. In place of the endless huge photographs I expected, the store is covered with murals.

Boxers, fencers, baseballers. All male, all about 18, all very, very white (unlike the staff). Muscles and faces poised for the next game, bout, match. And all, naturally, in a state of sporting undress.

It’s bizarre and slightly sinister: Abercrombie-world is a vague, imagined New England, replete with horses, rowing, blue blood and harldy a girl in sight. Its homoeroticism is so blatant it’s almost funny - see the pair of bared bottoms towards the right of the picture above? - but it’s all so tightly wound up with images of the nobility of sport that it’s kept from the surface. Indeed, what’s so odd about A&F is that, for all its famed nudity, the world it conjures up is incredibly sex-free. Like those boring, preppy clothes, I suppose.

A staff member stopped me from taking any more photos, so you’ll have to check it out for yourself. But do. Seriously. It’s like wandering into some sort of gay-fantasy alternative frat house, part Chariots of Fire, part Brideshead Revisited. I haven’t even mentioned the gigantic rowing mural. Or the statue.

I took my leave, and started to head up towards Oxford St. But my head was turned by a luggage store just off Hanover Square.

It’s not the yellow, as much as the armor - like some sort of space-age Boudicas - that makes these two so disarming. But as impressive as they are, they were nothing compared to their friend at the back of the store.

Yes, it’s a Gigantic Naked Plastic Yellow Man. With a speaker in the back of his leg, which shows a marvellously pragmatism on the part of the designers, I suppose. The shop was closed, and I couldn’t see from outside how far up he actually went. Could there be a whole mega-man, going up four stories, with further speakers in his shoulder blades? Or does he end, just out of sight, just above his shapely plastic arse?

I couldn’t face wondering, so I took my leave. After being assulted with male nude imagery at two stores, I turned to a more trustworthy purveryor of goods. Surely Selfridges, I thought, can be counted on to provide a sensible, understated shopping environment. As the spectacle that presented itself to me as I reached Oxford St demonstrates, I was wrong.

What the? Why is there an eyeball floating, menacingly, outside Selfridges? I thought perhaps the strains of a day’s shopping were getting to me. I stepped in for a closer look.

Yep. There was definitely a gigantic eyeball floating above the head of Creditia, the god of shopping, or whoever that is. What the hell was going on?

It turns out that Selfridges, in its capacity as sponsor to the V&A Museum, has got into the swing of the current Surrealism exhibition. The eyeball (also known as, ahem, “The Sum of All Reasons”) is just one of the surreal delights included instore. Other delights include a (slightly rubbish) lounge of circus-style surreal delights in the basement, and - rather fantastically - surrealist poetry printed on the backs of till receipts.

It’s all pretty wonderful, and a neat reminder that Selfridges is a hundred times better than Bloomingdale’s or Macy’s. Nevertheless, I did wonder once or twice if it wasn’t all getting in the way of some otherwise enthusiastic customers’s attempts to actually get some shopping done.

I’d had enough. I took my leave, and headed off to the ICA, to the comfortable, unchallenging world of contemporary art. Shopping’s too avant-garde for me.

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You know, I’ve lived on or near Holloway Rd all my three years in London – I lived right on it for a few months – and I’ve never really thought of it as a place to go; just as a route to somewhere else. Everyone talks about it as vaguely dangerous place, in that way which is basically code for “it’s poor and unpleasant.” A bloke at work – who is admittedly a self-professed Tory Snob – declared yesterday that it would do nothing but good if you stood at Archway, pointed a large flamethrower towards Highbury Corner, and pressed fire.

And yet, odd little things have been making me rethink it recently. At the weekend I was passing through on the 29, and I looked down the road as we crossed the Nag’s Head corner to see the blue Christmas lights stretching down the road. Now, the lights are crap, a dull-blue mess on every tree. But then it hit me, like a jolt: there are loads of trees. Every few metres, all the way down on both sides of the road. Suddenly, where previously I’d only seen a busy, run-down dual carriageway, I suddenly saw a tree-lined boulevard. My flatmate, who lived there for three years, confirms it looks quite lovely in spring.

Then, this morning, I found myself taking Holloway Rd partway to work, having taken a detour via a bike shop to fix a flat. As I whizzed (OK, trundled) down Hornsey Rd, I got my first proper view of the new Emirates Arsenal Stadium. It’s amazing; a real, 21st century sports stadium, like you see in any European city, but in the heart of north London. Behind it, I could see the strange new red-and-grey apartment buildings being developed as part of the Stadium deal. Then I scooted down a side road and came out onto Holloway, opposite several new flat developments. Now, ordinarily, new flat developments means dreary brick-heavy faux-industrial or faux-Edwardian blocks. But these are different: one has a network of interlocking coloured glass cubes on its frontage, another a large orange box offset from its side. I didn’t have time to take pictures, but it dawned on me that, free from the stricter planning rules of affluent Islington, developers were experimenting and playing in exciting ways.

And as I swung left, past London Met’s Libeskind-designed graduate centre, and scooted off down Liverpool Rd, it occurred to me that here, in my back yard, was some of the most cutting-edge modern architecture in London.

Which got me thinking – what else could I be missing? From Archway to Highbury Corner is probably less than a mile, but who knows what shopping, eating, drinking, and just plain sightseeing delights it could contain?

So, I’m going to find out. A whole day in January, devoted to exploring poor, maligned Holloway Rd. Anyone got anything I should check out, let me know.

See more progress on: Explore Holloway Rd

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