Indian Horse At English Derby

No one quite seems to know why they are taking Ram Gidoomal so seriously in the run-up to the elections for Mayor of London this May. He is candidate for something called the Christian People’s Alliance, a party no one had heard of until Gidoomal came along. Gidoomal himself has never been in politics. He is Indian, that is brown. Yet, he’s been on every TV channel again and again, and sat across full pages of Britain’s national newspapers.

So, will London have an Indian mayor? Or, as some anxious politicians see it, can Gidoomal stop the unstoppable Ken Livingstone? Powerful forces in the London establishment are out to stop Livingstone, that Labour maverick, who has said he wants a Seattle-type conference held in London so that he can throw chairs at delegates. And even Labour leaders think that kind of talk is not mayoral enough. This is New Labour, remember.

Gidoomal believes he can take Livingstone on. "It’s going to be a campaign fought in the media, it’s going to be about how you project yourself," he says. For that kind of contest, Gidoomal has been working on the

Mr London look. He has got where he has because the media don’t like Livingstone.

Gidoomal has presented his sums convincingly. "About a quarter of the population of London is from the minorities," Gidoomal says. "By the year 2010 they will be a third of the population of London." The voter turnout will be generally low but is expected to be high among the minorities, and Gidoomal would be their natural favourite. Conservative supporters might vote for an alternative just to keep Livingstone away. So could a conservative section of Labour. It may add up to Mayor Gidoomal.

The prospective Indian mayor has been working to win every kind of south Asian vote. "I don’t want my candidature polarised on religious lines," says Gidoomal. "I am from a Hindu family, I went to a Muslim school, I was brought up in the Sikh tradition and I love Jesus." The mayoral candidate has really had a multi-cultural life. His parents were from Hyderabad in undivided Sindh. They migrated to Kenya during Partition in 1947. But they were expelled from the country in January 1967. Then, they finally found their way to England.

Gidoomal has been attending meetings with black groups as a fellow black, which in Britain often means simply non-white.

A possible new counter against Livingstone dropped into Gidoomal’s lap by way of a public debate over homosexuality. The Christian People’s Alliance has pushed Gidoomal into taking a strong public stand against homosexuality. The debate came bang into the mayoral contest because Livingstone supported the move to repeal Section 28 (which prohibits explanations about homosexuality in state-run schools).

So, he gets the minority vote because he’s one of them and the middle-class conservative vote because he stands for middle-class values and a rejection of homosexuality. Says Gidoomal: "People are seeing me as a credible alternative and I’m optimistic."

Livingstone, meanwhile, is expected to win the vote for nomination within Labour despite Tony Blair - who has opposed Livingstone in public, bluntly. And then on it’s only Conservative candidate Steven Norris and Gidoomal in the way, though there are some suggestions that Jeffrey Archer might come in again as an independent candidate. Livingstone could get the minority vote as the voice of old Labour, and the middle-class vote because the middle class might not vote non-white.

Gidoomal has won the backing of business leaders such as Tim Melville-Ross, the influential outgoing director of the Institute of Directors. Support from business is not surprising given Gidoomal’s business background. He ran the Inlaks Foundation.

Within the Indian community Ram Gidoomal has won strong backing from businessmen Reuben Singh, G.K. Noon and Kumar Datwani. Singh has begun to campaign strongly for Gidoomal’s proposal to raise a people’s bond to fund improvements in the London Underground. "It’ll be a winner for all Londoners," he says.

Transport is at the heart of the issues in the election, so far as there are issues at all. But in the end it’s not going to be about what Gidoomal wants for traffic. It’ll be about how many come to vote and then want not to vote for Livingstone. And it’ll be about Gidoomal the Christian, and not least, Gidoomal the Indian.