London Mayor Ken Livingstone has a new business partner: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Thanks to a budding relationship between the two men, Caracas has agreed to cut fuel prices for London buses by 20 percent, and London has agreed to set up an office in Caracas to help with city planning, tourism and other areas where the UK capital city has special expertise. In essence, President Chavez is buying Mayor Livingstone’s support for $32 million.

In typical socialist fashion, the mayor, who is known as “Red Ken,” is using the funds to expand a city welfare program. Under the arrangement, about 1 million of London’s residents who are on income support will ride the buses for half price.

The Conservative leader of the London assembly, Angie Bray, said the mayor should have requested assistance from the Treasury if London needed money, and that “The spectacle of our mayor … going cap in hand to a dictator … is morally indefensible.” She reflected that the partnership amounts to “the mayor of one of the richest cities in the world buying popularity off the backs of those in one of the poorest cities in the world ….” The UK has a per capita gdp of $31,000, while Venezuela’s is only $6,000.

In defense of his action, the mayor offered this: “Frankly, I’d rather be getting into bed with [Mr. Chavez] than, as the British government has been, getting into bed with George W. Bush.”

Mayor Livingstone has offered himself as a symbol for other dubious causes. He supported the terrorist Irish Republican Army, staunchly backs the Palestinian movement, and has called Ariel Sharon a war criminal. He was a main backer for the proposal to build a giant mosque in London.

Britain is losing its sense of right and wrong under leaders like Mayor Livingstone. For more about the rapidly declining UK and the mayor’s role in that decline, read “The Sickness in Britain’s Heart” from the November/December 2006 Trumpet.