After defeat Ken Livingstone bids politics farewell But Mr Livingstone could not resist a parting shot at his enemies. He predicted that Mr Johnson's victory, by a margin of just 62,538 votes, would only serve to undermine David Cameron. The succession is fixed. For Boris Johnson to have won, however narrowly, when the whole Tory party is in meltdown is their worst result. Every Tory MP is going to think, if it's a difficult election coming up then Boris is a vote winner. Boris has already started to undermine Cameron. It was a very personal win for him. He won because of his personality and his humour. Cameron just hasn't got that. Mr Livingstone's supporters say he can point with pride to his political legacy. He was one of the first politicians of national standing to champion homosexual rights and anti-racism. He was one of the first to talk to Sinn Fein. When he became the first elected Mayor of London, defying Labour to run as an independent, he introduced the congestion charge and Oyster card. In his second term, he won praise for his reaction to the July 7 bombings. But he accumulated a great deal of political baggage along the way. There was the incident outside City Hall, when he compared a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, refusing to apologise, and his flirting with Islamist hardliners as a strategy to win the Muslim vote. One of the issues perceived to have done him the most damage in the campaign was his tax arrangements. This newspaper revealed that he avoided significant amounts of income tax by funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds through a private firm he owns with his wife. This came despite Mr Livingstone criticising tax avoiders as "rich --------" who should not be allowed to vote.