The Daily Mail reports London’s former Mayor Ken Livingstone was barred from London House while in Beijing from where he had planned to promote trade and tourism during the Games.
Livingstone spent four days in China as a guest of the Chinese government who, according to the Evening Standard, spent 20,000 pounds for the trip.
The former mayor wanted to look around London House during his trip and applied through the London Development Agency, (an agency he used to control), for a pass to one of the preview nights. According to the Daily Mail his application was denied despite London House reportedly being Livingstone’s original project.
Livingstone had played a major role on the London 2012 bid team, but when the new mayor Boris Johnson was elected, he slashed 1.2 million pounds from the project’s funding. A spokesman for Mayor Johnson said, “Ken is no longer in office and it wasn’t felt appropriate to have him there on that night when he would have been sharing a platform with Ian Clement, the deputy mayor for Government relations”.
