IT'S AN ELECTION, Scottie, but not as we know it. As its first mayor to be chosen by ballot, London will get either a newt farmer who thinks the Boy Scouts are too "militaristic," or a serial adulterer, or a Captain Birdseye lookalike who believes gays should be allowed to have sex in public as long as they do it in a dark corner.

Somehow, I don't think the good burghers of "The Smoke," as they call Britain's historic old capital, have quite gotten the hang of this city mayor business. Either that or they are working from a badly edited rough draft of Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Now we've all heard of the Lord Mayor of London, like Dick Whittington and his cat, that sort of thing. That's an ermine and ribbons affair with ancient, horse-drawn carriages and drums and bugles and marchers, a once-a-year occasion on which one chap gets the honor of parading about in 16th century bloomers, lording it over one and all for a day.

But this is different. We're not talking here about pomp and circumstance and Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera. We're talking tough politics, the first chance Londoners have ever had to rig votes and stuff ballot boxes and engage in the good old thrust and parry of slime politics in the fashion of every other nation that calls itself a democracy.

The London mayoral election on May 4, is in fact, the first truly U.S.-style political contest in Britain's history. Trouble is, the candidature of each of the three hopefuls - Ken Livingstone, Frank Dobson and Steve Norris - is more appropriate to the venerable American custom of a barrel of tar, a bag of feathers and a swift ride out of town on a rail.

The spotlight inevitably centers on Ken Livingstone, a firebrand socialist with policies and beliefs so "loony left" that he could drive Lenin into voting Republican. He once refused public funds for the Boy Scouts on grounds they were too "militaristic," choosing instead to donate the money to the English Collective of Prostitutes.

Livingstone also persuaded a now-defunct form of local government called the Greater London Council, or GLC, to cough up the equivalent of $40,000 to buy buses for black lesbian mothers, sought to have London "twinned" with Nicaragua, invited Irish terrorists to dinner in the midst of their bombing campaign against the capital, and granted about $2,500 to an outfit called Babies Against the Bomb.

Margaret Thatcher, prime minister at the time, decided enough was enough, dissolved the GLC and sent Ken home to spend more time with the salamanders he keeps for pets.

But Thatcher is history, Livingstone goes on, and his latest venture into diplomacy was to applaud the anarchists who took to the streets in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. The man who wants to head a city that is one of the financial capitals of the world allowed as how he would invite the WTO to London only if he could set up punishment stocks" so we can throw stuff at them in an organized way."

"Red Ken," of course, is a die-hard supporter of the leftwing Labor Party - but he is not, mind you, a party member. He was, but when in its primary-like balloting for its mayoralty candidate Labor passed him over in favor of Frank Dobson, Livingstone announced he would run as an independent. The party promptly kicked him out.

In that ballot, Livingstone received 74,000 votes to Dobson's 24,000 - so Labor's wizards read the runes, waved a magic wand, decided the vote was close enough to go either way and pronounced Dobson the winner. They may be amateurs at this democracy business, but they're learning fast.

"The Ego has landed," Dobson said when Livingstone announced he would run anyway, despite promises that he would support the official Labor candidate.

It was one of the few inspirational remarks ever attributed to Dobbo, a failed Cabinet member whose political stature is such that he stares the rest of the pygmies in the kneecaps. Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose idea a mayor for London was in the first place, found himself confronted with a health secretary he longed to shed and a mayoral prospect, Livingstone, he longed to shaft.

With the preliminary vote rigged, the PM got what he wanted - rid of Frank Dobson as his health secretary and, he figured, Ken Livingstone as London mayor, next to himself arguably the most powerful political figure in the land. "London can elect whoever it likes," Blair now said, "as long as his name is Frank Dobson."

Then Dobbo threw a wobbly by telling the police they were "wasting their time roaming around public lavatories" and should instead look discreetly away when gays suddenly get the urge and can't wait to get home. If, as many suspect, Dobson wants to be mayor about as much as he wants to trim his beard with a chainsaw, he couldn't have made a better move.

For foot-in-mouth attacks, Dobbo was in good company. After Lord Jeffrey Archer, the author, was caught being very economical with the truth about his dealings with prostitutes and other funny business, the Conservative Party defrocked him as its mayoral candidate and anointed Steve Norris, whom Archer already had beaten, and rather badly at that.

Norris's claim to fame is managing to keep a wife and five mistresses all on the line at once, announcing that curious arrangement to the world at large, then managing to keep his job as a member of Parliament despite it all. But never one to dodge a chance to commit political suicide, Stevie promptly endorsed Dobson's view on gay sex in wide-open public spaces.

Tory party leader William Hague, who unnervingly comes across with the appearance of a fetus on the loose, carpeted Steve Norris forthwith, that there would be no more supporting homosexual "cruising" and gay sex, discreet or no, on the streets of London. Otherwise, he could expect to spend more time in the company of the ladies.

And where does all that leave us? As of this writing, "Red Ken" - newts, nuts and all - has an astonishing 55 percent lead over Dobbo in a survey by the polling organization ICM for the Guardian newspaper. Norris is still working on getting a percentage.

So go figure. Me? I'm checking to see who's running on the Monster Raving Loony Party ticket.

Thought for the Week: If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

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