Former mayor of London Ken Livingstone has said that he will not accept a peerage and that the Labour government is in a "very strong position".

Speaking to the Today programme following his London Mayor election defeat to Boris Johnson, he said that people were starting to realise that the UK government had taken the wrong turning thirty years ago in embracing the world of banking and finance.

"We're at a turning point… we have to make something someone else wants to buy," he said.

Ed Miliband, he said, was getting the economic strategy right - his only criticism was that he was too concerned about "carrying around the discredited Blair legacy".

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