Never Thought I'd See The Day

When I found myself defending the Mayor of London, "Red" Ken Livingstone.

But here it is.

The backstory: Last year Livingstone compared a reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard. The reporter happened to be Jewish. Shite, meet fan. Although he made some placatory remarks to the Jewish community in general, Livingstone refused to apologize to the reporter.

Now you would think that there would be a great deal of political fallout from such an incident. In fact, it is not difficult to see a scenario where Livingstone (or any other politician who made such comments) could be voted out of office or forced to resign. Fair enough if he's willing to make remarks like this.

Here, though, the fallout seems to have been legal rather than political.

The case went before some species of disciplinary panel, which has now ruled that Livingstone's remarks constituted "[] a breach of the code in that Mr. Livingstone's actions have caused damage to the reputation of the office of which he holds..." The panel unanimously voted to bench Livingstone for four weeks.

Pardon me. I'm no expert on British law, but this strikes me as utter nonsense.

Livingstone is and always has been a first class jackass, whose politics I utterly loathe. And this incident was certainly an example of the kind of appalling obnoxiousness he's capable of. But Livingstone is London's elected jackass. To have some "adjudicative panel" suspend him for hurting somebody's feelings is by far the most disturbing thing to me about this whole story.

According to the story, Livingstone is considering an appeal.