Livingstone was chosen to stand as Labour candidate for mayor of London last May. His nomination was said to have been decided after the Party had consulted Labour party members across London. What form this consultation took is not reported.
That there should have been an enormous residual resentment at the closing down of the GLC, and even the selling off of its iconic building opposite Parliament, is not unreasonable or even surprising. Skylon should never have been pulled down either, that too was an act of petty political spite not delivered to the intended target but to an electorate who saw both these things as symbols of aspiration not party politics.
Livingstone's first victory, against established Labour and Conservative candidates, was a victory rooted in popular outcry against corruption on the right, and betrayal on the left. The campaign team was so small that when the Observer turned up to interview all six of them in their three tiny rooms, the journalists sneered.
To nominate Livingstone now, as the official Labour candidate, is an extraordinarily revealing disgrace. The Labour party will do anything to retain power wherever and whenever it takes it.
In London they have chosen to nominate a man who accused a reporter, interviewing him outside of the Mayor's office about who had been present at the party just held, of being equivalent to a concentration camp guard, and this after repeatedly abusing the reporter who on informing Livingstone that he is Jewish in the face of the first unacceptable onslaught, was the target of the millenial insult.
Whoever, Labour voter, Labour party member, Labour activist, campaigns for , or even votes for this man, is as disgraced as their candidate.
Whatever form of 'consultation' took place, it failed to reach, or listen to, the decent Labour voters and Party members ; they should be doing something about this nomination. Are they ?
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16 comments:
That is bad news. I really detest that man
I wonder what would qualify as 'really too disgusting, even though could win' for the Labour regime.
HG when did this happen ? I can`t see it anyhwhere .I have offered to go and help Boris , of whom I am a great fan
'On 3rd May 2007 the Labour Party announced that Ken Livingstone, the incumbent mayor, has been selected to be their mayoral candidate. The announcement was made following consultations with London Labour Party members.'
Try Wiki London Mayoral Elections 2008, or BBC news early May.
The nomination should never have gone to such a person. If he wants another go as an independent that's his to do, but the Labour party knows perfectly well what he, and his henchmen John Ross and Redmond O'Neill are.
Lots of votes in being heard not being nice to Jews, even if you explain it away as not being serious or a reaction to intolerable provocation (like being asked who was at an official reception in the GLA headquarters) and pretend the intention of the questioner was discriminatory against some social groups.
Why are people discussing the Conservative candidate on Dale N?
Why aren't the Labour posters being challenged on their party's vile candidate and his trotskyoid regime?
Oh sorry I forgot(clunk). I thought it was new.
You make a a number of good points and your reading of the anti semitic remarks is a spellbinding revelation.
What a woman !!
Hmmmm
Scuse, Miss - bit is it prerequisite that one must be a clown before becoming eligible for mayorship ?
E-K you know the difference between clowning about and being a fool.
What kind of party chooses for office a man who accuses a reporter of being the same as a concentration camp guard? Why did that particular viciousness spew so readily from his ever-ready, ever political mouth?
If you wanted to make someone go away, leave you alone, even though it's not unreasonable to be asked questions outside your office, would that kind of elaborated abuse even occur to you?
He should have said the usual.
There has been unease expressed here and there about ant-semitism again.
That's awful, of itself. We can't let it go N, if there's anything that can be done or just said against it, we must. For a holder of public office to make comments like that and then be renominated by Labour shames them in ways they hadn't managed yet.
Oh I `ve been hating Ken for years HG.I `m also sympathetic to Israel incidentally , but I chiefly despise the way KL has sucked up to terrorists . The Irish vote is of course also important !!
It has always struck me that the fact the IRA bombed our national government in Brighton has been almost airbrushed away. I met Norman Tebbit once and found him a kind and thoughtful man.
I admire his refusal to forgive the bombers .I admire a lot about him actually , easy to satirise perhaps but a sort of politician I miss
"He should have said the usual".
Of course. An Italian Higher Court (di Cassazione) ruled today that, when coming from peer to peer, the invitation "vaffanculo" (fcuk off) is not an insult, in view of its dilution through widespread, inflationary use. As the defence argued in a similar case in Sicily long ago, "Un invito fu, obbligo non v'era".
"Un invito fu, obbligo non v'era" suggests that "vaffanculo" is rendered in English with an equivalent, rather than precise rendering of the Italian invitation, C.
When learning Italian the best advice offered was avoid expletives, blasphemous outbursts, and rude words; foreigners always get them wrong; wrong time, wrong place, wrong imagery.
The Tuscan relationship with the Madonna, often heard vividly portrayed, is beyond description other than by a native speaker.
Hating Livingstone for his politics is a widespread activity, N.
Nominating for public office a candidate who abused a reporter specifically choosing the abuse to insult the reporter's Jewishness, after being warned by the reporter that the insults were of offesiveness unparalleled since the public insults offered to Jews in the streets in the last century, is of a different order.
Livingstone's nomination should never have been acceptable to the London Labour Party.
"Lots of votes in being heard not being nice to Jews"
I appreciate what Livingstone said was obviously racist and nasty, and that he really got away without any proper punishment, but the idea that he did it to get those massive numbers of anti-Semitic votes out there is just ludicrous and paranoid.
While there is a campaign in the UK against Israel's policies, I see no-one in the mainstream press - and extremely rarely anywhere at all - trying to link these policies to inherent characteristics of Jewishness.
I don't see articles in the press highlighting the crimes (or indeed just the extreme views) of a small handful of Jews with the caption "This is how Jews repay our hospitality". Yet that is *exactly* what the Daily Express did to Muslims a couple of weeks ago, right there on their front page.
If the papers were targeting Jews with such articles, as routinely occurs against Gypsies and Muslims, then I'd be prepared to admit anti-Semitism was a serious political force in the UK. Right now, thankfully, it simply is not.
Junglecitizen
If you accept that, and defend, offering public and gross insults to a Jew, because of and in terms of his Jewishness , in a London street, ever, never mind last year, is a one-off intemperacy and thus acceptable then you have neither shame nor understanding.
Ken Livingstone wants the anti semitic vote, and you can dress up your own anti-semitism as objective recognition that some dislike Israel's policies, but you remain what you are, a worthless anti-semitic catspaw for a worthless Jew baiter whose nomination shames every Labour member, supporter and activist in London.
Doing your conscientious bit for your Ken are you, in your croddy little political life as an SA cadre?
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