Ah, and in the excitement of the local elections (well, I don’t get out much), I had missed this gem from our old friend, Ken Livingstone.
For face time on TV he is now reduced, like Galloway, to speaking on the none-too-fussy PressTV, mouthpiece of the repressive and undemocratic government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, talking here about the Boston bomber:
Naturally, it was all the West’s fault (see Centre Lefts passim, ad nauseam).
No longer encumbered by political office, funnily enough, that was not at all like the message he gave after the London bombing of 7/7, as Guido Fawkes pointed out. This time his apologies for the cause of radical Islam remained unhindered.
It is fairly obvious that, had he made similar comments back in July 2005, he would have been, rightly, hounded from office by the families of the terrorists’ victims.
Livingstone seems still not to have realised that what finally did for his credibility more than anything was precisely this: being seen to say one thing to one audience and another to another. In the age of the internet, you just can’t get away with that any more.
It is clear that he is no longer a serious politician: what is frustrating for Labour is that he was considered one for so long.