Earlier in the year, I bemoaned the fact that Graham Tope and Simon Hughes were jumping up and down defending the Standards Board’s ruling to suspend Ken Livingstone.
Now that the whole thing has been overturned on appeal, is there any chance we’ll get to hear similar echoes of “justice has been served” from the London Lib Dems? Not a chance.
Oddly, Tuffrey wants to have it both ways, arguing that not only should the case have never been taken up by the board, but that it was all Livingstone’s fault for saying what he said in the first place. I find it breathtaking that not one syllable of criticism is being aimed at the people who submitted the complaint, forcing the issue.
This is very dodgy territory here, as it is coming close to calling for curbs on freedom of speech. I’m not saying that Livingstone is immune from criticism here, far from it. But such criticism should be dealt with in a political forum – like an Assembly, perhaps – not in some quasi-legal forum like the Standards Board.
And I expect to hear clarity, defending freedom of speech unambiguously, from the GLA Lib Dems, not all this dog whistle stuff aimed at the zany end of the Jewish community.