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02/27/2006: ""

I was already pretty convinced that the suspension if London's democratically elected mayor by an unaccountable quango was absurd. But today's revelations cast serious doubt on what agenda, precisely, the Standards Board for England are pursuing. According to today's Guardian:

Last year Jack Sayers, a Conservative member of Brent council in north-west London, was judged not to have broken the code of conduct despite a Standards Board finding that he said that "Jews run everything in Britain and practically run America". The board ruled that Mr Sayers had "expressed a controversial opinion that offended a member of the public" but took no action because "he did not commit a criminal offence". Part of the ruling was that his "comments would not put individuals or groups at risk.

Compare and contrast, if you will, with the vile slanders visited on an Evening Standard journalist by Ken Livingstone:

Livingstone: "What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?"

Finegold: "No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal."

Livingstone: "Ah ... right."

Finegold: "I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?"

Livingstone: "Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you?"

Finegold: "Great. I've you on record for that. So how did tonight go?"

If Livingstone is guilty of anything, it is a cringe-inducing rhetorical slackness that regards a comparison with nazis or fascists - however spurious - as a coup de grace in any exchange. Yes, concentration camp guards relied on the 'following orders' defence, and yes, so do other people in completely different contexts. To assert that this establishes moral equivalence between the two is a weak argument.

In fact, Livingstone himself qualified the analogy in his Press Release a year ago:

'I do not equate the actions of one reporter with the total abdication of responsibility shown by those who were complicit to whatever degree in the horrors of the holocaust. But I do believe that abdicating responsibility for one's actions by the excuse that "I am only doing my job" is the thin end of the immoral wedge that at its other extreme leads to the crimes and horrors of Auschwitz, Rwanda and Bosnia.'

Sorry Ken, but that's just rubbish. "I'm only doing my job" is indeed a lame defence for poor behaviour, but a comparison with the perpetratoirs of the Holocaust is still absurdly over the top.

But if advancing a weak argument is reason to be disqualified from political life, then dear god, the House of Commons would be a quiet place. And Finegold's claim to be 'actually quite offended' is in any event rather hard to reconcile with the evident delight in his next sentence; far from feeling aggrieved, the guy seems quite clearly thrilled by the scoop afforded him by Livingstone's insult.

In comparing Finegold to a concentration camp guard, Livingstone was out of order. Whether he owes any sort of apology to Finegold (as argued by Mark Lawson, in Saturday's Guardian) I suppose boils down to whether we should apologise for insulting people who routinely insult us; I suspect I know what answer I would give. More cryptic, though, is the reference by Veronica Wadley, editor of Evening Standard, to "those he offended." Those is plural. So, not just Finegold then? Presumably she has in mind a wider Jewish population. But what did Livingstone say that merits an apology to London's Jews?

This reminded me of the recent outcry over Ian Blair's reference to the girls murdered in Soham. In the course of accusing the British media of institutional racism, he used the reporting of their murder as an example.

"Let's be absolutely straight. It was a dreadful crime, nobody is suggesting anything else. But there are other dreadful crimes which do not become the greatest story in Britain and that did for that August period."

A slightly unfortunate example? Only in that it allowed a very important debate to be side-tracked. But in another sense, the media coverage of these particular murders perfectly illustrates Ian Blair's point that "sometimes something of that kind strikes the national consciousness and it is difficult to interpret why. Why that one and not another one? Why Damilola Taylor and not another murder of a small child?"

This important, though awkward, issue was seized upon gleefully by the cynical shroud-wavers of (would you believe?) The Daily Mail.

"It is hard to overstate the sheer crass insensitivity of Sir Ian Blair, the Met Commissioner, saying he couldn't understand why the Soham murders became 'the biggest story in Britain'. Every other parent understands. The killing of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman was a crime that touched the deepest fears of millions of ordinary people - of whatever ethnic background."

Well, maybe Sir Ian is out of touch with that section of the British public that mawkishly proclaims photogenic victims as their own ('Our Abby', 'Princess of Hearts'), while showing callous indifference to tens of thousands of brown people in other countries being bombed and starved by our government and its allies. Maybe that's no bad thing.

But why did this merit an apology to the parents of the Soham girls? Just as Ken Livingstone has explicitly recognised the Holocaust as uniquely evil, so to did Sir Ian acknowledge the murders of Jessica Chapman & Holly Wells as 'a dreadful crime'. But apparently, the mere mention of those crimes in the same context of a criticism of someone else entirely is somehow implicitly to insult the dead themselves. As Bob McLachlan, apparently the former head of the Met’s paedophile unit, told The Sun: “Sir Ian Blair has abused the memory of those two girls for his own political purpose."

No he hasn't. There is no sane way to interpret his comments - whether we like them or not - as abusing the memories of Holly and Jessica, any more than Livingstone's remarks were an offence to London's Jewish population. Only the mischievous or the terminally credulous would argue otherwise.

I think Ken Livingstone overstated his case considerably when he compared the journalist to a concentration camp guard. And I think Ian Blair chose the wrong example to illustrate his particular point (though it's a perfect example of another phenomenon). But the frantic attempts to denigrate both are reflective of a far more pernicious trend in modern Britain: criticise the press, and be ready for the consequences.