Ahead of the elections for London’s mayor, two normally sensible sources of opinion, Stephen Pollard and the Economist , both endorsed the venomous Ken Livingstone. Their reason? His laughable – and mean-spirited – congestion charge, something that they regarded as more important than Livingstone’s cronyism and spectacularly vicious brand of politics. Stephen has, typically, now done the decent thing and admitted that he was wrong.
“Livingstone’s unrepentant welcome to Yusuf al-Qaradawi shows him to be a keen fellow traveller of a man who could be described with some precision as evil, given the succour, not to say support, which he gives to murderers. al-Qaradawi is man deserving not of a welcoming handshake but a deportation order, and any politician who voices support for him is as contemptible. There are more important things than road pricing, and my failure to recognise what others were telling me day after day – that Livingstone had not changed his spots – is pretty inexcusable.”
Good for Stephen for saying this. Will the Economist now have the guts to follow his example?