Livingstone has a long and honourable history of campaiging against racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. But when has he ever promoted political correctness like this? Or did you believe all those made-up stories about “baa-baa white sheep” and so on, printed by the Standard, the Daily Mail and so on?

It is ironic though, that Ken has fallen victim to the same sort of political correctness that he has been promoting for years.

We get into a slightly different area here. Public figure who ought to know better lobs an insult, publicly, at someone. Had it been a nobody lobbing the insult, it wouldn’t have mattered, but it was Livingstone. Perhaps his conduct warranted some rebuke, but on the grounds of his being a public servant, and therefore whatever he says in public is in effect on behalf of the people he represents. (OK, so it was an off-the-cuff remark not ‘officially’ in public, as it were, but a figure like Livingstone is always in public if he’s at or entering or leaving a public event and there are people around who aren’t his confidants, i.e. just members of the public.) If John Prescott or Simon Hughes or David Davis or a senior civil servant with a public face had said it, I suspect that person, too, would have been hauled over the coals, but not for what was said so much as for actually saying it.

But of course he shouldn’t have been suspended.

A day in the stocks being pelted with rotten veg for making an arse of himself would be fine by me…