Has Ken Livingstone just pulled off the craftiest turn of the Mayoral elections?
With pressure continuing to build over allegations of wrong-doing at the London Development Agency Livingstone has suspended Lee Jasper after jasper asked the Mayor to refer the allegations to the police.
If his accusers take up the challenge to hand over any evidence to the police Livingstone is likely to refuse to answer any more questions on the grounds that it would be wrong to comment on an ongoing criminal investigation.
If he’s lucky he’ll be able to string this out until after the elections.
On the other hand, if the evidence isn’t handed over Livingstone will claim his detractors blinked and use that failure to strengthen assertions that the whole row is a racially motivated attempt to help the Conservative Mayoral campaign.
Better yet, the police may decide there’s nothing to investigate long before polling day, killing the story once and for all.
