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.
Chuck Unsworth says
February 15, 2008 at 5:55 pmNot a good move by Livingstone, really. If he goes into the election with the stench of an uninvestigated allegation around him it won’t really help his image. If he was serious about clearing this matter up he’d have called in independent auditors and the cops right away. The only other alternative would have been for him or Jasper to issue proceedings. The fact neither of them has done so speaks volumes. No, this is all about getting the matter out of sight – at least until after the Mayoral elections.