Is Ken Livingstone about to get his comeuppance

The Ken Livingstone, Lee Jasper saga continues, this time Andrew Gilligan writes in The Guardian's Comment is Free column (my emphasis)

"I want to start by making a confession. I knew exactly what would happen after I reported, on December 5, that the mayor, mostly through his wholly-controlled subsidiary the London Development Agency (LDA), has paid at least £2.5m in grants to organisations run by friends and business associates of his senior aide, Lee Jasper; organisations which appear to have done very little, or in some cases nothing, with the money; organisations which have in several cases failed to produce audited accounts, or any accounts at all.

I knew Ken Livingstone would not be able to challenge these facts, because they are facts; and, indeed, he has not done so. I also knew that he would be unable to answer the series of detailed questions about the grants which we submitted to him nearly a week before we ran the story. They were simple enough questions: why had the grants been awarded, what outcomes had they delivered, why had those particular organisations been chosen, what role had Jasper played?..... No, what I knew would happen was what has happened: Livingstone would seek to divert attention from those uncomfortable facts, and those unanswerable questions, by fanning a giant dust-cloud towards his accusers. So I have been accused by the mayor of politically motivated smears, of fraud, of racism, even, quite literally at one point, of murder (of David Kelly, of course - do keep up).....

On the charge of stirring up racial hatred, Livingstone seems to be saying that it is not permitted to scrutinise the money paid to any black organisation, or the behaviour of any black public official, and that to do so constitutes racism. It doesn't, of course. The target of our investigations is not the black community. It is the organisations around Jasper which siphon off money that should be going to the black community. In the last few days, these organisations have called fire and brimstone down upon the Standard. Their websites have urged mass emails, calls and letters to us to protest at our outrageous slurs on them. And do you know how many such calls, emails and letters we have received? Fifteen. Do you know how many actual complaints we have received? Two....

On the charge of fraud and dishonesty against me, I simply note that for all his ranting Livingstone has denied virtually none of the specific charges I make. The only serious charge he has denied is that there is a GLA investigation into Jasper. But we have a letter, dated October 30, saying that there is such an investigation. For the most part, Livingstone has used that old politician's trick of denying a number of charges which we never actually made. We never said, for instance, that the LDA paid an extra £250,000 to one of Jasper's friends - we merely said they offered it, and our story was clear that it was not, in the end, paid.

This story is running out of Livingstone's control; and I can confidently predict that matters are going to get worse for him. You see - and this is where my confession comes in - partly because I knew exactly what charges would be levelled at us, and partly because of the sheer volume of material, I have to confess that we've kept rather a lot back. If Livingstone rushed in with furious and unwise denials, we would then roll out some of our other evidence to - shall we say - put those denials in perspective....

Ken has been seen increasingly as a substantial and serious figure - I happen to think that reputation has never really been deserved - something which is certain to feature in his pitch against Boris Johnson - but the more he calls people racists and murderers without proper cause, the less serious he seems.....

The reason we're doing it - and the reason that other serious journalists are doing it - is twofold. First, because it is of major public interest. Secondly, less pompously, because it's a great story, and it's only going to get better."



Do read the rest, this one looks it might get nasty.