At Ken Livingstone's tears, I cry foul
From the desk of Jenny McCartney:
It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that what pricked Livingstone's imagination, provoking him to tears, was not so much the hard fact of the slaves' misery as the poignant image of Livingstone himself being moved by the slaves' misery.
Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, has a phrase for such a process, which is particularly widespread in modern politics. He describes it as "moral judo", whereby the practitioner takes every opportunity to trap his opponent in a tight hold that proves his own moral superiority.
It is worth remembering that Livingstone's weeping for slavery has come just as he is engaged in a very vigorous bout of moral judo regarding the London mayoral contest. <<Quick Read>>
