I think there's a certain amount of hot air being spoken on the subject of Ken Livingstone's suspension, though I do not myself defend the suspension. The hot air concerns elected politicians being deposed or removed by unelected officials, a type of action that apparently 'strikes at the heart of democracy'. Have those who say this kind of thing not come across judicial processes? Or the notion of impeachment? Not that the panel that has suspended Livingstone is of any very lofty status, and not that Livingstone has done anything serious enough to merit impeachment. But it does seem relevant to puncture some of the rhetoric about this - as if electoral mandates did not sometimes run up against legal or constitutional limits of one kind and another. In addition, the Mayor of London has not been deposed or removed from office. He's been suspended for a month, which is something much more limited, though I imagine it is potentially rather disruptive to the governance of the city.
And that really is the thing that matters. In a symbolic way the sentence is merely petty, adding nothing to the verdict itself (of disrepute etc). On this account, it isn't only potentially disruptive of the work of running London, but pointlessly so. It would be good, therefore, if the sentence was overturned.
