Whom the gods would destroy

Yes, Ken Livingston has done it again.

Yesterday he repeated his views about Hitler on Vanessa Feltz's radio programme.

This morning, invited onto the Victoria Derbyshire TV programme along with his fellow suspendee from the Labour party, Simon Danczuk, supposedly to defend Labour MP Keith Vaz MP who has just resigned as chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, he was also asked about his own position and managed to get well and truly side tracked into talking again about Hitler and suggesting that the Nazi dictator had "worked with" the Zionists - which seems a bit like describing wolves as having "worked with" sheep.

One of the many demolitions of Ken Livingston's comments about Hitler came from John Blake, a London-based history teacher who founded and co-edited the "Labour Teachers" site from 2011 to 2014, and his response to Ken's original interviews and refusal to apologise can still be read here.

I am reminded of a saying which is often attributed to Euripides, apparently wrongly: it appears in various forms but apparently this one was used in Longfellow's poem "The Masque of Pandora."

"WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE MAD." 

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