Ken Livingstone’s petulant signoff is the last act of a very sad spectacle

Ken Livingstone is not enormously sorry. That much seems evident from his resignation statement, a classic of the “If anyone was offended by my perfectly reasonable behaviour, then … ” genre. Even now he can’t seem to grasp why repeatedly insisting that Hitler was a Zionist was so damaging to his party and to his own reputation. What a waste of a once formidable political talent. For, whatever you make of his ideas, he was an outstanding communicator of them – one of the most naturally gifted politicians I’ve ever interviewed.

For this recalcitrant resignation is the worst of all worlds. Livingstone has clearly been forced out, with all the behind-the-scenes bitterness that entails. But Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t seen to do the forcing, leaving Jewish voters still wondering how he feels about it, deep down. The Labour leader said only that it was “the right thing to do”, and that the whole affair was “sad”.

This departure leaves too many unanswered questions – including, it must be said, for TV bookers, who kept putting the 72-year-old Livingstone on screen even when he had become a grim standing joke, every appearance a countdown to the first mention of Hitler. They knew he was likely to repeat something offensive. Yet for no good reason, beyond ratings, they kept wheeling the dancing bear out to say it.

It was clear a few weeks ago, when the Corbyn loyalist Shami Chakrabarti sharply criticised him on air, that sentiment inside Labour high command had swung against Livingstone. Those Hitler outbursts were identified as the cause of Labour’s failure to take Barnet in the local elections; and besides, it was clear a totemic act was needed to show the party was facing up to its problem with antisemitism. Expelling the former mayor was one of few points of agreement between mainstream Jewish bodies such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Jewdas, the leftwing anti-establishment group that famously hosted Corbyn at Passover.

Except he hasn’t been expelled: he has jumped before being pushed, insisting he isn’t an antisemite but doesn’t want to become a “distraction” – even though he’s arguably been a distraction ever since his suspension, two years ago. And if he was really worried about that, then the answer was either to quit before the local elections or, more straightforwardly, to apologise and shut up about Hitler. Instead he clung stubbornly on to what even now he grandly calls a “historical argument”, rather than an eccentric and offensive theory based on a misreading of history.

The puzzle is that Livingstone was once such a canny reader of the public mood, a shrewd judge of when he had pushed it too far and when he could push it further than others dared. From the latter stems his decision to legalise civil partnerships in London (which gave Labour the confidence to do it nationwide) and indeed to run for mayor as an independent before returning to the Labour fold. While most of the hard left sat out the Blair years, Livingstone never stopped trying to put his ideas into practice.

The mask slipped occasionally. In 2005 he was caught comparing a Jewish newspaper reporter to the Gestapo, and in 2012 he caused uproar by suggesting Jews tended to vote Tory because of their wealth. But at least back then he had the nous to show contrition. He duly retired from public life aged 67 on good terms, and if he had only resisted the lure of one last curtain call when Corbyn became leader he would be remembered rather fondly now as a maverick but a likable one, and a good mayor; a man who loved London, and who after the 7/7 bombings helped prevent a breakdown in community relations by skilfully bringing the city together.

But where is that Livingstone now? Nowhere to be found in this rather graceless statement of no-regrets. Either he has lost his ear for public opinion or he is listening to a Labour party very different from the one he joined half a century ago.

Labour members who worked their socks off during local elections only to be told by distressed Labour voters that they couldn’t endorse an antisemitic party won’t be sad to see him go. Nor will Jews who were understandably hurt and frightened to see a serious politician espousing such views in public.

But Corbyn was right, in some senses, that this is a sad day. Sad that a talent has been wasted, sad that his party couldn’t see it for so long, sad that an opportunity for closure on a painful matter has been fumbled – and, saddest of all, that as a result the departure of Ken Livingstone may not spell the end of it.