SO SUPPOSE he had stuck one on him? Suppose, when Ken Livingstone stepped into the night last February to be confronted by an irritating presence from the London Evening Standard, the Mayor had attempted not a bleary battle of wits but two falls, a knockout or a submission? How far could he go before those now championing his rights as a democratically elected official against the Adjudication Panel for England switched horses to chorus that Something Must Be Done?

There is nothing the press hates more than unaccountable individuals playing judge and jury with public life. After all, that’s our job. Take Tessa Jowell. We all know the appropriate place to decide whether her position as Culture Secretary is compromised by her husband’s mortgage arrangements; you’re looking at it. The Standards Board for England? How dare they? Don’t these people know that the proper way to get rid of a senior political figure without using the ballot box is a sustained campaign of editorial, commentary and rolling news? Good grief, carry on like this and we’ll all be out of a job. You can’t have any old Tom, Dick or David Laverick applying the checks and balances. If Livingstone is to spend more time with his newts, there are proper channels and many of them throw in Su Doku and a rundown of what is on the telly tonight, and all for 60p.

Livingstone is getting an incredibly easy ride from those that traditionally despise him, because he has fallen foul of a quango; and if there is one thing we hate more than erring politicians it is quangos. The quango is seen as symptomatic of everything that is venal in British politics: jobs for the boys, the old pals act, the licence to print money. In some cases, the critics are right.

The Adjudication Council for England, which has suspended Livingstone for behaving in an offensive manner, is therefore presumed to be redundant and wrong. Except, in this case, it isn’t either. If Livingstone were a Member of Parliament his peers could censure him. To be fair, if he were making cheese sandwiches in the works canteen, the duty manager could have a quiet word. As he is the Mayor of London, there is absolutely nothing that can be done about excesses that do not break the law of the land, beyond referral to the Standards Board for England. It is their job to prevent local government officials from acting the goat, and if they do not stop them, who will?

The presumption is that it is wrong for officials who are not elected to have responsibility over those who are. Yet without them, no disciplinary procedure would exist. There are many ways a person can behave that, while not illegal, would suggest unsuitability for office. Neither David Blunkett nor Peter Mandelson broke the law. In the absence of process, a standards board is the good sheriff. Without it, local government is Dodgepot City.

Livingstone’s supporters claim that by suspending him for a month a faceless quango has overruled a mandate from the people of London. Depends what is meant by mandate. Taking into account the total of first and second preferences, there were 73 per cent of people that did not vote for him at all in 2004. Seems a little reckless, then, to endorse a system in which having attracted just over one quarter of the capital’s support, the mayor is then left to behave in what ever manner he sees fit as long as it doesn’t end at the Old Bailey.

How are we to have elected watchdogs, anyway? David Laverick, the head of the quango that did for Livingstone, is sent up as power-mad, puffed up with self-importance or desperate for five minutes of fame. We should be very glad, though, that when the Mayor of London falls out of his latest jolly-up and starts falsely berating a journalist for asking a perfectly reasonable question, there is somebody with the official remit to utter the Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation equivalent of: you’re nicked, my old beauty.

For the record, Livingstone was not exiting the Nags Head after a swift half with the lads. He was leaving City Hall having hosted a publicly financed event — £4,000 from the mayoral fund — to commemorate 20 years since Chris Smith became the first MP to declare publicly his homosexuality. Livingstone and Smith are good friends. Many, in such circumstances, would have bought a mate a drink. Most, though, would have used their own money. Maybe Ken did that another time. But on February 8, 2005, guests were responding to an invitation on Greater London Authority headed paper and Ken was in the chair with public cash. In such circumstances, the Standard man was perfectly entitled to inquire if he had had a nice time.

Livingstone’s reaction, in which he compared a journalist whom he by then knew to be Jewish to a concentration camp guard, is exactly the sort of thing with which any standards board worth its title should be concerned.

Livingstone claimed that because he was departing the building, and wearing an overcoat, he was not on duty as London Mayor. Interestingly, pictures of Heinrich Himmler taken around 1943 show that he also liked to wrap up warm. No doubt a keen student of German history like Ken would agree politics are not something that can be taken off the peg. So, deep down, he must feel very glad the board considered his overcoat to be standards-proof.

Ken now says goodbye until April. If he gets bored, he could always pop in on the London Cultural Consortium, a 17-strong committee reporting directly to the mayor. No doubt its chairman, Chris Smith, will agree what a waste of time these tin-pot commissions are. They could even split the “up to £5,000” Smith declares each year to write for the Evening Standard. You could have a good knees-up with that.