The Mail has consistently flirted with the far right - writing admiring leaders in praise of Hitler in the Thirties and even publishing a pattern for a black shirt so readers could show their support for Oswald Mosely!
The Standard, which was bought by the Mail from the Express, has had a rather more schizophrenic history. In the seventies and eighties it followed the tabloid pack in demonising 'Red Ken'. But under editor Max Hastings it enjoyed a level of political maturity and respectability that the Mail did not; to such an extent that the group's editor in chief, Paul Dacre, was continually irked by what he saw as the Standard's 'pink agenda'.
So, when Max retired, Dacre installed an editor who would do his bidding, and under Veronica Wadley the paper has lurched rightwards and downmarket, becoming what its own staff now dismissively call 'The Baby Mail'. With this has come a series of snide and vitriolic attacks on Livingstone, who still has a unique place in the right's pantheon of hate figures. I see no reason for Livingstone to apologise, and I see Finegold (a young freelance) as a naive pawn in the whole process.