“Was anyone as sickened as I was to see Ken Livingstone crying on national TV talking about his beloved London and the assault on our capital city? This is the same Ken Livingstone who invited one of the most extremist Islamic clerics on the planet to London last year and proudly paraded him around the city on his arm.

“Just for your information, Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the lunatic who said all victims of the tsunami deserved to die, he hates women and he advocates the death of all homosexuals – preferably by burning at the stake. How dare Ken now show surprise or hurt at what has happened here? It is precisely the influence of extremist clerics that drove those four British men to become suicide bombers.”

Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror, 17 July 2005