Editorial: It is the commissioner for local government standards in Northern Ireland who should be suspended, not the councillor she has ruled upon

​The title of local government standards commissioner for Northern Ireland is a sombre-sounding position.

The role holder, Margaret Kelly, has suspended a DUP councillor for three months for remarks on Hamas. Colin Kennedy, of Ards and North Down, said: "Do not be surprised when those who enthusiastically endorse the LGBTQIA alphabet soup agenda in the West are the very same people who are now seeking to defend Hamas."

Incredibly, Ms Kelly has suspended Mr Kennedy.

This is one of these things that simply happens in Northern Ireland, with little comment. In fact, when it happens there is often a subtext that the ruling is a rigorous one from some lofty enforcer of decency. Yet Ms Kelly's ruling is so absurd that it is she who should be suspended. At best, she should be sent for re-training. Does she not know the first thing about free speech. Or democracy?

Mr Kennedy's comments were sweeping and open to serious interrogation. Of course there are people who strongly back gay rights, or LGBT rights, or even LGBTQIA (which, for sure, is an ‘alphabet soup’) rights, who oppose sincerely Hamas. But there are fools who do not realise that Hamas supports murdering gay people and is one of the most repressive groups in modern history.

Do councillors’ comments have to be perfect? Can they not be scathing about things but get nuances wrong, as Mr Kennedy has done?

It is shocking that he has been suspended. What is the mechanism for assessing Ms Kelly and her apparent ignorance of how politics works, with blunt free speech? She mustn’t know that politicians can say things that are stupid or wrong but still fall within the remit of fair opinion.

Ms Kelly has been given power to suspend councillors while seeming not to have a basic grasp of the candid political debate that separates free democracies from brutally-run societies like Gaza.