Livingstone: I have not damaged Labour Party
The veteran left-winger blames anti-Corbyn agitators for his troubles but others criticise his party for being too soft on him.
Wednesday 5 April 2017 11:04, UK
Ken Livingstone has denied that he has damaged the Labour Party, despite anger among many of its members after he avoided expulsion.
The former London mayor was on Tuesday evening after claiming Adolf Hitler supported Zionism in the 1930s.
The comments were described by Labour officials as "grossly detrimental".
Jeremy Newmark, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, told Sky News that "literally dozens" of his group have contacted him to say they're considering quitting the party in protest at the decision not to expel Mr Livingstone.
But Mr Livingstone was unrepentant, telling Sky News that he had "not at all" damaged his party.
He said: "I was asked a question in an interview and I answered it.
"Since then, other people have used it.
"These people who want to get rid of (Labour Party leader) Jeremy Corbyn keep driving this forward."
He then criticised his own party's "bureaucracy" for taking too long to decide how he should be punished.
"Why put this (disciplinary hearing) off for 11 months? Why have this inquiry just as the Labour campaign in local government is beginning?
"This should have been done months ago."
After learning his fate, he had compared the hearing to "sitting through a court in North Korea - no one was listening to anything we were actually saying".
Mr Livingstone has repeatedly defended his remarks, saying they had been misinterpreted by hostile Labour politicians and the media.
He had insisted he had never said the Nazi leader was a Zionist, only that Hitler supported Zionism, something he said was "a simple statement of historical fact".
A statement from Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said the decision not to expel Mr Livingstone from the party showed Labour had failed to tackle anti-Semitism.
He said: "This was a chance for the Labour Party to show that it would not tolerate wilful and unapologetic bating of the Jewish community by shamefully using the Holocaust as a tool with which to inflict the maximum amount of offence.
"Worryingly, the party has yet again failed to show that it is sufficiently serious about tackling the scourge of anti-Semitism.
"The Labour Party has failed the Jewish community, it has failed its members and it has failed all those who believe in zero tolerance of anti-Semitism."
Board of Deputies president Jonathan Arkush said that Labour's failure to expel Mr Livingstone marked "a new low" in the relationship between Labour and the Jewish community.
He added: "After 12 months of indecision, despite finding him guilty of all three charges, the Labour Party has decided to suspend him from holding office for just one year, despite his shameless, disgraceful and tendentious attempts to link Zionism to Nazism.
"All we can conclude from this hopelessly wrong decision is that the party has an enduring problem with anti-Semitism to which is it is unwilling to face up."