Anti-Semitism claims were just lies says Livingstone

KEN Livingstone has denied anti-Semitism is a problem within Labour and claimed “lies and smears” against Jeremy Corbyn contributed to the party’s election defeat.

The former Labour MP and Mayor of London said “not one” of his Jewish friends in the party could remember an anti-Semitic incident.

Defending Mr Corbyn, Mr Livingstone told Good Morning Britain: “I’ve known Jeremy for 45 years. He’s been side by side with everyone who’s campaigned against racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and yet the media was filled with all these lies about the Labour

Party as an institutionally anti-Semitic body.”

Under Mr Corbyn Labour has been beset by allegations of anti-Semitism, with several MPs quitting in protest and the Chief Rabbi urging people to “vote with their conscience”.

Mr Livingstone was originally suspended from the party in

2016. “That April

John Mann, then a Labour MP, with a camera crew in tow,

Livingstone... ‘lies’ a factor started shouting in my face that I was a Nazi apologist, then went on air and claimed I’d said Hitler was a Zionist. “I quit the Labour Party in 2018 because this was being dragged out to undermine Jeremy.

“But If I’d said Hitler was a Zionist I wouldn’t just have apologised, I’d have been off to my doctor to check I wasn’t in the first stage of dementia.” On Friday, he called “the Jewish vote” a factor in Labour’s defeat. “Jeremy should have tackled that issue far earlier than he did.”