Now Corbyn ally wants Red Ken ousted over Hitler row
A CLOSE ally of Jeremy Corbyn yesterday called for Ken Livingstone to be kicked out of the Labour Party.
Shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti said Mr Livingstone had brought shame on the party with his comments on Hitler and Zionism.
Labour should apologise to the Jewish community over the remarks, she added.
It will heap pressure on Mr Corbyn to abandon his long-time friend, the former mayor of London.
Baroness Chakrabarti is the latest in a string of frontbenchers to call for his expulsion. In a TV interview, she admitted some Corbynistas ‘looked the other way’ on anti-Semitism, including officials involved in the disciplinary process.
But she claimed it was the controversy around Mr Livingstone which had damaged the party in local elections earlier this month. Labour had been expected to take Barnet council in London but was punished by voters over the anti-Semitism issue.
Mr Livingstone is suspended from the party after suggesting Hitler supported Zionism in the 1930s. He has said he will resist any attempts to expel him and has described the claim of antiSemitism as a ‘big smear’.
Baroness Chakrabarti described his suspension as a ‘lenient sentence’. ‘I don’t believe Ken Livingstone can any longer be in the Labour Party,’ she told BBC1’s Sunday Politics.
‘To compare somebody who was trying to escape Nazis with Nazis themselves, and to do so again and again … even when you know that this has caused the deepest hurt and upset and embarrassment to the party – is completely unacceptable.’ She added: ‘ The moment he got that lenient sentence … what did he do? He went straight out into the media and he repeated the offence as he continues to do.
‘The decision will ultimately not be mine but I find it very difficult now to see how any rational decision maker could allow Mr Livingstone to stay in our party. He has brought it repeatedly into disrepute. He has brought shame upon it … we need to apologise to Jewish members, supporters and voters for the insult.’
In 2016, Baroness Chakrabarti, former director of human rights group Liberty, wrote a report on anti-Semitism in Labour which was widely dismissed as a whitewash. Since then the party has been engulfed by controversy – including the revelation that Mr Corbyn defended a gruesome antiSemitic mural in east London.
Baroness Chakrabarti said she was ‘incredibly disappointed’ that her report had not been implemented, blaming ‘factionalism’.
Mr Livingstone was suspended in 2016 following a radio interview in which he said: ‘Hitler was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’ His case is expected to return to a disciplinary committee within weeks.
÷George Osborne has been subjected to anti-Semitic abuse after revealing he has Jewish roots.
The former Chancellor spoke last week of his delight at learning his maternal grandmother was Jewish. But he then faced a slew of vile messages on Twitter.
Some even claimed the London Evening Standard editor had tried to ‘conceal’ his ancestry by changing his name from Gideon, a popular Jewish name.
Ex-barrister Ian Millard, barred from practising law following offensive tweets, wrote: ‘ That b****** “George” Osborne (Gideon Osborne) is a part- Jew! I always knew there was something dodgy (beyond the obvious) about him.’
Another Twitter user wrote: ‘George Osborne is Jewish? That’s why he ruined the UK, I guess.’