Kick Ken out, says Royall
BARONESS ROY ALL has said she“nearly blew a gasket” when Ken Livingstone repeated his claims about Hitler and Zionism this week.
The Labour peer told an audience on Wednesday evening that she wanted the former Mayor of London to be expelled from the party.
“He should have been booted out a long time ago as far as I’m concerned,” Baroness Royall said.
Mr Livingstone appeared on a series of television and radio programmes earlier this week. He said Hitler had collaborated with Zionists and Adolf Eich mann had armed Jewish fighters in Palestine.
Baroness Royall’s comments came at the launch of a book on anti semitism on the left, written by Dave Rich, the Community Security Trust’s deputy communications director.
The peer said: “I nearly blew a gasket when I heard reports of what Ken Livingstone had been saying again. Why do they keep putting Ken Livingstone, a serial offender, on our screens? I for one firmly hope that in the next couple of week she will be booted out of the party .”
Mr Livingstone was suspended by Labour after making similar claims in April, and awaits a full disciplinary hearing.
RUTH SMEETH, the Jewish MP who has police protection after receiving an antisemitic death threat, has said the “vile, disgusting” abuse was carried out “in the name” of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The 37-year-old was repeatedly referred to as a “Yid” in an abusive message which claimed “the gallows would be a fine and fitting place” for her “to swing from”.
Ms Smeeth, who has previously worked for the Community Security Trust and Board of Deputies, said: “It’s vile, it’s disgusting and it’s done in the name of the leader of the Labour Party. I knowJeremyCorbynwillcondemnthis but it’s about what people are doing in his name.”
In her comments to the BBC last Friday she said she had received more than 25,000 abusive messages since the end of June, the majority of them within a 12-hour period on one day.
She said: “Once it starts on social media it keeps going. Most of it was on Twitter, a great deal on Facebook, and calls to my office, and emails.”
The hanging threat was “one of the worst”, but not the most serious case, Ms Smeeth said.
Elected in May last year, the Labour backbencher has criticised Mr Corbyn’s response to the antisemitism crisis that has engulfed Labour. She said the abuse had led to “moments of concern, of fear”.
The outside of her home was damaged after the EU referendum in June, an incident which she now viewed as “much more concerning”.
“It’s not about me. It’s what it means for my friends and family, but not least my team and my staff. They are the ones who see it first and have to deal with it and it’s simply unacceptable. I got elected and put myself out there. To suggest this has become normal, or that this level of abuse is acceptable — it just simply can’t be,” the MP for Stokeon-Trent North told the BBC.
Ms Smeeth told an event on Wednesday she believed “British Jews on the street are going to get hurt” because of the level of abuse.
It was revealed last week that counter-terror police were investigating the “gallows” threat sent on Facebook. Ms Smeeth has had panic buttons and CCTV cameras fitted at her home.
The death threat expressed strong support for Mr Corbyn, referring to a “hatchet job” against him by the “rightwing, neo-con, Nazi-Zionists”.
In June, Ms Smeeth was verbally abused by a supporter of Mr Corbyn at the publication of Shami Chakrabarti’s report into antisemitism in the party. The death threat rant referred to that incident, describing her “crocodile” tears.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn initially responded to news of the death threat by saying no abuse was carried out in his name.
But the statement did not refer directly to Ms Smeeth or the death threat.
A later statement said the party leader had spoken to Ms Smeeth “to express his outrage at the abuse and threats directed against her”.