May blasts Labour for ‘betrayal’ of the Jewish
THERESA May will today accuse Labour of “betraying” Britain’s Jewish community by failing to expel Ken Livingstone.
In an uncompromising attack, the PM is expected to describe the row over Mr Livingstone repeatedly linking Hitler with the Zionist movement as a new low for Jeremy Corbyn’s party.
She will break her silence after the Labour leader was forced by an angry shadow cabinet revolt to launch a fresh disciplinary probe into Mr Livingstone’s remarks.
Humiliating
In a speech in Nottingham to kick off the Tory local election campaign, Mrs May will say that Labour has “revealed the depths to which it has now sunk, betraying the Jewish community in our country by letting Ken Livingstone off the hook”.
She will add: “It could not be clearer that the Labour Party is now a long way away from the common, centre ground of British politics.”
Fury erupted within Labour earlier this week at the decision not to kick Mr Livingstone out for alleged anti-Semitism. In a humiliating retreat, party leader Mr Corbyn turned on his old Left-wing ally and referred his case to the ruling National Executive Committee.
More than 40 Labour MPs, including deputy leader Tom Watson, had hit out at a disciplinary panel’s decision not to expel Mr Livingstone but to confirm his ban from holding office for two years.
The former London mayor provoked even more anger by refusing to apologise for his remarks and insisting he was quoting historical truth.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Corbyn said: “It is deeply disappointing that, despite his long record of standing up to racism, Ken has failed to acknowledge or apologise for the hurt he has caused.
“Since initiating the disciplinary process, I have not interfered with it.
“But Ken’s subsequent comments and actions will now be considered by the National Executive Committee after representations from party members.”
Deputy Mr Watson said the decision not to expel Mr Livingstone “shames us all”.
Shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti said she was “horrified” at the way Mr Livingstone behaved in the wake of the panel’s verdict.
Truth
Mr Livingstone has vowed to fight the ban, saying he plans to consult lawyers.
He added: “You can’t apologise for telling the truth. I will be launching a campaign to overturn my suspension.”
Mr Livingstone was suspended last year after saying Hitler backed Zionism in the 1930s before he “went mad and killed six million Jews”.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Labour of failing to show it would not tolerate “wilful baiting” of the Jewish community.
WITH his habitual mix of self-delusion and weary moral superiority, Jeremy Corbyn likes to see himself as a determined warrior for social justice and equality. In a speech last year about his professed opposition to anti-Semitism, he piously declared: “Racism is racism is racism. There is no acceptable form of it. I have always fought it in all its forms.”
How utterly hollow his words now sound as his party is convulsed by a row over the reprehensible, anti-Semitic conduct of former London mayor Ken Livingstone. Far from fighting racism Corbyn and his mob have now been exposed for colluding with extreme antiJewish bigotry. They are a bunch of hypocrites.
The explosive row this week was sparked by Labour’s shameful failure to take any serious disciplinary action against Livingstone, who has been indulging for months in offensive rants about the links between Hitler and Zionists.
Among the lurid claims, Livingstone has asserted that the Führer “was supporting Zionism before he went mad” and that there was “real collaboration” between his regime and some German Jews. That is just the sort of neurotic, conspiratorial language adopted by fascists and Holocaust deniers.
Yet instead of expelling Livingstone from the party Labour’s national constitutional committee said he should serve another year’s suspension. He also faces a new investigation.
GIVEN that he remains a full Labour member, it is a pathetic sentence, made worse by the fact that the committee even admitted Livingstone has brought the party into disrepute.
This outrageous decision comprehensively undermines all Labour’s righteousness about anti-racism. For decades the party has posed as the ultimate campaigner against bigotry, denouncing its Conservative opponents as xenophobes and reactionaries.
Yet presented with a clear case of anti-Semitism, Labour failed to act. No wonder the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said yesterday that Corbyn’s party had “failed the Jewish community”. Any organisation really committed to antiSemitism would not tolerate an obsessive such as Livingstone in its midst, for his unhinged utterances about Hitler are both historically inaccurate and morally indefensible.
Much of his prattle about Jewish collaboration with the Reich is derived from the obscure work of a Marxist academic with his own agenda.
Furthermore Livingstone’s sneering tirades have been designed to cause widespread offence. He delights in tainting Zionism through peddling the idea of guilt by association with Nazism while he also seeks to mitigate the evil of Hitler by pretending that he “went mad”. The Führer was not insane. He was a racially fixated monster who spelled out in his 1924 book Mein Kampf what he planned to do if he seized power.
The tragedy for the world was that through his tyranny Hitler gained the chance to put his genocidal anti-Semitism into practice. By trying to lessen Hitler’s responsibility Livingstone is downplaying the suffering inflicted on the Jewish people.
Today mainstream Labour figures are in despair. Deputy leader Tom Watson said he was “ashamed” about the decision and Luciana Berger, the Liverpool Wavertree MP, described it
EVEN Clement Attlee, widely regarded as the greatest of all Labour leaders, could be guilty of this trait. He once denied promotion to two Jewish Labour MPs because, in his words, “they belonged to the chosen people and he didn’t think he wanted any more of them”.
The problem is worse under Corbyn. His election in 2015 unleashed a toxic force that is destroying Labour from within. It is an irony that when it comes to anti-Semitism, the far Left are closer in spirit to Nazi ideology than any other movement in British politics – because of their hatred of Israel, their worship of state power, their connivance with extremism and their link to militant Islam.
Corbyn himself notoriously described Hezbollah and Hamas, those two anti-Israeli terror movements, as his “friends”, while he also lavished praise on Islamist hate preacher Sheikh Raed Salah who was barred from Britain for his “virulent anti-Semitism”.
The same outlook shines through the online contributions of Corbyn supporters, who yesterday were tweeting manically about “Zionist control” and the influence of “the pro-Israel” lobby.
Corbyn said last year that he wanted Labour to set “the gold standard for anti-racism”. But his party won gold only for hypocrisy, intolerance and lack of integrity.
‘Livingstone remains a full party member’