Red Ken fired from radio job over Hitler comments
KEN LIVINGSTONE’S obsession with talking about Hitler has proved very costly. I can disclose that the former Labour Mayor of London has been sacked after eight years as an LBC radio presenter following his ‘anti-semitic’ remarks.
Red Ken had presented a Saturday morning politics show with former Tory minister David Mellor, but he’s been replaced by Channel 4 News political journalist Michael Crick.
His departure from the national radio station was initially presented as a ‘ break’ to meet broadcasting impartiality rules governing the role participants in the EU referendum and local elections could play.
However, LBC now confirms he won’t return to his post following his repeated refusal to apologise for his inflammatory remarks last month. ‘Ken Livingstone is not currently presenting on LBC and will not be returning to the station at the end of his contract,’ a spokesman tells me.
The station doesn’t discuss presenters’ pay, but Ken’s fee is thought to come to tens of thousands a year.
Channel 4 news anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy was among those to call for Ken to be fired over his comments in which he claimed Adolf Hitler had been a Zionist before going mad and killing Jews. Guru- Murthy subsequently demanded: ‘Is LBC entirely comfortable paying him as a presenter after what he said yesterday?’ LBC’s action will add pressure on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to take action against his old friend and ally Ken. Although Livingstone was suspended ‘for bringing the party into disrepute’, the outcome of its National Executive Committee internal inquiry into his comments has not yet been declared.
London’s new Mayor, Sadiq Khan, is among those to have called for Ken, 70, to be expelled from the party.
However, Livingstone remains unrepentant. Last week he offered to buy a meal for anyone who could prove his comments were antisemitic, declaring: ‘Not a single newspaper, or radio, or TV programme has produced any evidence that what I said was wrong.’