Push to expel Livingstone from Labour Party grows
PRESSURE to expel Ken Livingstone from the Labour Party continued to grow as a shadow cabinet member said she was “sickened” by his failure to recognise the trauma he has caused to the Jewish community.
Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said she was “shocked” by the leniency of the sanction handed to the former London mayor by a disciplinary panel which found he had brought the party into disrepute with controversial remarks on Adolf Hitler and Zionism.
Ms Rayner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The Jewish community are really upset, and quite rightly so.
“We all know the history behind what happened with the Holocaust, I’ve been to Auschwitz, and it sickens me that the upset and the trauma that has been caused, that’s been felt by the Jewish community, hasn’t been recognised by Ken Livingstone. It’s not an academic issue.
“I want to see the sanction to be zero tolerance, and if that means that he is excluded form the party then that should be it.”
Ms Rayner is among more than 100 Labour MPs who have signed an open letter stating the sanction imposed on Mr Livingstone was a “betrayal” of Labour values.
The hard-hitting letter states: “We stand united in making it clear that we will not allow our party to be a home for anti-Semitism and Holocaust revisionism.”
The shadow education secretary said: “I think the letter, and the strength of feeling across the Labour Party, show that it is not a home for anti-Semitism.”
A furious backlash against the decision to give Mr Livingstone a further year-long suspension, rather than expulsion, saw leader Jeremy Corbyn announce a new probe by the party’s National Executive Committee into the exmayor’s behaviour since the ruling was made.
A defiant Mr Livingstone insisted he had simply been telling the truth and warned he would take legal action against the party if it tried to exclude him.
He told LBC: “If then there is another hearing, it does expel me, it will go for judicial review and it will be resolved in a court which is open to the press and public, unlike these Labour disciplinary things which take place in private.”