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Ken Livingstone emerges from suspension over antisemitism to say Labour antisemites are just going “over the top when they criticise Israel”

Ken Livingstone, the disgraced former MP and Mayor of London, has entered the furore over antisemitism at the Labour Party Conference.

Mr Livingstone is currently serving a suspension from the Party over his repeated claims that “Hitler was supporting Zionism”, however he emerged to tell Talk Radio that claims of antisemitism are merely “distorted” by people like Labour MP Wes Streeting, who decried antisemitism at the Labour Party Conference.

He told Talk Radio: “Some people have made offensive comments, it doesn’t mean they’re inherently antisemitic and hate Jews. They just go over the top when they criticise Israel. The people criticising Israeli government policy aren’t criticising people who are Jewish in Britain.” Pushed to explain, he said “We need to resolve the issue of the Palestinians”, before being pressed to admit that British Jews have nothing to do with resolving Palestinian grievances.

Mr Livingstone has his own entry in Campaign Against Antisemitism’s database of antisemitism in political parties due to his long history of courting controversy on the topic and complaining that people making allegations of antisemitism are merely doing so in order to stifle criticism of the Israeli government. Indeed he has repeated the smear so many times that it has become known as the ‘Livingstone Formulation’.

Today has seen Brighton’s Labour Council leader write to inform the Party that it may be evicted from holding the Conference in Brighton Centre in future over antisemitism, demanding: “I will need reassurances that there will be no repeat of the behaviour and actions we have seen this week before any further bookings from the Party are taken.” The CEO of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission has also intervened saying that Labour antisemitism is now so bad that the Party must “establish that it is not a racist party”.

Yesterday, at a Labour Party Conference fringe event that was advertised in official literature, speakers demanded the right to deny the Holocaust to loud cheering, and called for the Jewish grouping within the Labour Party to be expelled, prompting spontaneous calls of “throw them out”.

https://twitter.com/GeoffBraterman/status/912643534628499456

      

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