Ken Livingstone has brought “shame” on Labour and should be kicked out of the party, one of Labour’s leading frontbenchers has demanded.
Baroness Chakrabarti believes the former Mayor of London should be permanently expelled from Labour after repeatedly making controversial claims about Hitler’s relationship with Zionism.
Livingstone was suspended from the party for a year after his comments were investigated, and Labour’s outgoing general secretary Iain McNicol made that punishment indefinite just before he quit his post in March
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday Politics, the Shadow Attorney General said: “I don’t believe that Ken Livingstone can any longer be in the Labour Party.”
She said “I find it very difficult to see how any rational decision maker could allow Mr Livingstone to stay in our Party. He has brought it repeatedly into disrepute. He has brought shame upon it and his own legacy.”
Baroness Chakrabarti also said she was “incredibly disappointed” her report on anti-Semitism in the Labour party had not been fully implemented, despite it being completed two years ago.
She said: “I’m incredibly disappointed. And I think the reasons for that lack of implementation are partly, looking back, that factionalism at times got in the way on both sides of that debate.”
She continued: “I’m really delighted to say that Jennie Formby has taken probably more action to implement my report in the last month than has happened in two years.”
Labour has been rocked by numerous anti-Semitism scandals in recent years, culminating with the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies staging protests against Corbyn’s approach to the problem in Parliament Square in March.
A meeting between the Labour leader and the groups seemed to do little to ease tensions, with a statement issued by the organisations afterwards claiming Corbyn’s proposals for tackling the issue “fell short of the minimum level of action” which had been suggested.