Ken Livingstone quits Labour – NOT due to any guilt but because of the row kicked up by right-whingers
Ken Livingstone: Forced out by liars.
Those who have browbeaten Ken Livingstone out of the Labour Party will be feeling pretty good about themselves right about now. They have absolutely no reason to.
He hasn’t quit because of any truth to the allegations of anti-Semitism against him, because they aren’t true – as anybody familiar with this particular subject matter can explain.
He quit because too many people who either didn’t know enough about the matter – or who actually wanted to muddy the water with false accusations – were taking up too much airtime and too many column inches keeping the undue hysteria alive.
I don’t know which was the case with Baroness Chakrabarti, when she said she might quit the Labour front bench if the party failed to expel him.
But it seems clear her intervention was the last straw.
The shame of it is that certain people will take Mr Livingstone’s decision as an admission of guilt – and that he will not have the opportunity to put the record straight.
That means he is letting down others who have been put in the same situation (like This Writer).
I’m not backing down – and if Labour’s disciplinary panel find against me, I’ll happily sue the party because my good name is not a negotiable commodity.
Ken Livingstone has announced that he is resigning from the Labour party, saying the issues around his suspension for alleged antisemitism had become a distraction.
The former mayor of London and Labour MP said he was leaving the party he joined 50 years ago with “great sadness” but would continue to campaign for a government led by Jeremy Corbyn.
In a statement, he said: “After much consideration, I have decided to resign from the Labour party. We desperately need a Corbyn-led government to transform Britain and I’ll continue to work to this end.”
He added: “The ongoing issues around my suspension from the Labour party have become a distraction from the key political issue of our time – which is to replace a Tory government overseeing falling living standards and spiralling poverty, while starving our schools and the NHS of the vital resources they need.”
Livingstone, 72, has been suspended since 2016 in a row over antisemitism that erupted after comments he made about Adolf Hitler supporting Zionism, but a new Labour party disciplinary process was due to begin this week.
Source: Ken Livingstone quits Labour after antisemitism claims | Politics | The Guardian
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That’s a shame one very good member
” … he will not have the opportunity to put the record straight … ”
I think the record’s there already, Mike, for those who want to see it.
Anyway- what’s the link to the kickstarter or whatever page for your legal fund, Mike?
Presumably this means the disciplinary proceedings against Mr Livingstone will cease. Or will they seek to continue in order to decide if he will be allowed to return should he decide to?
I can’t say as I blame Mr Livingstone after the way he has been treated. He is quite likely sick to death of all the right-whinge-ing in the very divided ‘Labour Party’. I hesitate to become a ‘member’ with so many elements of the ‘party’ seemingly intent on wasting every good opportunity that is presented and apparently hell-bent on both self-preservation and self-destruction at the same time! So much for the ‘broad church’: it might yet have to split! Good luck Ken: you can’t keep a good man down: for long!
Baroness Chakrabarti, just another blairite dam its maddening to lose a man who sticks to his principles because of these very tory blairites in the party
I’m with Ken, I doubt if he is anti Semitic, but as we aledgedly have freedom of speech and thought, he should be allowed to have any belief he wants, I’m more concerned about the anti disabled, incapacitated, unemployed attitude that the government indulges in.
The allegations are not true,but that will not stop Labour’s enemies inside and outside the party claiming that his resignation is an admission of guilt.
I know which one I back and believe. Ken kept social values and people first in his mind during Thatcher and Blair periods when Labour was shambles or right wing. He has always kept true even when you might disagree with him. An independent and loved he was leader of London councils for ages as independent and got voted i as London Mayor as independent and beat the Labour official candidates
Met him on the tube, he is as he is laidback unpretentious, genuine and approachable. Knows his stuff, unlike others.
Labour has lost me – again. Repeating its same mistakes.
Something tells me that this won’t be enough for some people. It is a real shame that people can’t speak truth in this day and age, for fear of being labelled. It is like the Witch Trials of yore. What happened to evidence? What happened to the presumption of innocence? Something really nasty has happened in this country; I first noticed it after the proposal to change the Marriage laws; the stifling of debate, the willingness to accept, without question, whatever nonsense is broadcast [mostly] online, the lack of argument, merely confrontation; if you don’t agree with the prevailing wisdom, you are wrong and labelled; you are no longer entitled to disagree, you have to be wrong. We are in danger of unleashing the Thought Police. The fact that, even today, in a newspaper, I read that Mr. £ivingstone “alleged” something that is historical fact suggests that people are trying to bury the truth. If enough people fail to verify the claim, it will cease to be truth, become rumour and eventually a lie and the lie will be accepted as truth. This is why we need GOOD journalists, for today’s journalists are the historians of the future; they are the record keepers. As long as people like you, Mike, keep turning over those stones, we will have a chance.
Sadly, Ken failed to be circumspect in his comments. Hitler was never a Zionist, but supported the Haavara agreement from around 1937; it was signed in 1933. Hitler wanted all Jews out of Germany and didn’t really care how this could be accomplished. Sorry to learn Ken has resigned; he will be sorely missed, but it’s a salutory lesson for anyone who wants to comment on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the current climate.
And what is that lesson? Don’t do it?
That is unacceptable. No pressure group of any kind should be permitted to dictate what we are allowed to say in such a manner.