Labour suspends Ken Livingstone in antisemitism row - as it happened

The New Statesman’s George Eaton says John Mann only avoided being suspended because the whips office (ie Rosie Winterton, the chief whip) objected.

Helpfully, the Independent has got a full transcript of all the various things Ken Livingstone has been saying in interviews today.

I quoted Seema Malhotra, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, earlier saying the suspension of Ken Livingstone was a “defining moment” for Labour (see 4.11pm) but on Twitter she went further, saying Livingstone “must go”.

BBC New has just broadcast some footage of someone going up to the front door of Ken Livingstone’s home and tying an Israeli flag to the door knocker.

Livingstone came out afterwards and took it down.

Laura Janner-Klausner, Senior Rabbi to the Movement for Reform Judaism, has said that Ken Livingstone’s record on antisemitism is worse than Naz Shah’s. Janner-Klausner told the Press Association:

I think these two people, Naz and Ken Livingstone, are night and day in how they have reacted. Here is one person who did something very wrong and has said ‘I have done something very wrong, I am sorry, I want to learn I want to change’.

And here we have someone who did something very wrong and has done for years and is in denial, aggressive denial, I think. He [Livingstone] is not an apologist for the Nazis, but I do think that he has a terrible, proven, repeated and long-term record of treating Jews and Judaism in an unpleasant way, and also in a self-satisfied way.

The Labour MP Mike Gapes has also tweeted his support for John Mann.

This is what the Labour MP Chris Evans was posting on Twitter about Ken Livingstone and John Mann earlier.

Seema Malhotra, the shadow chief secretary to Treasury, has described the suspension of Ken Livingstone as a “defining moment” for the party. She said:

This is a defining moment and it is right that the Labour party acted swiftly in suspending Ken Livingstone. Anti-Semitism is racism.

We know this is not an issue for one political party alone. But Labour can and must take a lead in seeking to stamp out rising levels of racism in all its forms.

And here is my colleague Rowena Mason’s take on John Mann’s meeting with the chief whip.

This will disappoint those who were hoping that Mann might be suspended.

John Mann has already had his meeting with Rosie Winterton, the chief whip, I’m told. But I’ve got no further details yet as to what was said.

Here is some rather lively video of Ken Livingstone being doorstepped by reporters as he left the BBC’s Millbank studio after his interviews earlier today.

Here is more from what Jeremy Corbyn said about Ken Livingstone in Hull. Corbyn said:

There were grave concerns about the language [Livingstone] used. We had a discussion about it and decided we would suspend him and he would go through an investigation by party.

Corbyn also said that anyone who claimed the party was not “cracking down” on antisemitism was wrong.

Earlier I said that when David Cameron talked about Labour MPs shouting “disgraceful” when he raised antisemitism in the Labour party at PMQs recently, he may have been muddling that up with what happened when he attacked Sadiq Khan at PMQs. But Hansard confirms that he was heckled loudly when the criticised Labour’s record on anti-semitism last month. I’ve updated the earlier post. See 2.28pm. You may need to refresh the page to get the update to appear.

Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh says Jeremy Corbyn wants to suspend John Mann alongside Ken Livingstone.

Livingstone has been suspended. Mann has not, but he has been summoned to see the chief whip, which could lead to him being suspended at some point in the future.

In his comment on the Ken Livingstone affair David Cameron said that he was shouted down by Labour MPs in the Commons recently when he tried to make a point about antisemitism in the Labour party. (See 2.01pm.)

He may not be remembering this accurately. He was shouted down in the Commons last week when he criticised Sadiq Khan’s links to Suliman Gani, an imam who is deemed extremist. Hansard recalls that Jeremy Corbyn was one of the people who told Cameron he was being “digraceful” (the word Cameron recalled today).

But that exchange was not related to antisemitism in the party. Labour MPs were angry because they thought Cameron was engaged in a smear. The Guardian’s Dave Hill has more on this here.

UPDATE: I’m probably being unfair on Cameron. There was a PMQs in March when he raised anti-semitism in the Labour party, and was loudly heckled. But I can’t tell from Hansard whether the word “disgraceful” was shouted on that occasion. It certainly was last week during the Khan exchanges.

Rabbi Danni Rich from Liberal Judaism, a progressive Judaism body, has put out a statement explaining why, as a Labour party member, he was “disgusted” by Ken Livingstone’s Hitler comment this morning. Here’s an extract.

Claiming Hitler was a Zionist is not only a huge historical perversion, but it directly equates Nazism and Zionism. It suggests they share objectives and values; it is guilt by association. It is hard to think of a more offensive linkage.

Suspending him from the Labour Party is not the end of the matter. Livingstone is a symptom, not the cause.

I am nervous that by focussing on one large personality, we are not dealing with the issues which lead him to make such a statement.

The first step is to admit you have an institutional problem and then to set out strategies to deal with that.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has called for Ken Livingstone to be expelled from the Labour party. This is from its president, Jonathan Arkush.

Ken Livingstone’s comments were abhorrent and beyond disgraceful. He denies anti-Semitism in Labour when the evidence is there for all to see. He lacks any sense of reality and decency. He must now be expelled from the Labour party.

According to @deletedbyMPs, an account that aggregates tweets deleted by MPs, Diane Abbott, the shadow international development secretary and a leftwing ally of Ken Livingstone, has been deleting tweets she posted in the past expressing support for Livingstone. They were retweets of tweets backing Livingstone for election to Labour’s national executive committee.

The Labour MP Neil Coyle says some Labour members in his local party want Ken Livingstone to be expelled.

According to Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh, there are suggestions that John Mann could end up being suspended from the party too.

Dan Jarvis, seen by some as a possible future Labour leader, has also been among those calling for Livingstone to be suspended.

The Labour MP Wes Streeting says Ken Livingstone has been touring the TV studios “like a political arsonist”, pouring fuel on the fire. He should be gone, Streeting says.

He says Livingstone is guilty of “complicity” with antisemitism. He recalls what Livingstone said to the Jewish Evening Standard reporter. And he mentions Livingstone’s decision to invite the controversial Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London.

Livingstone is still on the World at One.

Q: There have been several calls for you to be suspended.

Livingstone says these are from “all my usual critics”. He agrees that there should be no space for antisemitism in the party.

Q: So you will not leave the party, or stand down from your post as co-chair of the party’s international policy commission.

Livingstone says he will carry on in the party fighting antisemitism.

As you would expect, we have been trying to get some reaction from Labour HQ and Jeremy Corbyn’s office to what Livingstone said. They have not responded.

But Corbyn is doing a visit in Grimsby, so we might hear from him later. This is from my colleague Anushka Asthana.

Michael Dugher, the former shadow culture secretary, has backed John Mann’s comments about Ken Livingstone. (See 12.53pm.)

More from Jon Lansman, the Momentum founder and key Corbyn ally.

Sadiq Khan is on Sky News now. He says Londoners will be “appalled” by Ken Livingstone’s comments.

He says Londoners he speaks to say the Labour leadership has been too slow to take action against people who make antisemitic comments.

Q: Ken Livingstone says there is a difference between criticising Israel and being antisemitic.

Khan says people will be offended by what Livingstone said.

I’m afraid we have had to close comments on the blog. This is something that happens only very rarely on Politics Live, but certain topics attract so much hate and abuse BTL that it becomes impossible for the moderators to cope. I’m sorry that has spoiled things for the many decent, sensible people who comment here.

Here is more footage of the Mann/Livingstone confrontation.

Q: [To Mann] Do you think Livingstone is antisemitic?

Yes, says Mann.

And he says Livingstone is wrong. Hitler was opposed to a Jewish state. He thought that would create a Jewish powerbase. He tells Livingstone.

I think you’ve lost it, Mr Livingstone ... What are you on at the moment? You certainly shouldn’t be on Labour’s national executive.

Livingstone says he never said Hitler was a Zionist.

Mann says he did. He challenges Livingstone to withdraw what he said earlier.

And that it. Neil finishes by saying at least Livingstone was willing to come on the programme and answer questions.

John Mann is coming on the programme now.

Q: Livingstone says you were over the top in calling him a Nazi apologist.

Mann says Livingstone is a Nazi apologist. And Livingstone is wrong about history. He should read Mein Kampf, and study what Hitler did. He should not be on Labour’s national executive committee. He should be suspended.

Livingstone says he was right. The BBC should check.

Q; But what’s the point?

Livingstone says he was answering a question.

Q: You seem to be implying Hitler was not such a bad guy because he just wanted to deport Jews.

Livingstone says Hitler was a monster all along.

Neil asks Nick Clegg, who is also on the Daily Politics, what he thinks.

Clegg says he thinks Labour MPs want Livingstone suspended because of what he said about Hitler. It is perverse logic to introduce Hitler when trying to defend someone of antisemitism. Clegg says he won’t be sanctimonious; he had to deal with antisemitism in his party. But linking Hitler with modern politics is contorted.

Livingstone says that was Hitler’s policy when he came to power.

Q: So that’s alright then, is it?

No, says Livingstone. He was just answering a question, he says.

He says that was Hitler’s policy when he came to power.

Clegg says he never expected to see mainstream politicians like Livingstone raking over what Hitler did.

Livingstone says he studies history, partly so we don’t make the same mistakes again.

Clegg says this is “an extraordinarily contorted approach”.

Neil plays a clip of the Livingstone/Mann confrontation.

Q: I have never heard a Labour MP call another Labour colleague a Nazi apologist.

Livingstone says he has had run ins with Mann before.

Q: There are people in the mainstream of Labour criticising you. It is not just your Blairite enemies ... Can you continue as co-chair of the foreign policy commission?

Livingstone says these things normally die down. When people see what he actually said, they will be calmer.

Neil quotes what Chris Bryant said in the Commons earlier. (That is the quote I poster earlier - see 11.42am. It is a transcript of what Bryant said in business questions in the Commons.)

Livingstone says many of the recent controversies involve people who have just joined the party.

Q: You welcomed to London a man who called for Jews and homosexuals around the world to be killed when you were mayor.

Livingstone says he cannot equate those comments with what he heard the Islamist say when he was in London.

Q: Eleven Labour MP want you to be suspended from the party. You are under pressure.

Not really, says Livingstone. He just said what he thought.

Here is some footage of the Ken Livingstone/John Mann confrontation.

The interview is still going on.

Livingstone says you will not find anyone in the Labour party saying anything antisemitic without being expelled recently.

Out of the 300,000 people who have joined the party recently, only two have been expelled for anti-semitism.

He says he was denounced and vilified as antisemitic when he said Labour should recognise the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Yet 12 years later Arafat was welcomed at the White House.

Asked about the confrontation with John Mann (see 11.51am) he says they did not have an argument. It was just Mann shouting at him. Mann would not engage with the argument, he says.

And that’s it. The interview is over.

According to Channel 4 News’s Michael Crick, the Labour MP John Mann told Ken Livingstone to his face outside a recording studio (it looks like Millbank from the picture) that he was “a fucking disgrace”.

And here is another Labour peer attacking Ken Livingstone. Spencer Livermore was Labour’s general election campaign director in 2015.

Here’s Stewart Wood, the Labour peer who was Ed Miliband’s main policy adviser, on Ken Livingstone.

Tristram Hunt, the former shadow education secretary, says Livingstone’s comments were “despicable”. He also wants Livingstone to be suspended.

In the Commons Chris Grayling, the Conservative leader of the Commons, has described Livingstone’s comments as “disgraceful”. This is from the Press Association’s Jack Maidment.

Figures from other parties are now hurling themselves on to the anti-Livingstone bandwagon. Caroline Pidgeon, the Lib Dem mayoral candidate, is calling for Ken Livingstone to be expelled from Labour.

Ken Livingstone has form on this. London is a diverse and tolerant city. There should be no place for division. Jeremy Corbyn should expel Ken Livingstone from the Labour Party.

And this is from the Labour MP John Woodcock, who seems to be calling for Livingstone to lose his role as co-chair of the party’s international policy commission.

The Labour MP Conor McGinn says Ken Livingstone’s comments on antisemitism are “appalling”.

Here are two blogs that are worth reading in connection with the Labour antisemitism row.

• Jamie Stern-Weiner at Open Democracy says that the claim that antisemitism is a growing problem is “ devoid of factual basis” and the allegations are being exaggerated by Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents. Stern-Weiner goes into considerable detail to make his point.

The allegations against Corbyn and the Labour party are underpinned by an almost comical paucity of evidence, while what evidence does exist not only fails to justify the claims being made, but has itself been systematically misrepresented. There is no grounds for supposing either that antisemitism is significant within the Labour party, or that its prevalence is increasing. But, under mounting pressure, the Labour leadership’s response to the accusations has regressed from dismissive to defensive, to the point where policy interventions from such noted antisemitism experts as Richard Angell of Progress are reportedly being treated as serious, good-faith contributions.

The political logic behind this retreat is understandable, but there is no reason for others to play along. The enraging and – for genuine opponents of antisemitism – dismaying truth is this: a miserable assortment of chancers, cynics and careerists is exploiting Jewish suffering to prosecute petty vendettas, wage factional warfare and discredit legitimate criticism of Israel ...

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research has lamented ‘the hyperbole, bias and conjecture that litter public discourse’ on antisemitism. The allegations of widespread or increasing antisemitism in the Labour party offer ample evidence of all three. They are based on wild generalisations from a small number of cases, most of which have themselves been misrepresented, either to fabricate antisemitism where none exists; to unfairly taint Corbyn and his supporters by association; or simply gratuitously, one presumes out of habit. But while sensationalist and sloppy journalism has abetted the propagation of these falsehoods, the accusations have snowballed because they serve, and are being opportunistically seized upon to advance, real political interests. Briefly stated, the taboo against antisemitism is being exploited by three distinct, but overlapping, groups: the Right, which hopes to attack Labour while directing attention away from the Conservative Party’s internal tensions and unpopular policies; pro-Israel activists, who hope to unseat a prominent critic of Israel and to discredit Palestine solidarity activism; and the Labour Right, which hopes to weaken a popular movement that has, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, wrested from it control of the party.

• Emran Mian, who runs the Social Market Foundation, writes for the i about how he used to be antisemitic and about how he came to think differently.

The Labour MP John Mann, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show that he thought Naz Shah should be sent to Isreal as part of antisemitism awareness training. He told the programme:

They are stupid remarks, but they are also racist remarks and highly offensive. Either she is thrown out or she is educated about antisemitism and the grave offence she has created.

What I’ve recommended, and I did so before she was suspended to Jeremy Corbyn, and to her directly personally, is that she should be educated in antisemitism in order that she can be one of the people who fights it. And that should include - and I’ve asked Jeremy Corbyn to do this - that she should go to Israel to the Holocaust centre at Yad Vashem and also to Sderot where the missiles from Hamas hit families to get a better understanding of Israel and why her remarks are offensive.

Asked if he thought she was antisemitic, he said he thought her remarks were antisemitic. But he said she was willing and happy to engage, which was a good thing.

Lucy Powell, the shadow education secretary, was asked why Naz Shah was not suspended earlier when she was interviewed on the Today programme this morning. “Sometimes I know people want us to act immediately but sometimes it does take some time to establish the facts,” Powell told the programme.

Powell also sidestepped a question about whether she would be happy to sit alongside Shah in the Commons, saying she did not want to “predetermine the outcome” of the investigation into the MP.

Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn suspended the Bradford West MP Naz Shah over a Facebook post deemed antisemitic that she made before the general election but his action has not silenced the row about antisemitism in the party. Leading Jewish figures have been saying it’s a serious problem for the party.

The most significant is probably Lord Levy, the party’s chief fundraiser when Tony Blair was leader. He told Newsnight that Corbyn’s team had “dithered” and “taken too long” to suspend Shah.

Unfortunately I have to say that I do think that it’s a serious problem. The lack of sensitivity when an MP talks about transportation of the largest Jewish community in the world, I think it just shows such ignorance.

The tweets and comments that she made on Hitler, I just begin to scratch my head in despair as to how people like this can enter our Parliament with such a lack of knowledge, such a lack of discretion and such a lack of sensitivity.

Rabbi Lady Neuberger, a crossbench peer, also told the programme she thought the party had a problem with antisemitsm.

I think Labour does have a problem with anti-Semitism. That’s not to say that other parties haven’t got problems with anti-Semitism, or that it isn’t elsewhere. But Labour has a very particular problem, and a particular problem at the moment.

David Abrahams, who has been a major donor to Labour in the past, told Jewish News that he was “appalled by the growth of antisemitism in the party”. And this morning the Jewish comedian David Baddiel that he thought the left championed itself as the protector of the oppressed but had a hangover that Jews “are rich and powerful and controlling”. He explained:

This is about the Left and their image of Jews and there is no question, obviously, that the way that the Left talk about Israel is part of that issue.

I will post more on this if this story develops.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Economists for Brexit publish a report saying Britain would be better off outside the EU.

9.15am: Sajid Javid, the business secretary, gives evidence to a Commons committee about the steel industry crisis. My colleague Graeme Wearden will be covering the hearing on his business live blog.

Around lunchtime: David Cameron takes part in a Q&A on the EU.

As usual, I will also be covering the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m @AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.

If you think there are any voices that I’m leaving out, particularly political figures or organisations giving alternative views of the stories I’m covering, do please flag them up below the line (include “Andrew” in the post). I can’t promise to include everything, but I do try to be open to as wide a range of perspectives as possible.