Ken Livingstone’s Labour membership card remains valid – but for how long? The former Mayor of London avoided being booted out of the party following his comments about Hitler. But he was told by Jeremy Corbyn yesterday that he faces another investigation into remarks he has made since the party’s decision to suspend him. The newspapers are unanimous: this sorry mess is doing the Labour party no favours at all.
We should be grateful, suggests the Daily Telegraph that Ken Livingstone reached for another dictatorial analogy yesterday rather than his usual choice. But his suggestion that being in the disciplinary hearing deciding his future place in the Labour party was like being in North Korea shows his ‘almost pathological obsession with making unsavoury allusions’. Livingstone has defended himself at every turn by insisting he is telling a ‘historical truth’ about the Nazis. But this is not a “truth” by any measure, says the Telegraph. Instead, it is ‘a tendentious view of history’ and the only purpose of Livingstone’s comments seem to be in drawing parallels between ‘the Israelis to the Nazis’. ‘It is an odious tactic’, says the Telegraph. But it’s clear Corbyn isn’t keen to get rid of ‘one of his closest allies’. ‘They are, after all, cut from the same cloth,’ concludes the paper.
Livingstone’s message is ‘a mangled retelling of the 1930s’, says the Guardian – and even if we ignore Livingstone’s ‘grotesque misreading of history’, there is no doubt that ‘this kind of language is deeply offensive’. It’s also the case, says the Guardian, that Livingstone’s refusal to say sorry for his remarks ‘oozes contempt for the Jewish community’. Instead of toning it down, the former London mayor has been keen instead to opt for the path of ‘gleeful defiance’. Now it’s time for that to stop: ‘every organisation that studies the Holocaust’, says the Guardian, tells us that ‘Livingstone’s language is unacceptable’. Yet while many are outraged by Red Ken’s comments, ‘a Labour committee has decided not to mind their pain’. Labour must not ask itself a vital question, says the Guardian: ‘How has it even come this far?’. Unless the party finally acts decisively, the paper says that a stark conclusion will be apparent: that ‘Labour values Mr Livingstone’s membership over the fight against antisemitism’.
The Times says that enough is enough: Livingstone’s punishment is ‘barely a slap on the wrist,’ says the paper. ‘it is obvious,’ argues the Times, ‘that Mr Livingstone has no intention of making a serious historical argument’. And even if he wanted to, suggests the paper, it’s apparent that he is ‘ill equipped’ for the task. Instead, the only purpose of his comments appears to be to ’seek maximum attention, regardless of the pain caused to Jewish people’. But Livingstone’s words are doing real damage, argues the Times. His historically-questionable statements ‘emboldens antisemites in the Labour Party’. And they also make a ’mockery’ of Labour’s claim that it is the tolerant party. ‘Labour must now eject Mr Livingstone,’ concludes the Times.
The Sun meanwhile has its say on the European parliament following its debate yesterday on Brexit. ‘Nothing symbolises the greed and waste at the core of the EU’ like this gathering of MEPs, says the paper. These ‘third-rate politicians’ are largely unknown by the people they are supposed to represent – and yet they are also largely to blame for Brussels’ ‘overreach’. It’s ‘little surprise’ then, says the Sun, that the EU’s parliament wanted to spell out such harsh ‘red lines’ on Brexit as it did yesterday. In doing so, the parliament is repeating the same performance it exercised during David Cameron’s negotiations last February, says the paper. Yet this will only result, once again, in a conclusion ‘that Britain doesn’t take kindly to being pushed around’, says the Sun. It seems that the ‘Euro loons’ have let their veto on any Brexit deal ‘go to their heads’. ‘We can only hope’, concludes the Sun, that ‘those in Brussels doing the real negotiating are ready to behave like grown-ups’.
The Daily Mail takes an unusual step in its editorial by sending a message to its rival, the Guardian: ‘the Mail wishes its old antagonist well’, it says. If it’s true that the paper is mulling up a move to Manchester then it’s good news, argues the Mail. For one thing, it ’might even put its journalists in touch with real people’. And, what’s more, the paper might start thinking ‘beyond the Islington echo-chamber’. But the Mail concludes its warm message to its rival with some advice to the ‘great people’ of Manchester: ‘If the Guardian (which loses £95million a year) really ran the country – instead of telling everyone else how to manage our affairs – we’d all be living in mud huts’.
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