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Listen to Douglas Murray and James Forsyth debating Ken Livingstone’s non-expulsion: Ken Livingstone has not been expelled from the Labour party for his comments about Hitler and Zionism. Instead, he has been suspended for two years; but he has already served one year of that suspension. Given the offensiveness of what Livingstone said and the glee with which he expounded his argument, he should have been expelled. Indeed, some of his comments in recent days have been worthy of expulsion on their own. He talked earlier this week of how ‘you had right up until the start of the Second World War real collaboration’ between the Nazi government and the

Ken Livingstone will find out in a few hours’ time whether he’s been permanently booted out of the Labour party for mouthing off about Hitler. So, how is he spending the hours before the verdict is in? Well, by mouthing off about Hitler – obviously. Outside the hearing where he will discover his fate, the former Mayor of London has been up to his usual tricks — giving any one who will listen a lecture on why Adolf Hitler was a Zionist. This time, Ken has been explaining how the SS set up training camps for German Jews. Here’s what he said: ‘The SS set up training camps so that German Jews, who

As Ken Livingstone faces a two-day disciplinary hearing from Labour into his claim that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist ‘before he went mad and murdered six million Jews’, the former Mayor of London has submitted a 17-page defence of himself to Labour’s National Constitutional Committee. In the hefty document, he describes the accusations against him as ‘essentially a political charge’ owing to his support for both Jeremy Corbyn and Palestinian human rights. While Livingstone’s claim that he’s victim of a ‘political plot’ has led to some ridicule, it’s another aspect of the document’s contents that’s troubling Mr S. In the citations section, the Labour politician lists evidence for his various claims. On one such footnote, he cites ‘Israel

In an appearance on the Today programme on Monday, Ken Livingstone silenced his critics by managing to refrain from mentioning Hitler once during the course of the interview. Alas, his good behaviour wasn’t to last. Speaking on Radio 5 Live this morning, the former Mayor of London — who is currently suspended from Labour after he argued that Hitler supported Zionism — managed to say the H-word once again. Speaking to Emma Barnett, Livingstone called for ‘right-wing’ Labour MPs — including Wes Streeting and Chuka Umunna — to be suspended. Referring to this group of non-believers, he said it’s the same group who ‘were screaming that I’d said Hitler was a Zionist and I

This week Ken Livingstone has managed to cause a stir after he appeared on the BBC to defend Keith Vaz — but ended up talking about Hitler. However, there was another reason Livingstone’s appearance on television piqued Mr S’s interest: why is he still in Britain? During the EU referendum campaign, Livingstone threatened to emigrate if Brexit triumphed: ‘I would personally start thinking about emigrating to somewhere the economy is not going to collapse.’ Yet three months on and Livingstone remains in Brexit Britain, showing no signs of making a quick getaway. While it’s certainly true — as this week’s Spectator cover story details — that the economy is confounding Remain doom-mongers such as

Today Keith Vaz has stepped down as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee following a series of claims about his personal life. His decision comes after a number of his Labour comrades tried to help his cause by going onto the airwaves to wax lyrical about their colleague. Simon Danczuk — who is currently suspended from the party for sexting a 17-year-old — appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show to claim that Vaz is a well-respected MP. He was joined by Ken Livingstone — who is currently suspended from the party over his claim that Hitler was ‘supporting Zionism’ before he ‘went mad and ended up killing six million Jews’. Livingstone did manage to wax lyrical about

Since the vote for Brexit, the media has fallen over itself to cover the apparently large upswing in the number of ‘hate crimes’ being reported. One of the trends noted is a particularly high occurrence of such incidents in areas that voted ‘Leave’. In his Spectator cover piece, Brendan O’Neill argues that there is an ‘unhinged subjectivity’ to hate crime reporting, which has skewed statistics in favour of self-critical moralisation. So, has there really been a post-Brexit surge in hostility towards minority groups or is our metric for recording these crimes simply off-kilter? Brendan O’Neill joins Kevin O’Sullivan, who was recently cleared after spending 20 months defending himself from a

Since the vote for Brexit, the media has fallen over itself to cover the apparently large upswing in the number of ‘hate crimes’ being reported. One of the trends noted is a particularly high occurrence of such incidents in areas that voted ‘Leave’. In his Spectator cover piece, Brendan O’Neill argues that there is an ‘unhinged subjectivity’ to hate crime reporting, which has skewed statistics in favour of self-critical moralisation. So, has there really been a post-Brexit surge in hostility towards minority groups or is our metric for recording these crimes simply off-kilter? Brendan O’Neill joins Kevin O’Sullivan, who was recently cleared after spending 20 months defending himself from a

It’s been over a month since Ken Livingstone found himself suspended from the Labour party over his claim that Hitler was a supporter of Zionism. Today the former Mayor of London was forced to face the music over his comments at the Home Affairs select committee on anti-Semitism. Although Livingstone has experienced a fall from grace since the comments, he was in a cheerful mood at the hearing. When he wasn’t pitching for his own BBC history show on Nazi Germany — ‘I’d be delighted to do it’ — he was filling MPs in on all the ‘well-educated’ Jews who had stopped him in the street of late to offer their sympathies. ‘The number of Jews

After Ken Livingstone claimed that Hitler supported Zionism, he found himself suspended from the Labour and his media presence dwindle — as he was let go from his weekly LBC show. Happily, the former Mayor of London has found a publication that still wants him. Step forward the Morning Star. Yes, the socialist paper has decided that Livingstone — who recently said ‘a real anti-Semite doesn’t just hate the Jews in Israel’ — has all the makings of a star columnist. In his first column, on the Queen’s Speech, Red Ken makes sure to thank the publication for its faith in him: ‘First, I would like to thank the Morning Star

After the recent local elections, John McDonnell put Labour’s ‘better-than-expected’ results in part down to the efforts of Momentum activists. Alas, it seems that not everyone involved with the hard-left campaign group is so in chime with the party when it comes to Labour values. Mr S understands that Momentum’s Marlene Ellis has been suspended by the party over an open letter to Corbyn from the Momentum Black ConneXions group. Ellis — who previously made the news after she was accused of labelling Chuka Umunna as not ‘politically black‘ — co-signed the blog post which calls on Corbyn to reverse the ‘unjustified suspension of Ken Livingstone’ after the former mayor was suspended over his

You know you’ve not necessarily added a great deal to your argument when Ken Livingstone is telling you off for invoking Hitler. Boris Johnson finds himself in that rather awkward position today, with the former Mayor being scolded by another former Mayor for claiming at the weekend that Hitler was among ‘various people’ who tried to create a European superstate and that ‘the EU is an attempt to do this by different methods’. Livingstone insisted that while ‘what I said was perfectly true’ (that was that Hitler supported Zionism ‘before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews’, in case you’d forgotten) that Boris had got his facts