PM: Labour ‘let Ken Livingstone off the hook’ over anti-Semitism row
Written by News on 06/04/2017
Theresa May is to accuse Labour of "betraying" the Jewish community by not expelling Ken Livingstone from the party.
The Prime Minister will say the former London mayor has been let "off the hook" over accusations of anti-Semitism.
The attack on Labour comes as Mrs May launches the Conservatives’ campaign for next month’s local elections.
In a speech in Nottinghamshire later, she will say the Labour Party is "totally out of touch with the concerns of the British people".
She will argue that, under Mr Corbyn, it has become a party that "indulges its own ideological obsessions".
The PM will add: "A Labour Party which just this week revealed the depths to which it has now sunk, betraying the Jewish community in our country by letting Ken Livingstone off the hook.
"It could not be clearer that the Labour Party is now a long way away from the common, centre ground of British politics today."
:: Livingstone unrepentant over Hitler remarks
It comes after Labour’s Constitutional Committee suspended Mr Livingstone from the party on Tuesday, rather than expelling him, over comments he made suggesting Adolf Hitler supported Zionism.
Since then, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has announced that the party’s National Executive Committee will investigate him again – this time over his "grossly insensitive" comments since the disciplinary action.
Mr Livingstone has told Sky News he is "quite happy to go through another big inquiry" and was unrepentant about his comments, claiming they are based on historical fact.
The Conservatives look set to try and exploit the situation by framing the local elections on Thursday 4 May as a choice between the competence of Conservative councils and the "chaos and disarray" of Labour.
Mrs May will say: "In fact, when you look at it closely, these local elections present a clear and informative choice.
"The competence of a strong Conservative council, focused on the priorities of local people, keeping local taxes down and delivering high-quality local services, or the chaos and disarray of the rest – political parties motivated not by what is best for local areas, but what is best for their own partisan political interest, and without a plan for our country or our local communities – just a recipe for chaos and failure."
(c) Sky News 2017: PM: Labour ‘let Ken Livingstone off the hook’ over anti-Semitism row
