12 times Labour failed to give Red Ken the boot

There are few sights more pitiful than Labour ‘moderates’ – I prefer to call them what they are: Corbyn-enablers – plating up meagre scraps as a feast of optimism for the party’s future. Last week, it was the routing of Momentum – and Unite-backed candidates for the Lewisham East by-election. That didn’t last long. Now, it’s Ken Livingstone, allowed to resign rather than risk possible expulsion. In its ‘all out war’ on anti-Semitism, Labour sued for peace on the enemy’s terms without firing a single shot. 

Expelling Livingstone would not have undone the bias and abuse the party has inflicted on British Jews. It would have been a hollow gesture in lieu of recognising and dismantling the institutional anti-Semitism which is now as Labour as the Red Flag and 11am pints at party conference. But it would have been something. In the end, Labour couldn’t even manage a hollow gesture to reassure Jews that they were safe staying in the party, voting for the party, or, heaven forbid, being governed by the party. 

Even so, any criticism of Labour’s failure to act under Jeremy Corbyn should also ask why Labour under Miliband, Brown, Blair, Smith, Kinnock and Foot was prepared to tolerate Livingstone for so long. The following are 12 instances in which Livingstone should have been expelled but wasn’t.