Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ken Livingstone’s resignation statement is that he finally managed to avoid saying the word that got him into so much trouble in the first place. The former mayor of London said that with ‘great sadness’ he was cutting up his party membership card because ‘the ongoing issues around my suspension from the Labour Party have become a distraction from the key political issue of our time’.
Livingstone’s decision to renounce his membership brings to an end his suspension from the party of more than two years, which came about after he suggested in 2016 that Hitler was a zionist. But while the row is now, in a sense, concluded, this is an outcome that will please no one. Ken has been allowed to quit the party on his own terms.
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