"Hero" Ken Must "Apologise", Says Shadow Secretary

Ken Livingstone was a “hero” who spent his life “at the front of liberation politics” before his remarks about Hitler, Clive Lewis said in London last night.

The Shadow Business Secretary told a national Union of Jewish Students (UJS) Conference the disgraced former London Mayor “really does need” to offer a “full and frank” apology for them.

Lewis speaks to UJS Conference

The former Mayor caused outrage when openly stating “Hitler “supported Zionism” … [before going] “mad and killing six million Jews.” Challenged by a student, Mr Lewis branded the comments "quite frankly, outrageous and wrong." 

“But I look at Livingstone’s political career in its entirety as someone on the Left, as someone who for many years saw him as a hero.”

The former Shadow Defence Secretary – who claimed to have himself been the victim of “racism” - admitted, however, the notoriously-known "Red Ken" having not already said sorry “does call into question” why his membership hasn’t been stripped.  

Issuing a plea to Mr Livingstone, he stated: “It is incumbent upon him to apologise and disown the comments that he made.”

Mr Lewis, who proposed to his girlfriend after giving a guest address to the annual student meeting, also expressed his sadness that “many” Jewish Labour members feel politically “homeless”.

“People with my opinions in the Labour Party are the majority, the vast majority,” he said. It is a “small minority” who hold “anti-Semitic views” that are being “pushed out”, he explained.

After the talk, Mr Lewis promised to ask Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn to respond more quickly and properly to intimidation and Anti-Semitic sentiments in Oxford University Union. The student who asked him to do so was unavailable at the time of publication.