It’s carry on Ken as London mayor’s suspension order lifted

KEN Livingstone won a last ditch legal bid yesterday to remain as London mayor - just hours before his suspension was due to begin.

A High Court judge ruled that Mr Livingstone should have the controversial four-week suspension stayed pending a statutory appeal.

On Friday, the Adjudication Panel for England unanimously found Mr Livingstone guilty of being “unnecessarily insensitive and offensive” in comparing Jewish Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold to a Nazi concentration camp guard.

The three-man tribunal decided that he brought his office into disrepute and breached the Greater London Authority code of conduct.

Mr Livingstone described the stay of suspension as “a very welcome development.”

He said: “In my view the ruling of the case tribunal to suspend me from office when there is no suggestion that I have acted unlawfully strikes at the fundamental principles of democracy.”

Grounds for the appeal are to be submitted in March. Mr Livingstone’s lawyers are to argue the tribunal’s decision breaches his right to private life under the European Convention on Human Rights. They will also claim it contravenes his right to freedom of expression and the suspension is an “inappropriate” sanction.

Even before any further legal action, Mr Livingstone says he faces a hefty bill for legal costs which tops £80,000 (€118,000).

The mayor vowed to fight the case all the way to the House of Lords if necessary.

As his legal team began gearing up for the appeal, Mr Livingstone was fuelling the ongoing tensions between himself, the Jewish community and Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail.

“I have no intention of apologising because I don’t believe it,” he said.

He accused the Board of Deputies of British Jews of making the original complaint only to try to “hush” him up over his views on the Middle East.

It was a form of “McCarthyism updated for a new age”, he claimed.

Jon Benjamin, of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, denied there was a witch hunt against Mr Livingstone. He dismissed the mayor’s claims that they wanted him to “tone down” his views on the Israeli government as just a “smokescreen.”