Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended from holding party office until April 2018. At a meeting on yesterday, Labour officials extended a one-year suspension imposed in 2016 for another 12 months.
Livingstone, who has repeatedly asserted collaboration between Zionists and Nazis before World War II, said the party hearing had been "like sitting through a court in North Korea."
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said Labour "has yet again failed to show that it is sufficiently serious about tackling the scourge of anti-Semitism."
The issue has wracked the party. Deputy leader Tom Watson said today that the failure to expel Livingstone "shames us all, and I'm deeply saddened by it."
"My party is not living up to its commitment to have a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism," Watson said. "I will continue the fight to ensure that it does, and I will press my colleagues to do so too."
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said Livingstone's suspension was "a slap on the wrist for a serial offender." Labour lawmaker Wes Streeting said the decision was "a terrible betrayal of Jewish Labour supporters.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content