Livingstone threatens judicial review over Hitler comments disciplinary case

Friday evening update: The hearing has been adjourned with a decision expected to be delivered next week.

Ken Livingstone today said he could try to take the Labour Party to court if he is expelled at the end of a misconduct hearing over his comments about Hitler.

The former London mayor, who is fighting charges of behaviour “grossly detrimental” to the party, said the “obvious” next move if he lost the hearing would be to seek a judicial review.

Livingstone has faced a two-day disciplinary case relating to comments last April, when he claimed Hitler supported Zionism before he “went mad” and killed six million Jews, prompted anger from many across British politics.

Today Livingstone struck a defiant tone as his fate was in the balance.

“The obvious thing would be a judicial review because that would be heard in public and that would be the best way of clearing the air of these lies and smears. This isn’t North Korea, we are supposed to be an open democracy,” he told the London Evening Standard.

Livingstone’s comments provoked uproar among Labour MPs when he made them in a series of television appearances last year.

His attitude was condemned again this week by the Holocaust Educational Trust, which said Livingstone was “promoting a misleading and misinformed version of history to further his agenda”.

Labour’s national constitutional committee is expected to rule on Livingstone today.