Ken Livingstone interview: 'Apologise over anti-Semitism? That would involve me lying'

I point out that Hitler actually lost the 1932 election to incumbent Paul von Hindenburg. "Oh. Oh right, I thought he won in ‘32”. Anyway, I say, can you see why the comments caused such offence to members of the Jewish community and more widely? “No. No-one said it’s offensive in all this time. Only in the media. I can’t go down the street without people stopping me and telling me about their support.

“No-one has been unpleasant to me throughout these two years and hundreds of people have stopped me to say ‘we know what you said is true’.”

"I mean, Jews know their history,” he belligerently informs me.

Is it wise to make such sweeping generalisations about a religious or racial group, I ask. “It’s a simple fact,” he says. “Literally, the Jewish community in Britain has the highest level of educational attainment of any community.

“The Jewish community are bound to have known about this because they have relatives who ended up in Israel because of this deal.”

I meet Livingstone at his house in north-west London, two days after he resigned from Labour. His departure had been a long time coming; it was two years ago that he was suspended, and since then he has faced a barrage of criticism and watched on as the party leadership was dragged further and further into a damaging anti-Semitism row. Members of the Jewish Labour Movement urged the party's ruling body not to readmit him, and he faced vehement criticism from Labour MPs.

In the two years since he was suspended, Livingstone says he has concentrated on his role as a “house-husband”, and tending to his immaculate garden. His home is bright and stylishly decorated, if a little cluttered. His walls and shelves are adorned with awards celebrating his work in LGBT rights, as well as a cartoonish clay model showing him clambering into Tony Blair’s skull, and a poster for a Russian event in Clapham.

At the age of 72, does he envisage a return to Labour in the future? Again, he uses the question as an opportunity to protest his innocence. "I’ve no plan to go back into the Labour party. What would be the point? I’m not going to run for Parliament again, I’m not going to run for Mayor again. The only reason that garden’s beautiful is I’ve been suspended for two years.

“I can support the Labour party from the outside. If I try to go back in, all the investigation has to go back again. Won’t it be embarrassing for them when they discover that I was suspended for saying something I didn’t say? It would reveal a travesty of injustice.”

Livingstone has clashed with the Labour party machine before: when Frank Dobson won the Labour nomination for the first London mayoral election, he stood against him as an independent. Within four years, he had been re-admitted and was re-elected to City Hall in 2004. “It was an electrifying period, we achieved so much. There was a really good atmosphere in there, it was all open to ideas and debate. I came into politics to do things, I love running things.” He highlighted the introduction of the Congestion Charge and winning the Olympic Games as standout achievements, and also cites work he undertook to promote LGBT rights.

If he were in Sadiq Khan’s shoes now, I ask, would he welcome Donald Trump to London? "He won’t be welcomed, because of his racism,” Livingston replies. “People will despise him, there’ll be lots of demos, but in a democracy you can’t ban someone from coming."

A long-term republican, he adds: “It will be embarrassing for the Queen if she has to meet him."

Did he watch the Royal wedding? “I thought it was lovely. What’s come over is that Harry and his brother are just normal people. Whereas poor old Prince Charles grew up in a world where there was a Victorian culture around the Palace. One of the reasons I’ve always been in favour of abolishing the monarchy… I just don’t think kids should grow up in a world where they’re waiting for their parent to die.”

But as well as clashing with the party machine, Livingstone also has previous with anti-Semitism. Examples include him claiming the Jewish community had stopped voting Labour as they got richer in 2012, and his suspension as Mayor after comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard in 2005.

Perhaps it’s time to issue an unequivocal apology for the most recent comments, I suggest. He won’t back down. “That would involve me lying. I’ve never lied in my entire political career and I’m not going to lie now. I stated historical fact.” He may be a veteran left-winger, but Livingstone thinks he's right until the bitter end.