{"id":247891,"date":"2016-06-05T01:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T01:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/livingstone-to-prescott-ghastly-ex-blairites-to-blame-for-labour-party-suspension-rt-show\/"},"modified":"2016-06-05T01:00:59","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T01:00:59","slug":"livingstone-to-prescott-ghastly-ex-blairites-to-blame-for-labour-party-suspension-rt-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/livingstone-to-prescott-ghastly-ex-blairites-to-blame-for-labour-party-suspension-rt-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Livingstone to Prescott: \u2018Ghastly\u2019 ex-Blairites to blame for Labour party suspension (RT SHOW)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.06\/thumbnail\/57535fe9c3618892798b45a3.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        Former Labour sparring partners John Prescott and Ken Livingstone have gone toe-to-toe on RT\u2019s News Thing, with the former London mayor blaming his party suspension on \u2018ghastly old ex-Blairites.\u2019<\/p>\n<div readability=\"99.291021671827\">\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/shows\/news-thing\/345414-john-prescott-ken-livingstone\/\">WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The pair have previously engaged in a war of words, with ex-mayor Livingstone once calling Lord Prescott an <em>\u201cembarrassment\u201d<\/em> for attacking the leadership of Ed Miliband.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nuuNR2VgPzw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>An advocate of re-engaging with Labour\u2019s leftist roots following the Blair years, Livingstone also told Prescott to <em>\u201cretire\u201d<\/em> in 2013.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cRetire &#8211; you have had your turn, you screwed it up, don\u2019t try and wreck it for others,\u201d<\/em> Livingstone said.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cFor Prescott to criticise anyone else given his record in government is just ridiculous. The last thing Ed Miliband needs to do is take advice from him.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Deputy prime minister during Labour\u2019s Tony Blair era, Prescott has fought his fair share of battles inside and out of the House of Commons, including the extraordinary moment he clocked an egg-throwing protester square on the jaw.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So it was perhaps no surprise that when handed the presenter\u2019s role of the political panel show Prescott aimed a few testing body shots at his Labour colleague.<\/p>\n<p>Zeroing in on Livingstone\u2019s recent comments linking Adolf Hitler to Zionism, Prescott asked the former London mayor if he courted controversy and whether he realised the damage it can do to the Labour Party.<\/p>\n<p>But Livingstone said he stood by his comments in an interview with BBC Radio London, during which he said: \u201cLet\u2019s remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that the Jews would be moved to Israel.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cHe was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/341271-ken-livingstone-suspended-hitler\/\">READ MORE: \u2018Hitler supported Zionism\u2019 claim gets Ken Livingstone suspended from Labour<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking on News Thing, Livingstone said he was attempting to challenge allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour party, and suggested he wasn\u2019t aware of the controversy it would cause until <em>\u201call these ghastly ex-Blairites start screaming.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Livingstone also refused to blame the new Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, for his subsequent suspension, instead rounding on the <em>\u201cbureaucracy\u201d<\/em> created by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThis is Blair\u2019s legacy, he gave the bureaucrats the power to suspend. We were elected, the bureaucrats are the people who are appointed.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cIt\u2019s the formal [Labour Party] staff appointed mainly in Blair\u2019s era &#8211; they are not elected.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Livingstone said that under Tony Blair the Labour Party\u2019s administrative authority, the National Executive Committee (NEC), changed for the worse.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWhen we were on the NEC together, you had about one suspension a year. Now it has become an industry,\u201d<\/em> he told Prescott.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/345416-prescott-livingstone-blairites-labour\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Labour sparring partners John Prescott and Ken Livingstone have gone toe-to-toe on RT\u2019s News Thing, with the former London mayor blaming his party suspension on \u2018ghastly old ex-Blairites.\u2019 WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE The pair have previously engaged in a war of words, with ex-mayor Livingstone once calling Lord Prescott an \u201cembarrassment\u201d for attacking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-247891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}