Ken Livingstone has form when it comes to backing candidates standing against Labour

By Jonathan Isaby

On Tuesday night Jeremy Brier wrote this CentreRight post flagging up the fact that Ken Livingstone, now Labour's official candidate for the London Mayoralty in 2012, was actively campaigning for the Independent candidate in yesterday's Tower Hamlets mayoral election. As it happens, the Independent, Lutfur Rahman, beat the Labour official candidate, but, unsurprisingly, it was a breach of Labour Party rules for Livingstone to support him and other Labour members have been expelled for doing the same thing.

This is not a first for Livingstone.

I noted here just before the general election that leaflets were being distributed by George Galloway in Poplar and Limehouse and by the Green Party's Tony Juniper in Cambridge, both featuring photos of the respective men with Livingstone, by whom they appeared to be endorsed.

Livingstone laughed those incidents off at the time when I challenged him, saying:

"Of course, I'm supporting the Labour candidates everywhere, but it would be churlish of me to deny others the pleasure of looking at me."

What he has been doing now in Tower Hamlets is even more blatant and without question in breach of Labour Party rules. If Labour HQ do not take any action against him, it shows not only weakness on the part of Ed Miliband, but that Red Ken is, once more, simply out of control.

Talking of which, Harry noted here yesterday morning that Livingstone is now backing a tax on peeople taking more than one foreign holiday a year...