Red Ken Livingstone is an appalling person but then again Britain is loaded with people who think just as he does.
by Christopher Hope
British Jews have switched their support from Labour to Conservative because they have got richer, according to a Labour politician.
Ken Livingstone, a former Labour MP and Mayor of London, said that income rather than skin colour was the reason why people voted for different political parties
Speaking on the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Tuesday night, he said: “People vote according to their income. Now that can change – it might be a generation before people catch up.
“If we were talking 50 years ago, the Roman Catholic community, the Irish community in Britain, the Jewish community was solidly Labour. Still the Irish Catholic community is pretty still solidly Labour because it is not terribly rich.
“As the Jewish community got richer, it moved over to voting for Mrs Thatcher as they did in Finchley.”
Mr Livingstone was discussing how politicians can do more to appeal to the growing proportion of Britons who have an ethnic minority background.
He said: “People come to Britain to become part of Britain, they don’t come to change it. I think the defining issue is not your colour or your religition it is your level of income.”
Referring to Sajid Javid, who was recently made Culture secretary, he continued: “David Cameron has just appointed the first British person of Pakistani origin – I look at him and I don’t see a Pakistani, I see a banker who earned £3million a year. That is why he is in the Tory party.”
The comments were dismissed by Adrian Cohen, chairman of the London Jewish forum.
Mr Cohen said: “Ken Livingstone last made comments to this effect during the Mayoral election. It’s pretty obvious that politicians shouldn’t write off parts of the electorate based on crude assumptions about their perceived relative affluence.
“Many Jews are not rich, indeed many struggle to make ends meet. In any event there are many factors which influence how a person chooses to vote and one shouldn’t refer to Jewish Londoners as if they were homogeneous.”
Tags: Christopher Hope, Ken Livingstone
