Multicultural capital turns on Livingstone over death-camp slur

EVEN BY his own energetic standards, Ken Livingstone's diary next week is full. Apart from his usual mayoral engagements, he will play an important role for the team helping to sell London's bid for the 2012 Olympics.

For Mr Livingstone, it is a crucial week as he tries to crown his second term as the capital's mayor by convincing a 14-member delegation of his native city's merits, including, as he puts it, its status as "one of the most multicultural cities in the world". It will be with some embarrassment, therefore, that he will make his case to the International Olympic Committee delegates with significant parts of that multicultural jigsaw firmly at his throat.

The famously outspoken mayor is under sustained attack from Jewish community leaders and a gay rights group over remarks he made during an encounter with a newspaper reporter. Mr Livingstone has refused to apologise to the Evening Standard newspaper or its journalist, Oliver Finegold, after he likened the reporter to a "concentration camp guard" moments after being told by Mr Finegold that he was Jewish.

On a tape of the encounter, the Labour politician can be heard asking the reporter if he is a "German war criminal" before learning of his Jewish background and then describes the staff of the paper, for which he once worked, as a "load of scumbags and reactionary bigots".

The incident is the latest in an apparent vendetta between Mr Livingstone and the Standard which began soon after Veronica Wadley became editor in 2002, when the paper reported that the Mayor had launched a drunken attack on his partner and her friend at a party. Mr Livingstone denied the claims.

Mr Livingstone woke yesterday morning to find representatives of some of the causes he has championed waiting to deliver a critical verdict on what his office insisted had begun as "relatively light-hearted comments". The verbal fracas, which followed a party in honour of the gay Labour MP Chris Smith on Tuesday night, brought swift condemnation from Jews, gay rights campaigners and from within his own party.

Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: "I find his language appalling and this man's insensitivity appears to know no bounds at all. He should consider his position."

Writing in the pages of the Standard, Gerald Kaufman, one of the country's leading Jewish MPs, said: "To liken anyone - let alone a Jew - to a concentration camp guard is crass and insensitive."

Mr Livingstone, who described the Standard's decision to doorstep the 20th anniversary party for Mr Smith's coming-out as harassment of a largely gay event, also attracted criticism from the gay rights group, OutRage! Brett Lock, a spokesman, said: "His sensationalist rhetoric cheapens the experience of Jews, gays, the disabled, Roma, black people, Communists and others persecuted by the Nazis."

Political enemies wasted no time in suggesting his comments would damage London's chances of securing the Olympics. Tony Arbour, the Tory vice- chairman of the Greater London Authority standards committee, said: "He has brought London and his office into disrepute, and may have single- handedly ensured London will fail to win the 2012 Olympics."

Details of Mr Livingstone's diary from last week, seen by The Independent, show he attended five events to which the media were invited, apparently providing the grounds for his office to complain that the Standard was unfairly pursuing him. But it was in the wider context of Mr Livingstone's agenda to create an integrated multi-ethnic capital that his remarks were likely to cause most consternation.

The comments are the latest in a series of spats between the mayor and Jewish leaders. A remark four years ago that global capitalism kills more people than Hitler did was condemned by Jews. Last year, Mr Livingstone defended a Muslim cleric, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who attended a conference hosted by the mayor and has tried to justify suicide bombers.

On his latest remarks, Louise Ellman MP, head of Labour's Friends of Israel, told Radio 4's Today: "I think it is highly wrong for the mayor to act in this way ... He should be reprimanded."

A Labour source said: "I think it goes in the category of something we would rather hadn't happened. But Ken is Ken."

Last night, Mr Livingstone was in no mood for a climbdown. He said that "nobody who works for the Daily Mail group of papers [which owns the Standard] deserves respect".