FORMER Hove Labour MP Ivor Caplin said the party had done the right thing in suspending Ken Livingstone over allegedly anti-Semitic comments.

Mr Caplin said anti-Semitism had been a “growing issue” for Labour over the past six to eight months and there had not been enough leadership to tackle the problem.

Yesterday former London mayor Mr Livingstone was suspended after he tried to defend Bradford West MP Naz Shah from allegations of anti-Semitism.

Ms Shah was suspended on Wednesday pending an investigation into controversial social media posts about Israel which she made before becoming an MP.

Mr Livingstone insisted that while her remarks were “over the top”, she was not anti-Semitic, and that he had never encountered anti-Semitism in 40 years in the Labour Party.

He sparked fury among colleagues by going on to claim that Hitler had supported Zionism “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”.

Mr Caplin, MP for Hove between 1997 and 2005, said Mr Livingstone made a “series of crass comments”.

He added: “I am at a loss to understand what he was talking about when I watched it – but this is a catalogue of comments that Ken Livingstone has made that have always just been on the fringe of anti-Semitic and quite awful behaviour.

“And I think the party has been absolutely right to suspend him immediately and I am glad that we have.”