Oh God.

Now, it would be easy to accuse the former London Mayor of ruining Jeremy Corbyn’s fightback, of sabotaging the Labour leader’s efforts to reconstruct his party’s reputation for tolerance and inclusiveness. But that would be to deny that all Livingstone has done is languidly fanned the flames of the burning building.

These are the words that Ken Livingstone, former MP and Mayor of London, and the man in charge of the party’s defence review, said today, using actual real words:

“Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

So, in summary: a week before polling day in local, mayoral, Scottish and Welsh elections, a prominent Labour figure and supporter of the party’s current leadership is inviting the nation to take a trip down memory lane in order to prove or disprove his theory that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist, thus, presumably, associating today’s supporters of the state of Israel with history’s most infamous mass killer.

Oh, and remember to vote Labour.