An unrepentant Ken Livingstone insisted that Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism when the former London mayor addressed an Oxford Union speaker event on Wednesday night.

He claimed that Jews were among those who had stopped him in the street to say: "Don't give in. We know what you say is true."

Mr Livingstone also maintained that Jeremy Corbyn had not wanted to suspend him from the Labour Party but had been hamstrung by the bureaucracy he had inherited from right-wing Blairites.

In his five minute opening comments, Mr Livingstone made no reference to the furore over his Hitler remarks. But he was quizzed robustly by Jewish students during the Q&A, among them the Oxford Union president, Rob Harris.

Mr Livingstone said that "all this crap about antisemitism" within the Labour Party was a largely manufactured debate which had served as a distraction from Mr Corbyn's leadership. He went on: "There's a well organised Israel lobby which diminishes genuine antisemitism."

As for the claim that Hitler supported the immigration of German Jews to Palestine, Mr Livingstone quoted an unnamed Nazi as saying that Zionists were "the good Jews. We can do business with these Jews."