The former Mayor of London instead Labour’s dreadful performance in the election was down to him being the subject of a “vile smear campaign” over the party’s anti-semitism crisis.
Mr Livingstone claims the Labour leader had been attacked for being a “genuine socialist” before denying the party had a problem with hated for Jewish people.
He told Sky News earlier today: “The simple fact is if you are a genuine socialist you get all this abuse.
“He ran the best campaign he could but he had a completely hostile environment.”
Mr Livingstone insisted Mr Corbyn had done “brilliantly well” in the last election in May 2017, which saw Labour win 262 seats – up by 30 from the previous election two years earlier.
The former London Mayor said: “The big difference is over the last two years he has been subject to the most vile smear campaign. It is even worse than was done to me.”
He also denied Labour has a problem with the abuse of Jewish members and the community, allegations of which have swept through the party over recent months.
Mr Livingstone claimed “one 20th of one percent” of Labour Party members had “tweeted or said something anti-Semitic”.
But in another denial, he insisted: “The media coverage suggested we were institutionally anti-Semitic. That was completely and utterly untrue.”
Mr Livingstone even said he was “glad” when former Jewish MP Luciana Burger left Labour earlier this year after complaining of a “culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation” because of her faith.
He continued during his interview on Sky News: “The simple fact is Luciana Berger, I was glad she left the Labour Party, because I didn’t think that she was really Labour.
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Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party scored a resounding victory over Labour in the election, winning 365 out of the 650 seats available and securing a majority of 80.
Labour won just 203 seats and saw its “Red Wall” in the election broken, with the Tories winning seats that had been held by the opposition party for more than 100 years.
Mr Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell will quit the party in 8-1o weeks, with Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey among the favourites to take over as leader.
In a letter for the Sunday Mirror, Mr Corbyn admitted he takes “responsibility” for Labour’s election disaster and in a message to voters, the party needs to “earn their trust back”.
But he also claimed Labour had “won the argument” but just “failed to convert it into a majority” – despite the huge margin in which Labour was defeated.
He wrote in the Sunday Mirror: “I’m sorry that we came up short and I take my responsibility for it.
“We will learn the lessons of this defeat, above all by listening to lifelong Labour voters who we’ve lost in working class communities. This party exists to represent them. We will earn their trust back.”
