Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone leaves after appearing on the LBC radio station in London, April 30, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Neil Hall.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone — no stranger to controversy – has stirred outrage again, telling a meeting of supporters of far-left Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn last week that accusations of widespread antisemitism within the party were “lies and smears” aimed at bringing down Corbyn, The Daily Mail reported.

“This is endemic,” he said. “If you have a genuine socialist leader who is going to transform things for ordinary people and make the bloody corporations pay their fair share of tax — they will do whatever is necessary to stop you…”

“That means lies and smears in most of the West. In other parts of the world it can mean assassination.”

The 73-year-Livingstone — who in 2016 said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “supported Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews,” and quit Labour last year amid the ongoing fallout from that statement — claimed that he had been the target of a smear campaign organized by backers of ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The UK-based Campaign Against Antisemitism said the comments marked a “new low” for Livingstone.