A judge at England’s High Court on Tuesday froze the order suspending London Mayor Ken Livingstone from office for likening a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
Livingstone, who has steadfastly refused to apologise for the remark, was due to start a four-week suspension on Wednesday.
But a judge decided that the mayor was entitled to have the sanction delayed during his appeal.
Earlier Tuesday, an angry Livingstone vowed to fight his suspension to the bitter end, even if it cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds in a wide-ranging attack on his critics.
He said: "The fundamental issue is not whether or not I was ’insensitive’, it is the principle that those whom the people elect should only be removed by the people or because they have broken the law.
"It is because this fundamental principle is at stake, that I pledge to
do everything in my power to have this attack on the democratic rights of Londoners overturned."
The Standards Board for England ruled last Friday that Livingstone’s
remarks to a journalist from London’s Evening Standard newspaper were "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" and ordered his suspension.
"Unstated allegation of anti-Semitism"
Livingstone, 60, hit out Tuesday against the board, claiming there was an unstated allegation of anti-Semitism against him.
"It is not explicitly stated because it cannot be substantiated," said the politician, dubbed "Red Ken" for his unwavering socialist views.
"It was of course the Board of Deputies of British Jews that decided to refer me to the Standards Board for England.
"Throughout they have protested that this issue is just about how I treated one reporter who happens to be Jewish. I don’t believe a word of it.
"For far too long the accusation of anti-Semitism has been used against anybody who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government."
Livingstone lashed out at the Evening Standard’s publishers, Associated Newspapers, saying they were guilty of a history of anti-Semitism. He also accused the media generally of having waged a 25-year hate campaign against him.
He attacked Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley for calling him a "snappy, snarling brute","voracious", "frightening", "ugly", "raging" and
"gripped by paranoia" in a November 2002 article.
