His comments fanned the flames of the running battle between Mr Corbyn’s socialist allies and moderate former New Labour MPs, several of whom were sacked or quit in protest during last week’s shadow cabinet reshuffle.
Speaking to The Times, Mr Dugher, who was sacked for alleged "disloyalty" to the party's high command, said Mr Corbyn was Mr Livingstone's puppet who operated among a cadre of the former mayor of London's acolytes brought from City Hall.
He said: "If you look at the people around Jeremy, most of them have been in the employment of Livingstone. I think the truth is this leadership team is dancing on the strings of Ken Livingstone - and nobody elected Ken Livingstone to be leader of the Labour party last September."
Mr Corbyn has made Mr Livingstone, a longstanding ally, co-chair of Labour's defence policy review. Some suspect the review will propose scrapping or watering down the UK’s independent Trident nuclear deterrent, a prospect which came a step closer with the promotion of pro-disarmament MP Emily Thornberry to shadow defence secretary.
Maria Eagle, who held the defence brief for a matter of months, was moved to fill the culture void left by Mr Dugher's departure from the shadow cabinet.
Mr Dugher also claimed his dismissal was in part due to his criticism of Mr Livingstone's "moral equivalence bulls***", in relation to comments the former mayor made about the London July 7 bombings.
However, on Saturday, Mr Livingstone hit back at Mr Dugher, who worked as a senior spokesman in Number 10 when Mr Brown was Prime Minister, and had been a special adviser to Labour ministers since 2001.
Mr Livingstone said: “He was head of communications for Gordon Brown, so the centre of what many people regarded as a rather brutal regime, the way it treated other people."
The former mayor also rejected Mr Dugher’s statement that his former aides now dominated Mr Corbyn’s senior team. “It’s complete nonsense all this stuff,” he said on his LBC radio show, which he co-presents with the former Tory MP, David Mellor.
However, Mr Livingstone conceded that Simon Fletcher, his former chief of staff, was now fulfilling the same role for Mr Corbyn, who has also hired two other former colleagues from his time as mayor of London.
“Jeremy is sensible to pick some people who worked for me and did very well,” he said.
Mr Livingstone infuriated colleagues by suggesting last week that his defence policy review would consider withdrawing Britain from Nato. Labour headquarters put out a statement denying that Nato membership was on the table for the review.
On Saturday, Mr Livingstone said Mr Corbyn had been clear that he did not want to pull out of Nato but insisted that all ideas would need to be considered. He also suggested that Putin's Russia posed no threat.
Mr Livingstone said: “Jeremy has made absolutely clear we are not leaving Nato and if at some point in the future you had a threatening Russian government, and I don’t think Putin is at all, but if you did have that, I think Nato would be a vital part of keeping western Europe safe. But we are going to review."
Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/579309/s/4cbf65ba/sc/13/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cpolitics0CJeremy0ICorbyn0C120A90A8190CKen0ELivingstone0Eat0Ewar0Ewith0EMichael0EDugher0Eover0Ewho0Eruns0ELabour0Bhtml/story01.htm
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