'Most Jews can't trust Labour': Jeremy Corbyn under fire from senior Jewish figure

“That must hamper Sadiq Khan’s votes among sections of the Jewish community. Even though I repeat, he is clearly a decent candidate, but he’s stuck with his leader [and] stuck with the stories of anti-Semitism in Labour circles.

“However much he tries to disavow them and criticise them, he is stuck with them.”

After the leadership was accused of hesitating in its response to the scandal Mr Khan moved quickly to limit damage to his campaign today, calling directly on Mr Corbyn to take action.

Mr Khan told the Standard he is “truly disgusted with the growing problems of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party.”

He said an approach that involved “tough action” needed to be taken to ensure offensive vierws were pushed out of the party..

He went on: “Allegations of anti-Semitism, racism, bullying, intimidation, candidate misconduct - there should be no place for any of that in the Labour Party.

“The leadership of the party, and that goes right to the top, to Jeremy Corbyn, must be clear that anti-Semitism has no place in the party that he leads.”

Ex Business Secretary Lord Mandelson felt the need to intervene this week and say anti-Semitism must be stamped out.

Former Labour minster Tom Harris said the party has “a problem with Jews”, while another former minister Angela Smith urged Mr Corbyn to do more.

Mr Arkush said it was positive that Mr Corbyn had said after their last meeting, that he condemned anti-Semitism from wherever it came in the “political spectrum”.

But the Board had been disappointed by the Labour leader’s response to concern over meetings with representatives of Hizbollah and Hamas, whom Mr Corbyn called “friends”.

Mr Arkush said: “All he would say is that he would reflect on [the meetings] and we made it very clear that we did not feel he had gone far enough.

“So if you’ve got the leader of the Labour Party saying...all he can do is reflect on them, then frankly that greatly concerns me.”

A spokesman for the Labour leader said: “Jeremy Corbyn has consistently opposed all forms of racism including anti-semitism.”

Labour peer Baroness Royall was already looking into allegations concerning Oxford University Labour club, but will now also consider a complaint relating to a Labour student at LSE.

Mr Corbyn’s office initially rejected calls for Woking Labour vice-chair Ms Kirby’s suspension, saying her tweets had been investigated and she had been reprimanded, adding they would only act on “new evidence”.

But following an uproar the party stepped in and suspended her again pending a further investigation.

Mr Arkush said: “If the anti-Semitic social media posts indeed came from her, then no-one who believes or publishes that sort of racism should be entitled to membership of any mainstream political party.

“I would expect and indeed I would call for Labour to expel her.”