ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

Jeremy Corbyn today admits that anti-Semitism is a “clear” problem in Labour that the party has failed to tackle properly.

Writing exclusively in the Evening Standard ahead of a key meeting with Jewish community leaders, he offers his most contrite apology yet for the failings.

“We have not done enough fully to get to grips with the problem, and for that the Jewish community and our own Jewish members deserve an apology,” he writes. “My party and I are sorry for the hurt and distress caused.”

His emotional mea culpa goes further than ever before by confessing the scale of the problem and by telling his own Left-wing followers they need to change their thinking and behaviour.

Mr Corbyn says the party’s internal checks have “been simply not fully fit for purpose” and “we did not look closely enough at ourselves”.

Labour must “strive to understand why anti-Semitism has surfaced” in its ranks. He also expresses regret that Baroness Chakrabarti’s reform plans were “not fully implemented” two years ago. Mr Corbyn is due to hold a one-hour meeting tonight with the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council. Both groups said they would not comment until after the meeting, which they hoped would result in “action not words”.

It comes a week after Labour’s leadership was humiliated in a Commons debate as MPs and others stood up to reveal how they had suffered anti-Semitic abuse including death threats. MPs say they are worried the issue will depress the party’s hopes of winning seats in next week’s borough elections.

In a message to Left-wingers who have used social media to round on Jewish critics, Mr Corbyn writes: “Their concerns are not smears.” He goes on: “We must strive to understand why anti-Semitism has surfaced in our party, which has always stood for equality for all, and opposed racism and discrimination.” He also unveils an action plan including, critically, the delayed implementation of Baroness Chakrabarti’s 2016 recommendations that were made after an inquiry into the problem.

Among the immediate measures will be her call for the appointment of a specialist legal counsel to advise on cases, one of 20 recommendations that were not fully implemented. New general secretary Jennie Formby will shortly set out the plans, which include measures to investigate complaints more quickly and a programme of “political education” at grass roots level.

The Labour leader’s admissions go further than his previous statement about “pockets of anti-Semitism” being a problem. He says anti-Semitic views, although confined to a minority, are undeniable and horrific. “The evidence is clear enough,” he said, pointing to “examples of Holocaust denial, crude stereotypes of Jewish bankers, conspiracy theories blaming 9/11 on Israel, and even one member who appeared to believe that Hitler had been misunderstood”. His reference to “crude stereotypes” recalls the row when he tweeted about an east London mural that contained caricatures of Jewish bankers. Allies of the leader said the article is the “fullest account” so far from Mr Corbyn of where he thinks Labour has gone wrong.

He identifies two sources of anti-Semitic behaviour: where those supporting Palestinian causes “can stray into anti-Semitic views” and Left-wingers who attack capitalism as a conspiracy. On the first, Mr Corbyn says it is unacceptable to suggest British Jews are somehow answerable for the actions of the State of Israel, and it is never acceptable to compare Israel with the Nazis.

Lisa Nandy, a Labour MP who spoke out against anti-Semitism in the debate, revealed she had come under “sickening” attacks on social media.