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Shaun Bailey, the Tory contender for Mayor of London, today revealed how he has been subjected to appalling racist attacks by Labour supporters.

The London Assembly member has been called a “vile disgusting Uncle Tom”, a “lying coconut” and a “token ethnic” since announcing he wanted to challenge Sadiq Khan for City Hall. Mr Bailey condemned the abuse and called for the mayoral election campaign to be a “battle of ideas” on issues affecting millions of Londoners, such as housing, transport and crime.

He told the Evening Standard: “We cannot have a contest that is plagued by racial abuse, mud-slinging and identity politics.

These attacks are poisoning the well of public debate and have no place in a modern, progressive tolerant Britain,” he said.

Mr Bailey is forwarding details of the Twitter attacks on him by people who claim to be Labour members to party chiefs, after Jeremy Corbyn vowed to root out racism within its ranks.

The attacks include:

A Momentum-supporting Labour member tweeting: “Shaun Bailey is the biggest Uncle Tom to walk the planet” and a “vile disgusting Uncle Tom”. It is a derogatory term for a black man considered to be “excessively obedient or servile to white people”.

Another Labour member from London messaged: “Shaun Bailey is the new token ethnic ... ”

A third Labour member claimed: “The Tories simply can’t find a candidate with any experience for London Mayor to go against @SadiqKhan @MayorofLondon so they’ve chosen an Uncle Tom @ShaunBaileyUK.”

A Labour supporter tweeted: “Shaun Bailey’s a lying coconut.” The term “coconut” is used to accuse individuals of betraying their race, or culture, by implying that they are “brown on the outside but white on the inside”.

A “socialist” from the capital messaged: “London IS a diverse city which must have a mayor who respects ALL religions and we do NOT deserve to be represented by a bigoted coconut.”

A Corbyn supporter replied to Mr Bailey: “You remind me of that Greek-Cypriot bloke on Gogglebox who ran for Ukip and that black Tory bloke on Big Brother who let all the Tories call him ‘Golly’.”

Mr Bailey has recently faced criticism over past statements, including a pamphlet he wrote 13 years ago on how Britain is failing young people in inner cities. In a section on multiculturalism, he said: “You bring your children to school and they learn far more about Diwali than Christmas. I speak to the people who are from Brent and they’ve been having Muslim and Hindi days off. What it does is rob Britain of its community.”

It is also claimed that when he was a parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith he said there was a “cottage industry” of women becoming pregnant to secure a council home.

Mr Bailey grew up in a Ladbroke Grove neighbourhood blighted by crime and is a former youth and crime adviser to David Cameron. He said today: “I did express concern — in the rather raw and ill-judged manner of a young man still figuring out his world — about the lack of integration in communities and its potential impact on social cohesion.”

A Labour Party spokeswoman said: “Labour does not tolerate racism of any kind. We won’t take any lessons from the Tories who deliberately targeted Diane Abbott in their negative general election material.”