I have been in touch with [Corbyn’s] office and been in touch with the leadership, yes. You’ll see at the launch of the Chakrabarti report, we are chatting as old friends and comrades, I knew Jeremy before he was elected to parliament, when he was a trade union official and he was talking to me about a text that he’d sent me.

The first letter I got, cancelling my membership summarily, was based on an alleged verbal attack on a member of the Parliamentary Labour party which was uncomradely, brought the party into disrepute and embarrassed the leader.

Well, the leader has told mutual friends he wasn’t embarrassed because he doesn’t see that I did anything wrong.

When [Corbyn’s office] called me on the first day of the hearing, they said to me that they had been working behind the scenes, that what I said wasn’t antisemitic.

But then you have to interpose that with the fact that Jeremy did have a bit of a go at me at the launch of the Chakrabarti report and said that perhaps I could have used kinder language.