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Disciplinary moves against a senior Labour MP who branded Jeremy Corbyn a “racist and an anti-Semite” were a “massive tactical mistake”, the founder of the Left-wing Momentum organisation has warned.

Jon Lansman opposed the action against Dame Margaret Hodge who launched the scathing attack on the Labour leader in a furious bust-up in the Commons last month.

The revelation in the Left-leaning New Statesman highlighted growing divisions between the Momentum group, which played a key role in Mr Corbyn becoming Labour leader, and his inner circle which backed swift disciplinary steps against Dame Margaret.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has also called for the dispute between Mr Corbyn and Dame Margaret to be resolved amicably.

Mr Corbyn has come under fire from centrist Labour MPs over his stance on anti-Semitism but Left-wingers are also dismayed over his handling of the row.

Momentum yesterday withdrew backing for one of Mr Corbyn’s close aides, Peter Willsman, as a candidate for Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, after he blamed Jewish “Trump fanatics” for fuelling the row.

Mr Willsman has apologised for the rant in which he also said rabbis should provide “evidence of severe and widespread anti-Semitism” in the party.

Dame Margaret today denied swearing at Mr Corbyn, when she confronted him after Labour refused to adopt the full definition of anti-Semitism as drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

She also criticised disciplinary moves against her but not Mr Willsman. “I still don’t know, three weeks on, what the allegations against me are, I’ve no idea what the process that they are going to follow, this seems to me a very unfair practice,” she told the BBC’s Woman’s Hour. “When you look at the member of the NEC, Peter Willsman, who I can’t believe he spoke so awfully, horribly at the NEC meeting, there is no place in Britain, or in the Labour Party, for those kind of views and such abhorrent behaviour.

“When you hear what he actually said — in front of the leader, in front of the General Secretary, in front of everybody — when you hear that and think no action is being taken to him and yet they are taking action to me for confronting Jeremy to his face and expressing my anger and disapproval of what he was doing, I think it all beggars belief, it’s completely ridiculous.”

Labour has denied Mr Corbyn was comparing the actions of Israelis to Nazis when he referred to the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad in a speech on Gaza at a rally in 2010.

Mr McDonnell wants the party’s approach on anti-Semitism to be resolved soon, adding: “It’s shaken us to the core.”