A SCOTTISH Labour councillor has suggested the Israeli secret service may be to blame for Labour's anti-Semitism row, calling it a "plot to stop Jeremy Corbyn being PM".

Fife councillor Mary Lockhart suggested Mossad were responsible for the criticism in "three Jewish newspapers".

Posting on Facebook, Lockhart said: "If the purpose is to generate opposition to anti-Semitism, it has backfired spectacularly.

"If it is to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader, it is unlikely to succeed, and is a shameless piece of cynical opportunism.

"If it is a Mossad assisted campaign to prevent the election of a Labour Government pledged to recognise Palestine as a state, it is unacceptable interference in the democracy of Britain.

"Whatever motivates it, and the MPs who exploit it, the Labour Party is neither racist, not anti-Semitic. And the hysterical claims that it is, after inquiries, consultation, rule changes, calm and peaceable statements, should not be permitted to further influence the Party's rules.

"Israel is a racist State. And since the Palestinians are also Semites, it is an ant-Semitic [sic] State. It is time we stopped propitiating".

Two years ago Lockhart was accused of linking her own party's officials to Nazis in a Facebook post. She was Scottish Labour's newest councillor at the time.

She was angered by a decision to ban a number of party members from voting in the upcoming leadership contest.

In response, she quoted a famous poem First They Came, by Pastor Martin Niemöller, about persecution by the Nazis.