Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell should face prosecution for repeating the assertion Esther McVey should be lynched, Cabinet Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has claimed.

Speaking at a recording of the Telegraph’s Chopper’s Brexit Podcast at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, the Leader of the Commons suggested the Labour frontbencher could have incited the murder of his Conservative colleague.

Mr McDonnell made the comments in 2014, when he recounted how Labour activists at a meeting in Liverpool felt a “Sack Esther McVey Day” didn’t go far enough. “Why are we sacking her? Why aren’t we lynching the b------?” Mr McDonnell claimed the activists demanded.

Mr Rees-Mogg argued the comments were far worse than Boris Johnson repeatedly legislation requiring the government to seek a delay to Brexit if a deal cannot be secured as a “Surrender Act”.

The North East Somerset MP said: “I think there is a deliberate attempt by the Left to object to language because they’ve lost the argument. Now the hypocrisy of it is shocking.