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Published: 2:40 PM November 14, 2019 Updated: 6:04 PM September 17, 2020

Actor Eddie Marsan is backing the Lib Dems in the general election. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA Wire. - Credit: PA

Actor Eddie Marsan has launched a scathing attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as he explained why he had switched support to the Liberal Democrats.

Marsan, who has appeared in films including Gangs Of New York and Mission Impossible 3, was highly critical of the Labour leader's stance on anti-Semitism at a Lib Dem campaign event.

Referring to Corbyn's apparent criticism in 2012 of the removal of a mural many people viewed as anti-Semitic, Marsan said: "You are either anti-Semitic or you are ignorant."

He added: "Either way, that should disqualify you from being the leader of the Labour Party and the prime minister."

Marsan said he had voted Labour since the 1980s but could not "hold my nose" and do so again with Corbyn in charge.

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He described voting Lib Dem as a "political enema", stating "it feels good".

When controversy over Corbyn's stance on the east London mural erupted in 2018, the Labour leader said: "I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on, the contents of which are deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic.

"I am opposed to the production of anti-Semitic material of any kind, and the defence of free speech cannot be used as a justification for the promotion of anti-Semitism in any form."

In a powerful column for The New European earlier this year Marsan claimed the Labour leader had "betrayed the working class".He wrote: "We are left with our main opposition party in the grip of a far-left populism which is every bit as harmful as the populism of the far-right. Both are deluded, manipulative, undemocratic and authoritarian. "For both, it is ideology which matters, not the people they claim to serve."