Labour is under pressure to dump a candidate who shared a “clearly antisemitic” message about Nick Robinson.

Jean Anne Mitchell, the party’s candidate in West Dunbartonshire, sent the message about the BBC presenter to a WhatsApp group, which comprised other Labour candidates, after he had hosted the head-to-head debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on Friday night.

The message reportedly read: “We watched the BBC Leadership Debate chaired by Nick Robinson.

“Throughout the debate we felt that Robinson gave Johnson an easy time, allowing him to avoid answering the audience’s questions and instead giving him free reign to attack Corbyn.

“We thought he was biased. And then we Googled him.”

It added: “His mother was born in Shanghai, where her German-Jewish parents fled during the 1930s. That makes him Jewish.”

The broadcaster has described himself as a “Jew by birth”, but was raised in the Church of England is now agnostic.

The Whatsapp message is the latest episode in the party’s antisemitism scandal which has dogged Jeremy Corbyn over the course of the election campaign.