Jeremy Corbyn wrote the foreword to a book about the “pressures” behind western imperialism

Jeremy Corbyn wrote the foreword to a book which argued that banks and the press were controlled by Jews.

In 2011 he agreed to endorse a new edition of JA Hobson’s 1902 book Imperialism: A Study, four years before he was catapulted from backbench obscurity to the Labour leadership.

In his foreword Mr Corbyn said the work was a “great tome”, praising Hobson’s “brilliant, and very controversial at the time” analysis of the “pressures” behind western, and in particular British, imperialism at the turn of the 20th century.

In the book, Hobson, an economist who was a great influence on Lenin and other Marxists, argued that those pressures were brought to bear by finance — which he claimed was controlled in Europe “by men