FORMER senior Labour staff were shown to have supported anti-Islam views and to have discussed delaying investigations into Islamophobia within the party, according to the internal party report leaked to Sky News.

Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Miqdaad Versi said yesterday that the instances of Islamophobia and references to it being ignored are “appalling.”

After the 2017 Westminster attack, James McBride — then of Labour’s policy unit — shared a clip of right-wing commentator Douglas Murray speaking on BBC Daily Politics.

On a WhatsApp chat with colleagues, Mr McBride said that he found it “difficult to disagree” with Mr Murray’s claim that parties were refusing to admit that terrorism “comes from” Islam.

Mr McBride said that “even so-called moderate Islam” has “hard questions” to face about terrorism.

Emails also showed staff saying that they might “sit on” an investigation into Islamophobia within the party due to the subject’s allegiance to certain Labour officials.

John Stolliday, then head of governance and legal, asked colleague Emilie Oldknow if journalist Rod Liddle could be suspended after Mr Liddle wrote in The Spectator that anti-semitism was “absolutely endemic” among Muslims due to an “envy” of Jewish people.

Ms Oldknow and former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s chief of staff Simon Fletcher agreed that they should suspend him. But two days later, Mr Stolliday emailed Ms Oldknow to say: “Apparently Rod Liddle is chummy with [former Labour MP] Ian Austin & by extension TW [then deputy Labour leader Tom Watson].

“I still want to [suspend Liddle] but we’re not under pressure to do it — so may just sit on it for now.”

Mr Liddle was suspended a week later, on 12 May 2016, and he resigned that September.