Jeremy Corbyn has dismissed as “ridiculous smears” the idea he gave information to a communist spy during the cold war, saying the only reason some newspapers are publishing the claims are because they are worried about a Labour government.

In his first substantive response to days of headlines about supposed meetings during the 1980s with Ján Sarkocy, a Czechoslovakian diplomat in London who was later expelled as a spy, Corbyn said some proprietors had reason to worry.

No evidence Corbyn was a communist spy, say intelligence experts Read more

Labour would “stand up to the powerful and corrupt”, the Labour leader said in a video released by the party, not detailing what action this would involve.

Sarkocy has claimed he recruited Corbyn as an intelligence asset and that Corbyn and other Labour MPs were paid £10,000 by the Czechoslovak secret service (StB) for their work.

In his video, Corbyn said the newspapers reporting the allegations – the Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express – “have all gone a little bit James Bond”. Sarkocy’s claims were “increasingly wild and entirely false”, Corbyn said.

“He seems to believe I kept him informed about what Margaret Thatcher had for breakfast and says he was responsible for either Live Aid or the Mandela Concert – or maybe both,” he said.



“It’s easy to laugh, but something more serious is happening. Publishing these ridiculous smears that have been refuted by Czech officials shows just how worried the media bosses are by the prospect of a Labour government.”



He continued: “A free press is essential for democracy and we don’t want to close it down, we want to open it up. At the moment, much of our press isn’t very free at all. In fact it’s controlled by billionaire tax exiles, who are determined to dodge paying their fair share for our vital public services.

“The general election showed the media barons are losing their influence and social media means their bad old habits are becoming less and less relevant. But instead of learning these lessons they’re continuing to resort to lies and smears. Their readers – you, all of us – deserve so much better. Well, we’ve got news for them: change is coming.”

Earlier on Monday, answering questions in London after a speech to the EEF organisation, which represents manufacturing firms, Corbyn was asked by a Daily Mail reporter whether companies could trust him in the light of the claims and whether he would allow any files held on him by the Stasi, the East German security service, to be released.



Corbyn replied: “Thanks for the question. I’m very sorry that the Daily Mail has reduced itself to reproducing some nonsense that was written in the Sun before.” The answer prompted cheers and applause from many delegates in the hall in Westminster.

After answering some more questions, the session ended with the compere, the BBC journalist Steph McGovern, asking Corbyn: “A final question: are you a Czech spy?” He replied, laughing: “No.”

The allegations have also been rejected by the director of the Czech security service archive, Světlana Ptáčníková, who told the BBC their files suggested Corbyn was seen as a potential contact but was not catalogued as an informant.



“Mr Corbyn was not a secret collaborator working for the Czechoslovak intelligence service,” she said. “He stayed in that basic category – and in fact he’s still described as that, as a person of interest, in the final report issued by the StB agent shortly before he [the agent] was expelled from the UK.”