A Labour activist expelled for heckling a Jewish MP at an event on antisemitism has claimed Jeremy Corbyn said he had “done nothing wrong’ and that the Labour leader’s team were “working behind the scenes” to help him.
Marc Wadsworth was kicked out the party on Friday after a disciplinary hearing earlier in the week.
Speaking afterwards, he told reporters he had the support of Mr Corbyn.
Saying he had been told his expulsion was partly on the grounds that his “verbal attack" on Ms Smeeth had “embarrassed the leader”, he said: “The leader has told mutual friends he wasn’t embarrassed because he doesn’t see that I did anything wrong.”
Asked whether he felt he had the support of Mr Corbyn and his team, Mr Wadsworth said: “When they called me on the first day of the hearing they told me that they’d been working behind the scenes, that what I said wasn’t antisemitism.
"But then you have to interpose that with the fact that Jeremy did have a bit of a go at me at the launch of the Chakrabarti report and perhaps I could have used kinder language.”
Mr Wadsworth said he had been in touch with Mr Corbyn’s office and “in touch with the leadership” recently, describing himself and the Labour leader were “old friends and comrades”.
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