Mansfield Labour are having a hard time with their local Mayoral campaign for the May elections. Their initial candidate, Paul Bradshaw, quit in January, having been forced out by the hard left of the party. A new significantly less moderate candidate, Sean McCallum, was selected on Wednesday evening…

Guido can reveal that McCallum is the author of deeply anti-Semitic posts on his personal Facebook account. In a bizarre rant defending the comments that got Ken Livingstone suspended from the Labour Party, he equated the genocidal evil of the Nazi regime with the existence of Israel as a country “nazism & zionism are equally foul.” This is going even further than Ken Livingstone did…

He also declared that he “can’t see anything even vaguely anti-Semitic” about Naz Shah’s infamous Facebook post that got her suspended from the Labour Party. Shah herself later acknowledged that “the language I used was anti-Semitic, it was offensive… What I did was I hurt people and the language that was the clear anti-Semitic language.”

At the time Jeremy Corbyn said “What Naz Shah did was offensive and unacceptable. I have spoken to her and made this clear.” When even Jeremy Corbyn describes what you’re sharing as offensive you know you’re in trouble…

UPDATE: Guido understands that the Labour Party has suspended Sean McCallum pending investigation. A party spokesperson said:

“The Labour Party takes all complaints of antisemitism extremely seriously and we are committed to challenging and campaigning against it in all its forms. All complaints about antisemitism are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken.”