NORTHWICH MP Mike Amesbury has been accused of sharing antisemitic material online, following the release of a report into the issue with the Labour Party.

Mr Amesbury, who has held the Weaver Vale seat since 2017, has been named in a letter including complaints by the Campaign Against Antisemitism group.

The group sent the letter to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and General Secretary David Evans following the release of the Equality and Human Rights Commission's report, which found the Labour broke equalities law on three grounds.

The complaint said: “On 4th July 2020, Mr Amesbury retweeted (and shortly afterwards deleted) a tweet originally posted by fellow MP Steve Reed in which the latter had written: “Is millionaire former porn-baron Desmond the puppet-master for the entire Tory cabinet?@Robert Jenrick @PritiPatel”.

“By retweeting the suggestion that a Jewish businessman was the ‘puppetmaster’ of the Conservative cabinet, thereby employing an antisemitic trope with a long history, having been, for example, deployed by the Nazis and more recently being frequently evoked to demonise Jewish financiers, he was disseminating material which was “making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.”

This is not the only incident linked to Mr Amesbury, with the campaign group also citing a 2013 incident in which the Shadow Housing and Planning shared an antisemitic image.

Mr Amesbury said: "

Mike said: “I apologised last year for sharing this appalling image in 2013. I do not recall sharing it and I am mortified that I did. I would never intentionally share such antisemitic tropes and caricatures. 

"In March 2019, I also met a representative of the Jewish Leadership Council and apologised in person, and wrote to the Chief Executive of the Holocaust Education Trust and The Community Security Trust to apologise for this terrible error. 

"I also apologised for retweeting Steve Reed’s tweet on July 4,  2020. The original tweet was immediately deleted and Steve Reed also apologised unreservedly for the inappropriate language it contained. 

"I am committed to the fight against antisemitism – in the labour movement and wider society – and committed to continuing to educate myself about antisemitism and the various forms it takes, including recently accompanying local schoolchildren to Auschwitz-Birkenau with the Holocaust Education Trust."