LABOUR says claims that Russian interference helped Jeremy Corbyn in last year’s snap general election are “farcical” and “ludicrous”.

A Sunday newspaper and Swansea University allege thousands of Russian Twitter accounts worked to boost Corbyn and Labour in the weeks running up to the June 2017 vote.

The accounts were “bots” – autonomous programs which perform repetitive and often complex tasks.

According to their research, around 80 per cent of the accounts were created at the same time just weeks ahead of the election and were then used to bombard Twitter users with orchestrated political messages hostile to the Tories and favourable to Labour.

The Sunday newspaper insist they had evidence that Russian social media accounts automatically retweeted messages praising Labour and deriding the Tories on the day of the latter’s manifesto launch.

The accounts also posted messages attacking Theresa May over the Manchester Arena bombing and her refusal to take part in TV debates.

There was some criticism of the research behind the story.

The dataset involved was 20,000 election-related tweets taken from 13,000 accounts over a four-week period, which means they were tweeting about the snap poll just once a fortnight.

The June election saw Labour’s support rise from 25 per cent to 40 per cent over the course of the campaign — the largest surge in support during a modern poll.

Labour says it was because strict impartiality rules kicked in during the election, and voters finally heard their message.

The surge was almost certainly in part down to a disastrous campaign for the Tories, where May stumbled frequently and was forced to perform a U-turn on plans to make people pay for their care if they have assets above £100,000.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told Sky News it was reminded him of a claim made by the paper in the run up to the 1992 election.

He said: “This is ludicrous. This is the thing they accused Neil Kinnock of during the general election. If I remember rightly, the Russian embassy was putting out supportive noises towards the Tory party.

“If there’s an issue here about anything on Russian influence within our society, it’s about Russian oligarchs funding the Tory party. Let’s have an inquiry into that.”

He added: “This Sunday Times story – a Conservative-supporting newspaper – [is] farcical. They tried it in 1992 on Neil Kinnock. They’re doing it again just before an election this time.”

Shortly before the 1992 general election, the paper ran a front-page story about conversations between then Labour leader, and Soviet diplomats in London.

Culture Minister Matt Hancock said the report was “extremely concerning”.

He said: “It is absolutely unacceptable for any nation to attempt to interfere in the democratic elections of another country. The social media companies need to act to safeguard our democratic discourse and reveal what they know.”

Professor Oleksandr Talavera, the Swansea University economist who collected the data, stood by his work. He said: “The samples provide evidence that Russian-language bots were used deliberately to try to influence the election in favour of Labour and against the Conservatives.

“The data represents just a small random sample and therefore the Russian-language automated bot behaviour we have observed is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg of their general election operation.”

A Labour spokesman said: “Labour’s proposed crackdown on tax dodging, failed privatisation and corrupt oligarchs is opposed by both May and Putin’s conservative philosophy and their super-rich supporters. The Labour Party’s people-powered election campaign attracted huge levels of public support online. We were not aware of any from automated bots, categorically did not pay for any and are not aware of any of our supporters doing so.”

Russian oligarchs and their associates have registered donations of more than £820,100 to the Tories since May became Prime Minister.

That includes money from Lubov Chernukhin, who bid £20,000 to have lunch with Ruth Davidson, at an auction at the UK party’s black and white fundraising ball in February.