FORMER Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy has taken out a advert in the Jewish Telegraph to apologise for his party’s anti-Semitism difficulties and to launch a scathing and personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Leonard.

Murphy, who, as the MP for East Renfrewshire, represented Scotland’s largest Jewish community, wrote that he “could no longer remain passive while the current Labour leadership does so much damage to Labour’s relationship with British Jewry”.

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Referring to Corbyn and John McDonnell as “British Labour’s top team” he accuses them of being “intellectually arrogant, emotionally inept and politically maladroit”.

Corbyn, he adds, “is not doing nearly enough to throw out the anti-Semites found within grassroots and online Labour".

Labour’s anti-Semitism row has been rumbling on since Corbyn became leader in 2015.

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However, it has intensified in recent weeks after the decision by the party’s ruling NEC not to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s full definition of anti-Semitism into its code of conduct. It misses out four of the IHRA’s examples of anti-Semitism, including comparisons between Israeli policy and the Nazis, and allegations of dual loyalty.

In his advert, Murphy says: “I have always been angered by the way in which British Jews are held to account for actions of a government of a foreign country, of which they’re not citizens and whose government they’ve played no role in choosing.”

He added: “The Jewish community and everyone else who is offended by Labour’s stance are being asked to accept quarter-baked platitudinous Labour apologises for the ‘upset that has been caused’.”

Murphy’s contribution will put pressure on Leonard. The Scottish Labour leader has been relatively quiet over the row.

Ben Proctor, chairman of the East Renfrewshire constituency Labour Party tweeted a link to Murphy’s advert to Leonard, writing: “Hi @LabourRichard, When can we expect you to say anything in the issue?”

The Scottish Labour leader refused to be drawn on the IHRA and the examples during a BBC Radio Scotland last week. He said: “I am willing to recommend we have further discussion and dialogue with the Jewish community, including the Jewish community in Scotland, which I intend to lead on, because we need to win the confidence of the Jewish community.

Scottish Tory deputy leader Jackson Carlaw tweeted a link to the Jewish Telegraph article, and said: “This is an unprecedented, powerful and thundering indictment of Corbyn and Leonard by Jim Murphy. Sadly East Renfrewshire Labour and their elected members are outliers in this maelstrom of anti-Semitism.”

Shadow Chancellor McDonnell recently told the BBC the row had shaken Labour to its core.

He said: “None of us failed to appreciate the way this has upset people, including ourselves. It’s shaken us to the core really. But we’ll resolve it. We’ve got to.

“We’ve got to resolve it in the Labour party certainly, but also the members of the Jewish community are really suffering out there.

“We’ve had a massive increase in attacks on the Jewish community – daubing of cemeteries, it’s appalling that Jewish schools have to have security guards as well.

“So we need to resolve it within our party and then get out there with the Jewish community and campaign against anti-Semitism within our society overall.”

Murphy led Scottish Labour to its biggest defeat in 2015, when the party lost 40 of its 41 seats to the SNP,including the East Renfrewshire constituency he had held since 1997.

He is currently listed as a “contributor” at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

The advert came as the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews accused Corbyn of hiding from the crisis.

In a column for the Jewish News, Marie van der Zyl said Corbyn was refusing to “face the obvious difficult questions”.

“He is clearly just hoping it will go away,” she added.