Labour leadership contest: Donor who compared Corbyn supporters to Nazis suspended from party

Michael Fosters insists he was referring to Mr Corbyn's 'leadership cadre' when comparing Momentum to stormtroopers

Michael Foster wrote the article after he lost a High Court battle to stop Jeremy Corbyn being automatically on the ballot paper (Reuters)

A top Labour donor has been suspended from the party after comparing Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters to Nazis.

Michael Foster wrote an article in which he said Mr Corbyn’s supporters had “no respect for others, no respect for the rule of law” and likened them to Stormtroopers.

Labour said Mr Foster had allegedly fallen foul of party rules which ban “abuse of any kind” but the former showbiz agent, who has donated approximately £700,000 to the party in the past, said he was writing about Mr Corbyn’s “leadership cadre” and did not use the word Nazi himself in the article.

He said Mr Corbyn’s leadership could also be likened to the "Pretorian Guard or Revolutionary Guard or Red Guard - a group there to secure the leader and his political plans" and said the newspaper had included the word Nazi in the headline without his knowledge.

The article, which appeared in the Mail on Sunday, came just after he lost a High Court bid to block Mr Corbyn’s name appearing automatically on the ballot paper.

In the article he wrote: “To me, respect for the rule of law is fundamental to a democracy.

“Once political parties believe they are above the law it ends with all opposition silenced, whether it is my grandparents in Dachau, or the Left in Erdogan's Turkey rounded up and held uncharged in prison.

“The courts decided that the rules as they stand allowed it. This decision advantaged Corbyn and his Sturm Abteilung (stormtroopers)...”

He described Momentum, the grassroots campaign group set up to support Mr Corbyn’s leadership, as an “aggressive holier-than-thou cadre of hard-Left socialists with no real policies to speak of” and “no moral compass”.

He claimed that as a Jewish donor he has been smeared as a Blairite conspirator “plotting to falsely use the accusation of anti-Semitism to damage the Left”.

Following the article, which appeared on 14 August, a petition calling for his expulsion from the party attracted over 8,000 signatures.

It comes after Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell claimed Labour HQ was conducting a “rigged purge” of pro-Corbyn Labour members after the leading of the bakers’ union, Ronnie Draper, but doing nothing about Mr Foster’s comments.

The Labour party confirmed to the BBC that Mr Foster had been suspended from the party on 7 September over the article.

It did not give a timetable for the issue to be resolved but did say he would not be able to vote in the leadership election on 24 September.