Jeremy Corbyn to meet community leaders early next year

Jeremy Corbyn is to hold his first face-to-face talks with community leaders early in the new year.

The Labour leader will meet the Board of Deputies president and chief executive in the second week of February, the organisation’s plenary meeting was told.

Board President Jonathan Arkush said: “This meeting will be significant, as it will be likely to set the tone of the relationship between Britain’s Jewish community and the leader of the Labour Party.

I shall be raising a range of issues that concern British Jews and will listen carefully to his responses. I always speak up for our community and my meeting with Jeremy Corbyn will be no exception.”

Corbyn’s hosting of and support for extremists over several years as a backbencher has sparked widespread concern, while he has also been one of parliament’s leading critics of Israel.

At the party’s annual conference, he delivered a landmark address to Labour Friends of Israel but failed to mention the word Israel once. “The Jewish community has some very deep concerns about [his] reported links to a Holocaust denier and other individuals with anti-Semitic track records and about his hostile views on Israel.

During Mr Corbyn’s leadership campaign, Board president Jonathan Arkush said: “The Jewish community has some very deep concerns about [his] reported links to a Holocaust denier and other individuals with anti-Semitic track records and about his hostile views on Israel.”

He added: ““We would like Jeremy Corbyn to give clear, straight answers to straight questions and repudiate any sort of support for or links to anti-Semites, racists and terrorists”