Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for a fresh inquiry into antisemitism within Labour, saying Jew-hate cannot “continue to fester”.

Speaking at an event in London on Tuesday night, Mr Brown said his party would have to deal with “those people that are causing the problem”.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for his perceived inaction on antisemitism, which prompted an escalating row between his critics and supporters that culminating in the “Enough is Enough” rally outside parliament in late March.

After meeting with Mr Corbyn in April, Jewish leaders condemned him for a perceived reluctance to adopt measures to deal with antisemitism suggested by the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council.

Speaking on stage at the Southbank Centre on Tuesday, Mr Brown said: “There’s going to have to be a new inquiry and we are going to have to get all the facts. I think that Jeremy Corbyn understands this.

“I hope that he does but it’s important. You cannot allow a problem like this to continue to fester. This is something that we thought had been dealt with... [we thought] it was something in the past. It is not.

“So the Labour Party has got its own duty when a problem is pointed out. You have to deal with it.

“We have got to take further action as the Labour Party and it’s got to be done now and it has got to be done with determination.”

The party has previously ordered a probe into antisemitism in its ranks, which was published in July 2016.

It was condemned by some in the community as "whitewashed". 

The Board of Deputies condemned Labour for subsequently offering a peerage to its author, Baroness Chakrabarti.

Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London and a close ally of Mr Corbyn, quit the Labour Party after a two-year investigation into repeated assertions that Hitler supported Zionism.

Mr Brown added that Labour should rally around Jews “in an hour of difficulty”, referring to the wave of antisemitic incidents reported in Europe in recent years.