Dame Margaret Hodge has insisted she will carry on fighting antisemitism "from inside" the Labour Party - even as the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister loomed with confirmation of a General Election in December.

Speaking to the JC as MPs voted on Tuesday evening in favour of going to the polls on December 12, the Jewish MP for Barking, 75, said she heard the argument that by remaining in Labour she undermined her own campaign against antisemitism in the party.

But having only overcome an attempt to deselect her the day before, she said: "I know that argument but I'm quite clear - I campaign for the Labour values that brought me into the party.

 "I campaign on those values of anti-racism. I will never stop calling out antisemitism. I just won’t.

"I think it’s really important that me and Ruth Smeeth stay fighting from the inside. We are both tough individuals and neither of us will be frightened of them."

Having fought off attempts to sanction her, after she confronted Mr Corbyn and called him an "antisemite and a racist" to his face, Dame Margaret said she would continue to oppose her party leader in the same way he had "spent the past 30 years against every Labour leader."

She added: "I have spent all that time with him, and still stood by my own Labour values."

But asked about campaigning for Labour's forthcoming general election manifesto, she said: "To be honest Boris Johnson is so dreadful.

"And most of John McDonnell’s policies, he’s running the manifesto, I can live with. "

The MP, a former minister and chair of the public accounts committee, admitted she "always asked myself the question" of whether she wished to remain in the party she was first elected to represent as an Islington councillor in 1973.

She was the second Labour MP to be 'triggered' through the party's new ballot procedures which make it easier for local members to force a contest.

"It was a very tough fight," she admitted. "I totally focused on this for a month but when you look at the result it was a distraction because I did win overwhelmingly. 

"A small minority of the party just choose to make mischief."

She added that the battle to stop activsts replacing her with a different candidate had also been "a really good exercise in talking to all my members again". 

Dame Margaret also gave particular praise to "Muslim sisters" both within her Barking party and elsewhere in Labour who had come to help her during the reselection battle.

"I think is important to note how the membership had changed over the years," she said.

"I created this party in Barking when we were fighting the BNP. It used to be a small, inward looking, men-only sort of party. Now it’s a very diverse outward looking one, mixed in gender and age.

"I have a big Muslim membership and it was heartening. There was an affinity from them about how antisemitism is a bit like the Islamophobia. 

"Whereas Momentum were suggesting I had made it all up."

She also praised Tulip Siddiq, the Hampstead and Kilburn MP, Rushanara Ali, the MP for Bethnal Green,and Shabana Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood, as "Muslim sisters who helped me enormously."