One of Chris Williamson’s former aides spoke of how the MP found it “very difficult to disassociate” from a man expelled from Labour for tweeting about companies having Jewish blood, it has emerged.

Sayed Umaar Kazmi, who worked in the Derby North MP’s office as a communications officer, wrote in April 2018 that the expelled man’s earlier support meant Mr Williamson was reluctant to distance himself from him, despite tweets that “clearly were antisemitic”.

Mr Kazmi was referring to messages written by Scott Nelson, who ran the Twitter account @SocialistVoice.

Scott Nelson was expelled by the party for tweeting about companies having “Jewish blood” and posting an image of the BBC’s logo with the Star of David replacing the letter C.

“I don’t think they ever met, but Scott has been very friendly with Chris online in terms of giving him support/retweeting him,” Mr Kazmi wrote in a private message to a prominent left-wing activist.

“So, in terms of publicly disowning him, I doubt that is a really a possibility.” 

The private message was published this weekend by the activist, Gary Spedding, who said it was evidence that even Mr Williamson’s own staffers acknowledged it was not acceptable for the MP to support people expressing antisemitic views.

“Williamson’s former staffers have acknowledged this & even claimed to have tried to speak to Williamson about it. He clearly isn’t listening,” he wrote.

“I’m tweeting this after deliberating for weeks on whether it is the right thing to do.

“I have taken the decision that it is now in the public interest to highlight this particular interaction I had with a former Williamson staffer. It wasn’t an easy decision.”

Mr Kazmi responded that he did not “really see what is scandalous in this message”.

He continued: “Chris [Williamson] and I had a different point of view at the time about engaging with Scott Nelson, who clearly had made antisemitic comments.

“I asked Chris if he would stop retweeting him. Chris made the point that Scott had apologised and that, on that basis, he ought to be given a second chance (the concept of redemption doesn't exist for Spedding).

“I'm not sure why, over a year later, Gary Spedding has decided to ‘leak’ this conversation when I approached him privately in good faith.”

Chris Williamson was suspended in February for claiming that Labour had been “too apologetic” in the party's antisemitism row. He was later readmitted, but then re-suspended in June.