JEREMY CORBYN will push his Labour leadership campaign’s focus back onto economic policy after hitting back at “beyond appalling” allegations that he sympathised with anti-semites.

The contest frontrunner will appear alongside his economic adviser Richard Murphy, trade unionists and Young Labour activists at a rally in Nottingham this evening.

His appearance follows a heated exchange on BBC radio’s The World at One yesterday, in which he faced repeated questions over his interventions on foreign policy.

He was quizzed over alleged associations with Lebanese activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, who is reported to have told a Flemish magazine in 2004 that he considered “every dead American, British and Dutch soldier a victory.”

But Mr Corbyn said he had never heard of Mr Abou Jahjeh: “I saw the name this morning and I asked somebody: ‘Who is he?’

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who this person is.”

Dozens of British Jews penned an open letter on Tuesday condemning the “McCarthyite guilt by association technique” deployed by the Jewish Chronicle in articles associating Mr Corbyn with holocaust denier Paul Eisen.

“The idea that I’m some kind of racist or anti-semitic person is beyond appalling, disgusting and deeply offensive,” Mr Corbyn said.

“I have spent my life opposing racism. Until my dying day I will be opposed to racism in any form.”

Meanwhile, the liberal New Statesman magazine echoed scare stories suggesting that Mr Corbyn would plunge Labour into “civil war.”

Its editorial claimed that Yvette Cooper was the best choice for the top job, arguing she could take over from Mr Corbyn if Labour performed poorly in mid-parliament elections.

“Ms Cooper’s moment may yet come,” it said.