British Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, warned Wednesday that if Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn won a general election, he would be “the first anti-Semitic leader of a western nation since the second world war.”

Hancock, who is running to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May who resigned over her inability to deliver Brexit, made the comments at a private hustings event in Westminster for the Conservative Party leadership.

Sources present at the event told The Guardian that Hancock stressed, “The Conservative party has to get this right” or else risk the country electing the first openly anti-Semitic leader of a western nation since the Hitler regime.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, a Corbyn loyalist, said the Conservative minister’s remarks were “a disgrace.” Other Labour sources dismissed Hancock’s comments as a “baseless political attack.”

The Labour Party has been plagued by accusations of anti-Semitism since Corbyn took office in 2015 and is currently under formal investigation by the country’s equality watchdog over allegations that it “unlawfully discriminated” against people because they are Jewish.

Hancock is not the only senior British politician to highlight the issue. Dominic Raab, a former minister and Conservative leadership candidate, recently said that anti-Semitism in Labour was a “stain on our country.”

Earlier in the week, former British Prime Minister and long-time Labour leader Tony Blair said at an event in Israel that Corbyn is an anti-Semite, noting that “some of the remarks are not explicable in any other way.”

Last month, Hamas – the Islamist terrorist organization Corbyn infamously called his “friends” – thanked the Labour leader for his message of solidarity to an anti-Semitic Palestinian rally in London.

Yair Lapid, a leader in Israel’s main opposition party, said: “Jeremy Corbyn, here is a free piece of advice: if Hamas is thanking you then you’re on the side of terrorism.”

[Photo: Guardian News / YouTube]