DISSENT against the Labour leadership’s “McCarthyism” is growing, campaigners said today after allegations of yet another witch-hunt targeting a leftwinger provoked a furious response.

In a damning intervention, the party’s MP for Dagenham and Rainham Jon Cruddas branded threats to expel Neal Lawson, a former speech writer for Gordon Brown, as a “disgraceful move by a right-wing, illiberal faction.”

According to the Observer newspaper, Mr Lawson, a party member for 44 years and head of centre-left pressure group Compass, received an email from the party last week claiming that he expressed support for Green Party candidates in the 2021 local elections.