Joan Ryan became the eighth Labour MP to quit the Party on Tuesday night - claiming Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party has "become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism."

In a letter written to the Labour leader, Ms Ryan, who is chair of the Labour Friends of Israel group, said she was "forced" to resign from the Party she joined 25 years ago because the "values that led me to join" are now the "same values that have led me to leave it today."

In a lengthy letter she said the "huge shame" of antisemitism simply did not exist in the party before his election as leader. "No previous Labour leader would have allowed this huge shame to befall the party."

She added that Mr Corbyn was“presiding over a culture of antisemitism and hatred of Israel”.

In damning indictment of Mr Corbyn's failure to deal with Jew-hate, Ms Ryan added that Mr Corbyn's "mindset, ideology and worldview that tolerates antisemitism poses a threat to the British public, Jew and non-Jew alike."

She said Labour would "ostracise" Israel, the "Middle-East's only democracy in favour of the Ayatollahs in Tehran.

The MP, who is not herself Jewish, said over the past year she had visited synagogues and spoken to the community on doorsteps to hear only "bewilderment, fear and anger."

Referencing the struggle last summer to get the party to adopt the IHRA definition in full, Ms Ryan said Mr Corbyn had "one priority - to preserve the right of antisemities to call Israel 'a racist endeavour'."

Last year Ms Ryan lost a vote of confidence forced by a small band of far-left militants in her local Party. Her leadership of LFI was frequently held against her by pro-Corbyn supporters.

The Enfield North MP said she decided to leave when she watched Luciana Berger announce her decision on Monday. 

In an interview with The Times hours before announcing her departure, Ms Ryan said: “A young woman, a Labour MP, has to leave the party because she’s Jewish, because of antisemitism."

There was immediate reaction to the news from Young Labour, which tweeted: "Joan Ryan Gone - Palestine Lives". The tweet was later deleted.