Labour is 'aggressively extreme' under Jeremy Corbyn, warns Tory London mayor hopeful Zac Goldsmith

“It has become so aggressively extreme on so many different levels,” he explained. “To have a Leader of the Opposition, a potential Prime Minister-in-waiting, refer to Hizbollah, Hamas and the IRA as friends, is genuinely worrying.

“People will say he has no chance of being Prime Minister, but of course he has a chance. We could mess up.

“It’s possible that in four years you could have Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister, and five years of government so unfriendly to certain elements of the community, and so hostile to business and with such a skewed view of the big international issues and conundrums we face. I think that’s a genuine threat and no one should be complacent.”

Mr Goldsmith said Mr Khan was “one of the key architects of what has happened to the Labour Party” having nominated Mr Corbyn to be leader and helped run former leader Ed Miliband’s general election campaign last year.

The Tories had become “almost inseparable” from the Jewish community during the same period, Mr Goldsmith claimed.

“I don’t think anyone can be in any doubt about the Conservative Party being a friend of Israel. We have seen that through actual interventions – money for the Community Security Trust, a recognition of the threat the community faces – but it goes much deeper than that as well.

“There’s a really solid, positive and good relationship there and it will endure.”

Mr Khan has previously tried to distance himself from former London mayor Ken Livingstone and has said his party must move away from an “unacceptable anti-Jewish” image.

While relations between Labour and British Jews have deteriorated in the past five years, Mr Goldsmith said he was not complacent about securing support from the community in his bid to be mayor.

“I’m not taking any votes for granted at all. I have my work cut out. It’s going to be very tough. You won’t see even a hint of complacency in my campaign.

“I accept I started on the back foot and things have taken longer. But my involvement with the Jewish community throughout my time as a politician has been very solid and hopefully mutually beneficial.”

Mr Goldsmith described as “stomach-churning” the incident at King’s College London earlier this week in which a lecture was evacuated after a protest by anti-Israel activists turned violent.

He said: “People should feel free and comfortable expressing their views, having debates, discussing the big issues of the day without the fear of having people smash their windows and hound them out of discussion. It’s just completely unacceptable.

“What worries me is that this wasn’t simply a matter of protesters expressing their views – which is legitimate in a democracy, we have freedom of speech – they crossed the line. Windows were broken. People were made to feel terrified. I’ve heard people make reference to what happened in Germany 70 years ago with shards of glass shattering and so on.”

Freedom of speech must be maintained, the MP said, but it was not acceptable for protests to descend into threats and attacks.

He explained: “There is a line. People in this country should be allowed to express their views - even if they are idiotic. I see that every hour on Twitter – idiotic, stupid, offensive and very rude things that people say. But there’s a gap between that and incitement and threats.

“People shouldn’t feel threatened in London. We are one of the most diverse cities on earth. It’s a harmonious city. Of course there are tensions that bubble up from time to time. Broadly speaking it’s a model of working diversity, but that requires people of every community to feel safe at all times.”

Mr Goldsmith said he wanted to offer support to Londoners from all backgrounds.

“There’s a thread that runs through every community,” he said. “You don’t have a bespoke offer to this community and a bespoke offer for that community; you cannot be a mayor for London with a divisive approach. You have to speak to London as a whole. Londoners without any doubt are overwhelmingly worried about housing. It’s the number one concern.

“They recognise we have to grow and improve our transport structure. Air quality has become a concern. It’s gone shooting up the public agenda. And security – for some communities that’s even more acute than for all of us, and that certainly applies to the Jewish community, but it’s a concern for everyone.”