The brother Bernie Sanders has joked a potential run-off between him and Michael Bloomberg  for the Democratic nomination for US President would be a “very interesting… all-Jewish final, which we haven’t had before”.

Speaking on the BBC Four’s Today programme, Larry Sanders said that Mr Bloomberg was “a very strange kind of candidate”, being a former Republican Mayor of New York, and that “I don’t think he’ll get very far, but you can get quite a distance with a billion dollars or so.”

When asked his brother was radical, Mr Sanders responded: “No, the issues he struggles on – about having a good minimum wage, about having a good universal healthcare service, about having free public universities and all that sort of thing – every time they go to the polls the vast majority of people approve [of] them.

“He’s called radical because he’s serious, but the issues he wants to change in America are mainstream.”

Asked if Mr Sanders was Jeremy Corbyn of the primaries, Larry Sanders said: “Jeremy Corbyn had a very low popularity approval rate here in Britain, for whatever reason.”

He added: “Bernard is at the top of the list in America for approval from Democrats and he doesn’t have this crazy Brexit terror.”

Mr Sanders is the organiser of his brother’s Democrats Abroad primary campaign, which will see voters from around the world vote as to who should be the Democratic nominee for president.

As well as being able to vote online from February 19, there will be voting booths in Edinburgh, St Andrews, London, Oxford and Cambridge.

International delegates will be present at the Democratic convention in July.