Lord Sugar has urged the UK government to “use all efforts to ensure that Jeremy Corbyn does not become the leader of our country”, warning that it will be "be the day Britain died" if the Labour leader comes to power.

The Jewish peer and Apprentice host was speaking in a debate on antisemitism, held in the House of Lords on Thursday afternoon, during which he suggested that political calculations were one reason for the Labour leader’s inaction on the issue.

He said: “I think Corbyn allowed matters to ramble on because he, frankly, does not give two hoots about what Jews in the UK think. He simply does not care, that of the 250,000 Jews, let’s say 220,000 are eligible to vote, if it came to an election, 220,000 votes are a drop in the ocean. We mean nothing to him."

Lord Sugar told the House: “The Labour leader allowed the issue of alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party to ramble on for months. What kind of leader is he not to take his party by the scruff of the neck and make them see sense and kill the matter off once and for all?”

He called on Mr Corbyn to “terminate the obsession of the hard left with Israel and Palestine and focus on the far more pressing matters of Brexit and jobs.”

Ending his speech, he said: “We’re all familiar with the term ‘there is no smoke without fire.’ My request to the UK government is to extinguish the flame and use all efforts to ensure that Jeremy Corbyn does not become the leader of our country; that will be the day Britain died."

During the debate, a number of Jewish peers accused Mr Corbyn of antisemitism.

Lord Mendelsohn, who was dismissed from his role on Labour's front bench in January after he attended the President's Club dinner, said: "I too believe that the leader of my party, Jeremy Corbyn, has been a perpetrator of antisemitism."

Baroness Altmann, a Conservative said that "one of our mainstream political parties is led by an antisemite", and Lord Pannick, a crossbencher, said: "The leader of one of our main political parties is incubating antisemitism."

Speaking in turn, Lord Sacks, who recently likened comments of Jeremy Corbyn about some “Zionists” to Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, said: “A thousand years of Jewish history in Europe added certain words to the human vocabulary.

“Forced conversion. Inquisition. Expulsion. Ghetto. Pogrom. Holocaust. They happened because hate went unchecked. No-one said ‘stop’.

“My Lords, it pains me to speak about antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred. But I cannot keep silent. One of the most enduring facts of history is that most antisemites do not think of themselves as antisemites. ‘We don’t hate Jews’, they said in the Middle Ages, ‘just their religion’. ‘We don’t hate Jews’, they said in the nineteenth century. ‘Just their race’. ‘We don’t hate Jews’, they say now, ‘just their nation state.’

“Antisemitism is the hardest of all hatreds to defeat, because like a virus it mutates, but one thing stays the same. Jews, whether as a religion, or a race, or the State of Israel, are made the scapegoats for problems for which all sides are responsible. That is how the road to tragedy begins.”

Lord Sacks described how “antisemitism or any hate becomes dangerous when three things happen. First, when it moves from the fringes of politics to a mainstream party and its leadership. Second, when the party sees that its popularity with the general public is not harmed thereby. And three, when those who stand up and protest are vilified and abused for doing so.

“All three factors exist in Britain now. I never thought I would see this in my lifetime. That is why I cannot stay silent, for it is not only Jews who are at risk; so to, is our humanity."