Donald Trump’s leadership is “giving licence” to the largest increase in antisemitic incidents on record in the United States, former Vice President Joe Biden has said.

Mr Biden, who was Barack Obama’s deputy in the White House between 2009 and 2017, made the remark on Wednesday night in a speech to the Tom Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice.

“We are in a battle for the soul of this nation,” he said. “We have to recognize trend lines are moving in the wrong direction.”

He cited a recent Anti-Defamation League report that said antisemitic incidents had increased by nearly 60 per cent in 2017, adding:

“The largest one-year increase since they started keeping records in 1970. That’s not an accident. It’s not an accident.

“Our leadership is giving licencse, giving licence to this prejudice.”

Antisemitic incidents in 2017 included a march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, where hundreds of people marched through the University of Virginia campus chanting “Jews will not replace us”, as a rival group opposed them.

Paralegal and social activist Heather Heyer, 32, died after a car was driven into a body of people involved in one counter protest.

Mr Trump drew anger from across mainstream US politics by refusing to uneqivocally condemn the neo-Nazi movement, choosing instead to say both “very fine people on both sides”.

James Alex Fields Jr, 21, is currently on trial charged with first-degree murder in relation to the car-ramming incident.

Mr Biden is rumoured to be considering a run for the presidency against Donald Trump in the next election, due in 2020.