THE article Finding Peace in the Trolly Land: How releasing a memoir makes me a Corbynista (M Star September 20) should not have been published without additional checks.

The article made a number of allegations about an interview that journalist Etan Smallman conducted with the author Lauren Booth. However, the interview in question had not been published and evidence for the allegations had not been provided.

Ms Booth’s article said: “I knew the ‘P-word’ would draw a certain kind of journalist to circle my book launch seeking the first scent of blood.”

We accept this to be wholly without basis in light of the fact that Mr Smallman was not drawn to her book launch but was asked to interview her by his editor and that, in his nine years as a journalist, he has written just one article about Israel/Palestine and just one that touches on Mr Corbyn.

The Morning Star is satisfied that, contrary to the article’s insinuation, Mr Smallman's Twitter feed does not reveal “a big affection for all tropes related to Labour as anti-semitic to its inner core” and that there is no evidence the interview he conducted with Ms Booth was commissioned in order to attack Jeremy Corbyn or that Mr Corbyn was the main subject of the interview. We accept that Mr Smallman made no comment about Ms Booth’s book or anything else being pro or anti-Israel and therefore the assertion that he demanded the memoir “be re-edited to insert a more pro-Israeli ‘balance’” was offensive and wrong.

The Morning Star would like to apologise to Mr Smallman for failing to investigate the basis for these assertions before printing them. The article in question has already been removed from our website.

We would also like to apologise for any confusion caused by references in the article to the Independent, as it was the "i" not the Independent which commissioned the interview.

And we wish to apologise to our readers for having printed such a misleading article.