LABOUR Party MP Neil Coyle was suspended by the party today after he was accused of making racist comments.

The dramatic move came after political journalist Henry Dyer, who is of British-Chinese heritage, said that the member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark had used racial slurs in a Commons bar on February 1. 

The Insider Politics reporter made a formal complaint to Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who Mr Dyer said “took immediate action” and banned Mr Coyle from parliamentary estate bars for six months.

A Labour spokesman said that the party “expects the highest standards of behaviour from all our MPs and we take allegations of this sort very seriously.

“Accordingly, the chief whip has now suspended the Labour whip from Neil Coyle pending an investigation.”

Mr Coyle said that he was “very sorry for my insensitive comments,” later adding he had “apologised to everyone involved” and would be co-operating with Labour’s probe. 

Mr Dyer confirmed that the MP, who was involved in the plot to oust Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in 2016, had “offered his apologies for his inappropriate actions.”

Writing in Business Insider, the journalist said that Mr Coyle made a racially insensitive remark in the Strangers’ Bar about Barry Gardiner, a Labour MP who has declared funding from Christine Ching Kui Lee – accused by British spooks of seeking “influence” for China.

Mr Dyer claims Mr Coyle used a racial stereotype, a comment which “struck me at the time as not right.”

He said that he “gently pushed back at Coyle about this,” but the MP suggested he was being “over-sensitive.”

“I responded by saying that I am British-Chinese, to which Coyle responded that he could tell ‘from how you look like you’ve been giving renminbi [the Chinese currency] to Barry Gardiner’.”