The British Chancellor, Sajid Javid, refused several times on Tuesday to condemn Prime Minister Boris Johnson's jibes against Muslim women, which he made in a newspaper column last year. Writing for <em>The Telegraph</em> last August, Mr Johnson said Muslim women who wear the burqa looked like "letterboxes" and "bank robbers". He said it was “absolutely ridiculous” that anyone would choose to wear the burqa, prompting backlash from faith groups and opposition politicians. Mr Johnson refused to apologise for the article, despite then-prime minister Theresa May ordering him to. At a campaign event in the Bolton, northern England, on Tuesday, Mr Javid was asked seven times whether he would use the Mr Johnson’s words to describe Muslim women, but refused to answer directly. “The prime minister himself has been asked that question a number of times and he explained why he used that language," he said. "It was to defend the rights of women, whether Muslim women or otherwise. So he’s explained that and given a perfectly valid explanation.” On Tuesday, the Muslim Council of Britain accused the Conservatives of “denial, dismissal and deceit” with its handling of Islamophobia. Mr Javid is not a practising Muslim but he has pushed for an inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative party. It has since been widened to include all forms of racial and religious hatred. Meanwhile on Tuesday, Britain’s top rabbi accused Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of allowing “poison sanctioned from the top” to take root in the party. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, backed Ephraim Mirvis’s comments in a tweet, saying his words highlighted the “deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews”. Later that day at the launch of Labour’s race and faith policies in Tottenham, north London, Mr Corbyn said: “Anti-Semitism in any form is vile and wrong. It is an evil within our society. "There is no place for it and under a Labour government it will not be tolerated in any form whatsoever.” But in a BBC interview aired on Tuesday evening, the Labour leader repeatedly refused to apologise for his party’s handling of anti-Semitism. The latest election polls indicate that Labour is narrowing the gap with the Conservatives. A survey by ICM on Tuesday found Labour is up two points to 34 per cent of the vote, with the Conservatives falling by one to 41 per cent.