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The Greens have welcomed activists kicked out of Labour for antisemitic views and people should be “very careful” who they vote for next month, one of Keir Starmer’s most senior ministers has said in a notable stepping-up of attacks on Zack Polanski’s party.

In a double-pronged attack on the two parties expected to make big gains in the elections on 7 May, Steve Reed also accused Nigel Farage of being more interested in talking to Donald Trump then representing his Clacton constituency.

Speaking to the Guardian on his way to Clacton to view projects financed by the government’s Pride in Place scheme, the housing secretary said the Reform UK leader had not attended any of the 10-plus meetings of a local board set up to decide how to spend the £20m grant.

And escalating Labour’s attacks on the Greens, who in a series of recent polls have been placed above Labour, Reed accused the party of failing to properly vet council candidates, and allowing in a stream of hard-left former Labour members, some with antisemitic views.

If people were tempted to vote Green, Reed said, they should “look at what they put up, because some of them are not what you think – they’re not the fluffy people that care about the environment”.

Reed, who before entering parliament was leader of Lambeth council in south London, where the Greens are tipped to make significant gains, pointed to recent media coverage accusing some Green candidates in the borough of sharing antisemitic posts.

“I would just say to voters: be very careful to look at what you might be voting for,” Reed said. “Because the people that the Labour party kicked out for being antisemites were welcomed into the Green party with no checks whatsoever, and a lot of them are now standing for election, and you might get something you didn’t expect if you vote for them.”

A Green spokesperson described Reed’s comments about the party as “smears”.

The Greens in England and Wales have had a near-quadrupling in membership since Polanski took over as leader seven months ago, with activists in the Greens and Labour saying some of these new members are leftwing activists who were in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Reed said: “Some of the worst antisemites that we kicked out of the Labour party not only joined the Green party, but are now standing for the Green party. And Zack Polanski has been very honest about the fact they carried out no checks on these people before they let them into the party or put them up as candidates.”

Labour is forecast to lose considerable ground to both the Greens and Reform UK ing the elections for English councils and the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.

Farage’s constituency in Essex is among 300 areas that have been given up to £20m in support over a decade to spend under the Pride in Place programme. Unlike schemes such as the Conservatives’ levelling-up fund, the idea is to distribute the money to a series of smaller projects, rather than a single landmark idea.

This, Reed argued, involved local input, ideally helped by the MP – but he said Farage had apparently been absent from Clacton’s decision-making.

“Each area has a neighbourhood board that is made up of local business people and local community activists, and the MP is supposed to be along there to support that,” Reed said.

“But if the MP never shows up, then the neighbourhood board struggles to function. Tragically, Nigel Farage has never turned up. In over 10 meetings of his community board, he has never showed his face once to try and help the local community.”

Farage, who is a strong supporter of Donald Trump, has been a regular visitor to the US since winning his seat. Last year he testified to a congressional committee looking into free speech, and was accused of calling for sanctions against the UK for supposed failures on this.

“We have seen him in Washington once, in Congress, begging like a dog for the US government to put sanctions on British workers, but he doesn’t show up in Clacton to support his own constituents,” Reed said. “So I’m going down to talk to them to see if I can offer them any support they’re not getting from their MP.”

While attacking Reform and the Greens, Reed insisted it was not inevitable that Labour would perform badly next month. He said it was “a fool’s errand trying to work out what the public are going to do” and that the next general election was even more impossible to predict.

But he accepted not everything had gone well for Starmer’s government. “There have been mistakes, and therefore things have had to be corrected,” he said, adding that he was aware that voters “want change to happen faster”.

The Green spokesperson said: “Evidence from YouGov polling shows that Green voters are among the least likely to hold antisemitic attitudes. We are a proudly anti-racist party, and we take antisemitism incredibly seriously.

“Keir Starmer is desperately clinging on, and he knows he has nothing positive to offer voters. Bad-faith attacks are all Labour has left.”

A spokesperson for Farage said he was an active MP, adding: “He makes regular personal donations to charities and good causes, writes a weekly column for the local newspaper and is the only MP to have ever held a business surgery in the constituency.

“Every MRP poll since the last general election has predicted that Reform UK’s majority in Clacton will increase at the next election. Local voters will be the judge of Nigel’s record when the time comes.”