Anti-brexit Left line up to create a new party if Corbyn gets humiliated

Clegg and Cable call for unity against the Tories if May achieves crushing election victory

LABOUR and Liberal Democrat candidates are plotting to unite and form an “anti-brexit force” after the election as they lay the grounds for a new party.

Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, said over the weekend that centre-left parties in the UK were “duty bound to work together”.

Sir Vince Cable, the former business secretary who is seeking a return to Parliament on June 8, has suggested a Conservative landslide would spark the birth of a new party.

He said Labour would face a “bloodletting” in the wake of a humiliating defeat as he predicted there would be “serious conversations” about creating a viable alternative to Theresa May’s Conservatives.

Sir Vince will today join Clive Lewis, the former shadow business secretary, to address the launch of a campaign aimed at building alliances in an attempt to stop Tory candidates in marginal seats.

It also emerged that allies of Tony Blair were drawing up plans for a new party in an effort to combine the forces of anti-brexit Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green politicians.

Mr Clegg told a conference on Brexit in Westminster: “You cannot restore the genius, the elixir, the necessity of competition to the British democratic system without non-conservative antiBrexit forces working effectively together.

“For any of us who don’t feel that either of those options are the kind of future that we want – of Scottish nationalism on the one hand and an increasingly angry Ukip-lite English nationalism at the hands of the Conservative Party – it’s not a choice, we are duty bound to work together.”

Sir Vince told Pienaar’s Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live that Labour’s future “is in great doubt” as he suggested a new party could be formed in the aftermath of a massive victory for Mrs May.

He said: “There will be serious conversations about where British politics goes and how you create an alternative to the Conservatives which … is centrist, centre-left, pro-business, practical, offering an alternative to what is potentially a very damaging form of Conservatism.”

Much of the speculation surrounding the formation of a new party has focused on the role Mr Blair could play after the former Labour prime minister said Brexit had given him a “direct motivation” to return to front-line politics.

A source who used to work for Mr Blair told The Sunday Times: “People are waiting to see just how bad the damage is on June 9. They will look at the results and say, ‘Is this horse a dead horse or can it still be revived?’ Some people have already come to the conclusion that it can’t and therefore something else will have to be born.”

Senior figures from Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens will today address the campaign launch of the Progressive Alliance which is focused on doing deals to stop Conservative candidates winning seats.

The Tories have estimated that more than 30 deals have already been done.

Patrick Mcloughlin, the party chairman, said: “All over the country Green and Liberal Democrat candidates are doing their utmost to put in power a coalition of chaos that would be led by a weak, shambolic Jeremy Corbyn.”

But a Labour spokesman said: “This is desperate rubbish from the Tories, making things up to try and deflect from their own failures.

“Labour doesn’t and won’t do deals. We’re fighting to win in every seat.”

‘People are waiting to see how bad the damage is. They will say, is this a dead horse or can it be revived?’