Labour in turmoil as MPs turn on Corbyn

Picking Jeremy Corbyn as leader would be to choose the preferred candidate of the Tories, he says

ALMOST half of the Labour MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn to be leader have abandoned his bid and will back a rival candidate to stop the party lurching to the Left.

Fourteen of the 35 MPs who originally nominated Mr Corbyn for the Labour leadership have told The Daily

Telegraph that they are supporting one of his rivals. A further two who backed Mr Corbyn have privately said that they had not decided which candidate to vote for in September.

Margaret Beckett, the former foreign secretary, admitted on national radio that she had been a “moron” for supporting Mr Corbyn in the first place. The situation underlines the chaos engulfing the Labour leadership race, which now threatens to deliver a hardLeft leader who supports a £100 billion tax rise.

Yesterday Tony Blair added his voice to those warning of the damage that Mr Corbyn could cause to the party. He urged the party not to veer to the Left, warning that it faces 20 years out of office. The disclosure that many of Mr Corbyn’s original backers now regret their actions raises questions over whether he should pull out of the race. Labour sources suggested he now had no mandate to run against his rivals, Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper.

However, others said it was too late for him to withdraw as the Labour Left is now combining with major unions to install Mr Corbyn as leader. The scale of the desertion surrounding Mr Corbyn comes after a YouGov poll of people eligible to vote gave Mr Corbyn a 17-point lead over his nearest rival Mr Burnham.

John McTernan, a former aide to Mr Blair, said the 35 Labour MPs who nominated Mr Corbyn were “morons”.

Challenged over the insult, Mrs Beckett said: “I am one of them. I have to say at no point did I intend to vote for Jeremy myself nor advise anyone else to do so.” Mrs Beckett said she was “beginning to wish I hadn’t nominated Jeremy Corbyn” and had decided to vote for Mr Burnham.

Mr Field, a former Labour minister, said Mr Corbyn had been helped because no strong candidate had emerged. He said: “I told Jeremy I would nominate him because I wanted the wider debate – we have not got that wider debate – but I also said I would not be voting for him.”

Emily Thornberry, a former shadow attorney general, said she would vote for Miss Cooper rather than Mr Corbyn: “He is attractive as an opposition prime minister, but we don’t want an opposition politician, we want a new prime minister.”

Other MPs who have withdrawn their support are: Gareth Thomas, Rupa Huq, Andrew Smith, Dawn Butler, Louise Haigh, Tulip Siddiq, David Lammy, Huw Irranca-Davies, Neil Coyle, Chi Onwurah and Jo Cox.

Mr Corbyn last night dominated a radio phone-in debate which was gatecrashed by Nigel Farage. The Ukip leader phoned in as “Nigel from Kent” to ask how the candidates would vote in the EU referendum. He said he hoped Mr Corbyn would win after the MP said that he would consider voting to leave.

LABOUR faces 20 years out of power if it moves further towards the “leftist platform” of the 1980s, Tony Blair has warned as he mounted a bitter attack on the hard-Left leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Blair said that those who claimed that their heart was with Mr Corbyn should “get a transplant” as he dismissed the life-long socialist as the “Tory preference”. It comes after a YouGov poll suggested that Mr Corbyn is on course to secure a shock victory in the Labour leadership battle.

In his most significant intervention since the general election, Mr Blair said that he would not choose to adopt an “old-fashioned” Left-wing approach, even if it could guarantee victory.

He also launched a scathing critique of Ed Miliband’s leadership, describing Labour’s election approach as old-fashioned enough to be from the Star Trek era and adding that it was “out of the playbook of the 1980s”. He highlighted the scale of the challenge facing Labour by comparing its defeat at the general election to the early 1980s, when Baroness Thatcher won and the party lost four elections in a row.

He said: “After the 1979 election the Labour Party persuaded itself of something absolutely extraordinary.

“The Labour Party persuaded itself that the reason why the country had voted for Margaret Thatcher was because they wanted a really Left-wing Labour Party. This is what I call the theory that the electorate is stupid, that somehow they haven’t noticed that Margaret Thatcher was somewhat to the right of Jim Callaghan.

“There’s no need to go through four election defeats to get to the place that it’s pretty obvious we should be now.”

He said that Labour must not “move back” and needed to resist the “easy and enormously tempting urge” to become a “party of protest” rather than a credible opposition.

“If we do, then the public won’t vote for us, not because our thoughts are too pure, but because they’re too out of touch with the world they live in,” he added.

“We won elections when we had an agenda that was driven by values but informed by modernity. When we had strength and clarity of purpose; when we were reformers not just investors in public services; when we gave working people rights at work including the right to join a union, but refused unions a veto over policy; when we understand and understood business created jobs not governments. And where we were the change-makers, not the small ‘c’ conservatives of the left.”

He added: “I would not win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was a route to victory, I would not take it. The speed of change requires new thinking. And 2015 is not 2007 or 1997. So yes, move on – but do not move back.”

Mr Blair also re-opened his feud with Tom Watson, the MP who is favourite to become the party’s deputy leader, by suggesting that the role should go to a woman. Mr Watson was one of those behind the efforts to oust Mr Blair as prime minister.

Mr Corbyn hit back at Mr Blair’s “very silly remarks”. He said: “Can’t we discuss the policy issues that we are putting forward in this election about rebuilding our society, rebuilding our economy, eliminating poverty? Let’s stick to issues.”

He added: “I think Tony Blair’s big problem is we’re still waiting for the Chilcot Report to come out.”