Corbyn on brink as 9 key MPs wield knife
JEREMY CORBYN’S Labour leadership was hanging by a thread last night after details of two extraordinary showdowns with rebel Labour MPs were leaked.
Nine prominent Labour MPs joined forces to warn him the party was heading for disaster under his leadership.
There was fury when Mr Corbyn brushed aside a protest by Halifax MP Holly Lynch, 30, who told him she had a 428 majority and faced losing it at the next election because of his unpopularity.
The Labour leader told her: ‘I have just been re-elected by Labour members.’ One witness said: ‘It was shocking. He more or less said he couldn’t care less.’
And Corbyn cheerleader, film director Ken Loach who made I, Daniel Blake, was dragged into the row, accused of fuelling the revolt by launching an attack on rebel MPs in a newspaper article. Stoke North Labour MP Ruth Smeeth told Mr Corbyn it was ‘outrageous’ for Mr Loach to claim Labour MPs were to blame for the dismal showing in the Copeland by-election. The scale of the revolt that threatens to engulf Mr Corbyn was reflected in surprise comments yesterday by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
He said Labour’s defeat in Copeland, Cumbria, had left it looking ‘over the cliff edge’.
The confrontations with rebel MPs took place at two separate meetings; at Tuesday’s Shadow Cabinet and Wednesday’s Labour Parliamentary Committee.
Shadow Brexit Minister Keir Starmer urged Mr Corbyn to follow his own lead when head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
‘When I led the CPS, I always carried the can when things went wrong,’ he said. ‘That is what you should do. You can’t keep making excuses.’
Shadow Trade Minister Barry Gardiner said the Labour leader and the Shadow Cabinet should be in no doubt about the widespread opposition to him from his MPs.
Labour’s election campaigns chief Andrew Gwynne said he feared the Tories were on course for a landslide election victory, with Labour losing up to 50 seats.
Lancaster and Fleetwood MP Cat Smith protested at having been mocked for putting a brave face on the Copeland defeat. ‘I got monstered for saying Copeland was a great result but it was Labour officials who told me to say it.’
Labour’s leader in the Lords, Baroness Angela Smith, revealed she was ‘fed up’ with Mr Corbyn’s supporters attacking the last Labour Government.
Mr Corbyn’s lone defender was Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery, who said: ‘We have to learn lessons from the by-elections but it is absurd to say it is all the leader’s fault.’
Mr Corbyn was subjected to another onslaught 24 hours later at a meeting of the party’s Parliamentary Committee. Miss Smeeth tore into him over an article by Mr Loach in the Guardian newspaper, in which he said: ‘The MPs are doing immense damage. It was their Labour Party, not Corbyn’s, that lost Scotland, lost two elections and has seen Labour’s vote shrink inexorably.’
Middlesbrough MP Tom Blenkinsop told Mr Corbyn bluntly: ‘You have the worst electoral record of any Labour leader in history.’
John Cryer, chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said Mr Corbyn must ‘stop rubbishing people who have given their lives to this party.’
Mr Corbyn said: ‘I intend to keep reaching out.’
...And this was their leader’s jaw-dropping response Corbyn shrugged his shoulders and told rebel MPs: ‘I have just been re-elected by Labour members’