Corbyn shaken as 8th MP quits to join Independent Group

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's grip on his party was shaken on Tuesday as an eighth MP resigned in protest over failure to deal with antisemitism.

Adding to Corbyn's woes late on Tuesday night came the news that Enfield North MP Joan Ryan had joined the self-styled “Independent Group”, citing a “culture of anti-Jewish racism”.

Nevertheless, Corbyn was defiant in remarks after a speech earlier on Tuesday where he said he hoped the departing MPs understood “they were elected to parliament on a manifesto that was...was based around a more equal and fairer society...and it is that programme that we are going to put to the electorate in the future, that does have enormous support”.

Yet ironically as he chastised the departing MPs, Labour was welcoming back a controversial part of its past – the former deputy leader of Liverpool council Derek Hatton, the Trotskyist head of the Militant faction who in the 1980s famously sent redundancy notices to the homes of council employees by taxi.

Acolytes of Militant were thought to number 8,000 at their peak as they sought economic reform through nationalisation of industry.

Ryan, who served as a minister under Tony Blair, followed Chuka Umunna, Mike Gapes, Luciana Berger, Ann Coffey, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker and Chris Leslie in quitting the party.

Devastating in her criticism, Ryan added that Corbyn and his inner circle were "purging their perceived ideological enemies within and obsessing over issues of little interest to British people".

She lashed out at the "Stalinist clique which surrounds him" adding she could not “remain a member of the Labour party while this requires me to suggest that I believe Jeremy Corbyn – a man who has presided over the culture of anti-Jewish racism and hatred of Israel that now afflicts my former party – is fit to be prime minister of this country. He is not.”

There were suggestions on Wednesday morning that Conservative MPs unhappy with Prime Minister Theresa May's refusal to take a no-deal Brexit scenario off the table might also defect.

Conservative grandee Ken Clarke said some MPs "are getting very fed up".

"There are some, I think - not including me - who probably are contemplating leaving if the party moves too far to the right and no longer represents what they regard as the mainstream Conservative views they have held for all the previous years. I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope it doesn’t come to that," he told the BBC.