UK Labour's Corbyn refuses to stand down after losing no-confidence vote

British opposition Labour Party leader lost a humiliating no-confidence vote by 170 to 40 but refused to resign, media reports said on Tuesday.

Original allies of Corbyn, who won the leadership contest in a landlside in 2015, turned on him, calling for a fresh approach to challenge the ruling Conservative Party, itself in turmoil after the Brexit vote result on Friday. The vote is not binding under existing Labour Party rules and Corbyn said standing down would "betray" the party members who voted for him.

Rebels within Labour have accused Corbyn, a noted eurosceptic, of failing to show leadership during the referendum campaign and have blamed him for not mobilising the Labour vote which could have turned the result in favour of the Remain camp.

“I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60% of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning. Today’s vote by MPs has no constitutional legitimacy,” he said. In-fighting broke out last week when shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn told Corbyn he could no longer support him and was fired.

Several shadow cabinet members then resigned publicly which prompted a procession of departures from Corbyn's leadership team.

Insisting that he would not be resigning whatever the outcome of the secret no-confidence vote, Corbyn has said he would stand again if a formal leadership bid was launched by rivals.

Staunch supporters of the hard-line veteran left winger said the resignations were little more than a coup that had been plotted since Corbyn took control of the party against the odds last year.

Allies such as shadow health secretary Diane Abbott accused the rebels of trying to bypass party rules, saying that the leader was elected by all members, not just MPs.

Calling the no-confidence vote a “three ring circus”, Abbott said opponents of Corbyn were not confident they could topple him in a normal leadership ballot.

Unifying Labour's factions has been impossible for Corbyn in the wake of the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown era that saw the party move almost to the centre-right in some of its policies as it gained power in 1997 until Brown's defeat at the hands of the David Cameron-led Conservatives in 2010.

Noisy pro-Corbyn demonstrators gathered on Monday at a rally to hear him speak.

The mood inside parliament at a meeting of Labour MPs was less than welcoming however, as several anti-Corbyn MPs exchanged insults in private and in the corridor outside in full view of journalists.