Seven MPs quit UK’s Labour over Brexit, in party’s biggest split for decades
- Lawmakers say they are unhappy with the party’s direction under Jeremy Corbyn and his support for Britain leaving the EU
Seven MPs from Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Monday announced they were breaking away and forming an independent group in protest at the party’s support for Brexit.
“This has been a very difficult, painful but necessary decision,” one of the MPs, Luciana Berger, said at a hastily arranged press conference in London.
Other MPs expected to quit the party included Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith and Mike Gapes.
“If you want an alternative please help us build it,” Umunna said. “Politics is broken. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Gapes said: “I am furious that the Labour leadership is complicit in facilitating Brexit.”
Leslie said he was leaving because of “Labour’s betrayal on Europe”.
Despite the small number, it is the biggest split in the party since four senior Labour figures quit in the 1980s to form the Social Democratic party.
The MPs say they have been unhappy with Labour’s direction under Jeremy Corbyn.
There has been speculation that several centrist Conservative politicians are also considering their future in the party over Theresa May’s EU policy.
MPs from both parties have been facing the threat of possible deselections where their views clash with local constituency members either over Brexit or their loyalty to the leadership.
Corbyn said he was “disappointed” by the MPs’ decision.
“Now more than ever is the time to bring people together to build a better future for us all,” he said.
Labour MP Stephen Kinnock told BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour on Sunday: “The talk has been going on so long that I say with great regret that, yes, there probably will be some kind of splintering. It just seems to have been in the rumour mill so long that it’s unlikely that wouldn’t be the outcome.”
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell warned on Sunday that MPs quitting could cause a decade of Tory rule, as it risked splitting the Labour vote in their constituencies.
“It would be like the 1980s. In my constituency in Hayes and Harlington we had a Labour MP join the SDP and we lost the seat to the Conservatives,” he told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show. “And it basically installed Mrs Thatcher in power for that decade. I don’t think any of the people who have even been mentioned around this split would want that.”
Some in Labour appear to be goading the grouping to split. Last week, Momentum released a spoof Valentine’s Day video aimed at Umunna, set to the song Please Don’t Go.
Reacting to rumours of a split on Sunday night, Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the Unite union, told the BBC: “If you are going to leave, for God’s sake get on with it and stop pestering us through the media and through the TV,” he told the BBC.
Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the TSSA transport union, which backs a second EU referendum, said: “I’d urge anyone in our party thinking of bolting not to do so. Brexit, or any other issue, isn’t an excuse for breaking away. Labour is the only show in town for creating a fairer Britain. Our voters need our MPs to be made of sterner stuff.”
Berger insisted the party had become “institutionally anti-Semitic”.
“I have become embarrassed and ashamed to represent the Labour Party,” she said. “I am leaving behind a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation.”
Local Lib Dem parties in some constituencies have been told to be receptive if any MP were to quit Labour or the Conservatives, even if they do so to sit in Westminster as an independent.
The Guardian, Agence France-Presse
