Labour must change direction now, says Pat McFadden

In a stinging attack on the Corbyn leadership, Mr McFadden, now the sole Wolverhampton Labour MP after last week's election, placed the blame for the crushing defeat squarely on their shoulders and said they had "failed utterly".

Mr McFadden, who is aligned to the more moderate wing of the party, said Mr Corbyn and his allies had adopted an "anti-western world view that the public rightly saw as taking sides with the regimes hostile to the UK and making excuses for terrorism". He also said the party has fostered a "toxic culture of factionalism" and "personality cult".

With Labour at a crucial crossroads, the MP for Wolverhampton South East, who served as a minister under Gordon Brown and saw his majority cut to just 1,200 at the election, said a shift back towards the centre ground was crucial to making the party electable once more.

He said: "Jeremy Corbyn will now go but will Corbynism go with him? That is the question now facing Labour. Can it — does it even want to — face up to the scale of the voters’ rejection and the hard work necessary to even begin to win back voters’ trust?

"Or will it seek refuge in suicidal bromides of denial: it was all the media’s fault; it was all Brexit’s fault; or the most mind-numbing one of all — 'we won the argument'."

Rebecca Long-Bailey looks likely to be the leadership candidate supported by allies of Mr Corbyn. Others such, as Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer or Yvette Cooper, could seek to unite the party.

Mr McFadden said: "People ask who should replace Jeremy Corbyn. It’s a fair question but it is also incomplete. The question has to also be what should replace Jeremy Corbyn. Because anyone taking false comfort in the idea that all we need is continuity Corbynism with a different face and voice was not hearing voters on working-class doorsteps in recent weeks.

"Labour has lost big before, most notably in 1983. But at that time, Michael Foot departed with dignity and there was an almost universal acceptance that the approach had been wrong and the party needed fundamental change.

"That hard work was begun by Neil Kinnock and carried through by Tony Blair resulting in victories that now seem a distant memory. The worrying signs in many comments from leadership figures and their cheerleaders this time is that there is a determined effort to deny the reality of what happened and to face up to the scale of change needed."