Ex-MP claims party has been hijacked by ‘something really nasty and dark in the hard left’

The former Labour minister Jane Kennedy has said the party is “broken to the core” and has been hijacked by “something really nasty and dark in the hard left”.

Kennedy, the police and crime commissioner for Merseyside, quit the Labour party in March after the resignation of Luciana Berger, saying it had failed to get to grips with antisemitism.

The former Liverpool Wavertree MP, who served as a minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, said on Monday that other centre-left figures were being “hounded out” as a result of ongoing antisemitism and homophobia in local Labour parties.

“There’s something really nasty and dark in the hard left that has taken over the Labour party … The two main parties are broken to the core. They are rotten and dominated by hard politics of the hard left and the hard right, and there will be a continuing realignment in British politics, which in my opinion can’t happen soon enough,” she said.

Kennedy, who steps down as Merseyside police and crime commissioner next May, said she was supporting Change UK in the European elections on Thursday. The fledgling party, which has 11 MPs who split from Labour and the Conservatives, has endured a bruising European election campaign, which it had hoped to use to build support among disaffected remainers.

Kennedy said she backed a “confirmatory referendum” on any Brexit deal that can be agreed by MPs before the deadline of 31 October. She described Labour’s position on Brexit as “very dishonest” and “calculated to confuse” both leave and remain voters into thinking they could vote for the party on 23 May.

Kennedy said she decided to quit Labour following the resignation of Berger, her successor in Liverpool Wavertree, and the readmittance of Derek Hatton, the controversial former deputy leader of Liverpool council.

Hatton, 71, was allowed back into the party in February after a 34-year absence, but was suspended two days later following the emergence of a tweet, now deleted, in which he said: “Jewish people with any sense of humanity need to start speaking out publicly against the ruthless murdering being carried out by Israel.”

Hatton has since withdrawn his application to rejoin Labour. Kennedy, who fought against Hatton’s hard-left Militant group on Liverpool council in the 1980s, said she took it personally when he was allowed back in.

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She said she admired Labour MPs such as Margaret Hodge and Louise Ellman, who have criticised the party over antisemitism, but said they had been “left high and dry” by Jeremy Corbyn.

“The really sad thing for me is to see how some lovely people of the centre left are now held in hostage to these people and they are afraid to do the right thing, to speak out against it and, if push comes to shove, to step away from it,” Kennedy said.

“I know I reached a view several years ago when I knew that Jeremy Corbyn was going to be re-elected that the Labour party would end up with this kind of politics dominating its business. I knew I couldn’t vote for the Labour party when that became the case.”

A Labour party spokeswoman said: “Labour’s bold and popular policies under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership have changed the political conversation in this country and exposed the devastation caused by the Tories’ austerity agenda.

“While Change UK is polling at 1% in some surveys, Labour’s policies to end austerity, invest in our communities and bring water, energy and rail into public ownership are popular and reflect the mainstream of public opinion.

“Under Jeremy Corbyn, we achieved the biggest increase in the share of the vote since 1945 in the 2017 general election and we are now one of the biggest political parties in Europe with an active and diverse membership.”