Jeremy Corbyn will face a vote of no confidence in his leadership on Tuesday after a motion was put forward at a meeting of angry Labour MPs where he faced repeated calls to resign.

At a packed meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, Corbyn faced down critics by unveiling a list of new shadow cabinet members and insisting he planned to lead Labour into the next general election.

After losing 20 members of his shadow cabinet and several other frontbenchers in a dramatic coup attempt that began over the weekend, Corbyn was barraged at the meeting which one MP said was “going wild”.

Another frontbencher, Andy Slaughter, announced his resignation early on Tuesday. In a letter, the shadow justice minister said he decided to resign after talking to his local party and other members in his constituency of Hammersmith.

There is a sense among MPs that the membership may be turning. In parliament, there were discussions among politicians about how the number of Corbyn-supporting members in their constituencies had dropped – but there is still a feeling that he would be difficult to beat given the mobilising ability of the grassroots Labour group Momentum.

Diane Abbott criticised the process facing Corbyn on Tuesday, arguing that the no-confidence motion was not part of the rules and a secret ballot was unfair. She suggested the leader would do better if the vote was public, claiming that even a “parish church” would not be run in this way.

The new shadow health secretary argued that the only way forward was a leadership election, and that if Corbyn won again then the party had to fall in line.

“This isn’t about Westminster MPs, it is about the party and the country,” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Corbyn named his new shadow cabinet members on Monday, including Barry Gardiner on energy, Richard Burgon on justice and Debbie Abrahams on work and pensions, before refusing to make way for a new leader.

But he was confronted by MPs, including Chris Bryant, Yvette Cooper and Jess Phillips, asking him to reconsider his position before the possibility of a general election, which could be called this year after David Cameron resigned as prime minister.

One MP described the mood as despairing. Some were upset that thousands of Corbyn supporters gathered by Momentum were protesting in Parliament Square chanting “Blairites out” throughout the meeting. There were claims that the crowd were waving Socialist Workers party flags rather than Labour ones.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn supporters outside parliament. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Ian Murray, the former shadow Scotland secretary, asked his leader to “call off the dogs” after facing protests outside his constituency office following his decision to resign from Labour’s frontbench at the weekend.

“Momentum are people you and your office control,” he said, to shouts from others of “They’re outside”.

Jess Phillips said she had faced antisemitic abuse since stepping down, tweeting a Momentum email that accused her of being bought by “Zionist money”.

Others on the soft left of the party, including Helen Goodman and Clive Efford, also spoke against the leader, while Chris Matheson was cheered for telling Corbyn: “I’ve done something you’ve never done, won a seat off the Tories.”

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One MP who tried to defend Corbyn was booed, in a febrile session that ended with Angela Eagle, who had resigned as shadow business secretary, visibly upset.

Corbyn remained defiant even in the face of resignations from previously loyal members of his team on the left of the party, including Eagle, Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy secretary.

Eagle had requested a meeting with Corbyn but had not heard back and so offered her resignation over the phone on Monday morning. Her sister, Maria Eagle, the shadow culture secretary, also went.

Angela Eagle told reporters outside parliament: “I’ve made it clear that I don’t think it’s working, and Jeremy needs to think about his position.”

A Labour spokesman said Corbyn was intent on staying until the general election, and the remaining vacant shadow cabinet positions would be filled.



“The people who elect the leader of the Labour party are the members of the Labour party and Jeremy has made that crystal clear. He’s not going to concede to a corridor coup or backroom deal which tries to flush him out,” he said. “He was elected by an overwhelming majority of the Labour party. He is not going to betray those people and stand down because of pressure.”

The spokesman said the only way to challenge Corbyn would be for another MP to collect nominations and trigger a contest. “All the resignations are a sideshow. If people have confidence they can win a leadership election, they can mount that challenge. If they are avoiding that, maybe they don’t have that confidence.”

Labour rebels are trying to coalesce around one candidate so that if Corbyn is back on the ballot there is a better chance of beating him.

Rumours about Nandy were quashed after she said publicly that she would not run. Sources suggested Angela Eagle or the deputy leader, Tom Watson, were the most likely unity candidates, with some mentioning Dan Jarvis as a possible future leader.

It is believed MPs are attempting to poll members to try to understand who would be seen most favourably.

There will also be an attempt to stop Corbyn standing again, although there has been opposing legal advice about whether the standing leader needs to secure MPs’ nominations in the face of a challenge.

Given Corbyn’s refusal to resign, a direct leadership challenge is likely to be the only way to proceed with the attempted coup and could come this week.

After the meeting, Corbyn addressed supporters outside parliament, promising to fight on to represent them.



He was flanked by Abbott and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, who told the crowd the team was going nowhere. Speaking of a “handful of MPs”, McDonnell said it was “open to them to seek another election”.

“But let me make it clear: if there is another leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn will be standing again and I will be supporting him. This is not about any individual, this is about democracy of the movement,” he said, to chants of “Corbyn, Corbyn, Corbyn”.

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McDonnell criticised his colleagues’ comments about the demonstrations, arguing that while “some call it mob rule”, he believed “people have the right to peaceful protest”.

Phillips said the move would further anger MPs who had been described as “Blairite scum” by some of those protesting.

John Woodcock, an MP who has been hostile to Corbyn’s leadership, accused the leader’s spokesman, Kevin Slocombe, of giving journalists a distorted account of what had happened.

Earlier, Bryant claimed Corbyn had voted for Brexit. A member of the public said on Monday that the Labour leader had told him he was voting to leave the EU, telling the Guardian they had a conversation in a Waterloo tapas restaurant on Friday 10 June.

Corbyn’s team are adamant that he voted to remain, pointing to his tweet saying so. But the leader has been criticised for his campaign efforts. The chair of Labour In for Britain, Alan Johnson, emailed colleagues to thank several people involved in the campaign, notably missing Corbyn off the list.

“At times it felt as if they were working against the rest of the party and had conflicting objectives,” said Johnson, who repeated his claims at the PLP meeting, to cheers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn waves to supporters from the grounds of parliament. Photograph: Chris Furlong/Getty Images

Emails leaked to the Guardian reveal that staff in both Corbyn and McDonnell’s offices removed sentences from statements and speeches that had been suggested by the remain campaign and workers in Labour’s headquarters.

In one chain of emails referring to the publication of a Treasury report, McDonnell was repeatedly pressed to make his statement more clearly about the EU referendum. The final wording included a reference to the impact of a Tory Brexit, but removed the words “Labour will continue to campaign for Britain to remain in Europe to protect jobs, growth, trade, investment and working people”, which had been suggested by the party’s central press office.

In a separate piece of correspondence, Corbyn’s team edited the sentence “I am clear just like my shadow cabinet, the trade union movement and our members, that it is in the interests of the people of this country to remain in the European Union”, to take out any personal reference.

Both teams have strongly denied that they did anything other than try to win the referendum.