Persistent critics of Jeremy Corbyn should consider leaving Labour and setting up their own party if they do not feel they can support their leader, an MP who backs Mr Corbyn has said.

Ronnie Campbell, the MP for Blyth Valley, hit out at party deputy leader Tom Watson after Mr Watson accused left-wing Labour activists of a “secret plan to take over the Labour party”.

Mr Campbell told his local Evening Chronicle newspaper: “I’m just getting a bit fed up of it. It’s time they made their mind up to leave and start their own party as far as I’m concerned.”

Mr Watson this week declared war on the Labour left after reports that Britain’s biggest union, Unite, might affiliate to left-wing campaign group Momentum. The claim was based on a recording of Momentum founder Jon Lansman saying he wanted the union to affiliate. Unite says it has no plans to affiliate.

In the recording, Mr Lansman says he wants the Labour left to fight for adequate representation in the party’s official organs. Since the 1990s left-wing members have been marginalised in the party’s structures, including on key committees.

Mr Corbyn has called for unity across the party.

Mr Campbell said that Unite could affiliate to whichever organisations it wanted to because it was only spending its own money and that “MPs like Tom Watson” were “causing more problems and more friction in the Labour Party”.

“And then they turn around and say, ‘look at what’s happening in the Labour Party!’” he told his local newspaper.

“It’s them that’s causing the problems. Can Tom Watson not see that he is causing the problems?”

Last year Mr Campbell suggested that Blairites criticising the Labour leader keep their “mouths shut”.

“They are like the Tory establishment. The Tory establishment think they have the right to govern the country at any time,” he told The House magazine at the time.

Ronnie Campbell, Labour MP (PA Images)

“The Blairites are doing exactly the same. They are saying ‘we have the right to rule this party of ours’.”

Mr Watson said of Mr Lansman’s comments: “It looks like a secret plan to take over the Labour party to me, and I think it needs to be called out.

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“Many of our young members who have joined Momentum do not want to be involved in covert plans to take over the Labour Party.