Several members of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet are considering refusing to vote for a bill triggering article 50, amid widespread concern among Labour MPs about the party’s response to Brexit.

With the government expected to table legislation giving it the power to start the formal divorce process with the EU as soon as next Wednesday, if, as expected, it loses the supreme court appeal, Labour MPs are in disarray about how to respond.

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Four shadow cabinet ministers, including close Corbyn loyalists, and several more junior frontbenchers, have told the Guardian that they are agonising about whether to back the party line of what one called “waving through” article 50, in what could prove the first real test of new chief whip Nick Brown’s powers of persuasion.

One shadow cabinet minister from a remain constituency told the Guardian: “I’m concerned that if we wave article 50 through, my constituents will go crazy.” Another said: “When the pain hits, as it will, and when people lose their jobs, you need to be on the right side of that. I don’t think we should vote to trigger article 50.”

The tone of the referendum campaign, and the subsequent public debate, have exposed a deep rift in the party, broadly between Labour MPs representing leave constituencies where there are concerns about immigration; and those in London and metropolitan seats that voted remain.

The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, who accepted a job in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet after the bitter summer leadership campaign, has sought to straddle the divide, and represent the concerns of both leave and remain voters.

In his response to May’s twelve-point Brexit plan in the Commons on Tuesday, he welcomed her commitment to seeking tariff-free access to the single market, which he said represented a victory for Labour, and suggested she was aiming to avoid a hard Brexit.



But some Labour MPs complained that stance was “too hedged; too nuanced”, and that they were left ill-prepared for the debate, and unsure what the party’s stance was until late on Tuesday afternoon.

Corbyn’s approach at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, when he kicked off with an attack on Theresa May for making her speech at Lancaster House, instead of to MPs, was also regarded, even by some close allies, as less punchy than his recent successful attacks on social care and the NHS.

Labour plans to seek to amend any legislation the government tables, to ensure that parliament and the public can scrutinise whatever deal the government strikes. But many MPs feel that is not a robust enough response.

Starmer, speaking in an interview with the Guardian Politics Weekly podcast, defended his response to May’s speech. He argued that the term “hard Brexit” was not useful any more, arguing that business wanted “tariff free and barrier/impediment free access to the single market”.

“What Theresa May said yesterday was she didn’t want formal membership but then she listed as her objectives those key attributes of membership. If she is able to achieve that then that is not the hard Brexit that some feared. What matters now is delivery,” he said.

Starmer argued that May had only revealed the plan because his party had forced the issue and had included Labour demands for tariff-free trade in her priorities. “It’s important to remember what we’ve achieved.”

Tristram Hunt, the Stoke-on-Trent MP who triggered a byelection by resigning to become director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, used his final speech in the Commons on Wednesday to warn about the difficulties of reconciling the conflict between public opinion in traditional Labour seats, and the party’s liberal instincts on issues such as immigration.

“The division of opinion between the official Labour party position and many of our heartland voters has served only to highlight some of the deep-seated challenges which centre-left parties are facing,” he told MPs.

Conservatives seized on the news to accuse Labour of failing to respect the referendum verdict. Dominic Raab MP, member of the Brexit select committee, said: “Labour backed the EU referendum that put the decision on UK membership of the EU in the hands of the British people. It’s unbelievable that members of Jeremy Corbyn’s top team are now plotting to vote to ignore the result if they get the chance.

“The prime minister has set out a comprehensive plan to build a global Britain as we exit the EU that has commanded wide support. Labour is too divided and incompetent even to agree to respect the decision people have already made.”

Several other backbench MPs, who feel freer to speak than shadow cabinet members, struck a markedly different tone from the leadership, saying they have not given up the fight for single-market membership.

Seema Malhotra, who sits on the Commons’ Brexit select committee, said the prime minister, “shouldn’t turn her back on a reformed single market and us staying as members of that which I think is fundamental for our future prosperity”. She added that she did not accept “the idea that we could not seek EU wide reform on migration – on freedom of movement. There should be greater flexibility for member states to decide on the types of controls they use – I don’t think we should give up on that”.

Alison McGovern, chair of Progress, the centrist group of MPs, said she believed the party should continue to reject the argument that reducing migration will improve voters’ lives. “People forget that the Labour party has a historic role in bringing working people together, wherever they’re from, and if we’re not doing that now, when would we be?”

Tim Farron’s Liberal Democrats, who have taken a firm anti-Brexit stance, are hoping to capitalise on Labour’s discomfort by scooping up votes from ardent remainers who might usually be natural Labour voters.

Angus Robertson, leader of the Scottish National party in Westminster, claimed it was extraordinary that at PMQs on Wednesday, after such a historic speech, the “official British opposition was absent without leave, significant numbers of their MPs not even in the chamber, total incoherence from the Labour frontbench.”

He said people had voted to leave or remain for all kinds of passionate reasons. “But I know that there are people who voted leave did so after leave campaigners said Britain would be staying in the single market. Here we are a day after the prime minister said unilaterally we are not doing this, we are leaving the common market and the most testing question Jeremy Corbyn can come up with is, ‘how much money are we going to have to pay to have access to the European single market?’ Not, ‘hold on a second we were told this wasn’t going to happen and it’s now going to happen’.”

The party’s whips have already called in several shadow ministers, including Tulip Siddiq, Daniel Zeichner and Catherine West, after all three said they would defy any Labour whip to vote in favour of triggering article 50.

Siddiq’s Hampstead and Kilburn’s seat has historically been a tight three-way marginal, where 75% voted to remain, similar to West’s Hornsey and Wood Green seat which was previously held by Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone.