This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Labour is braced for a backlash from shadow ministers and backbenchers angry at the party’s plans to support an amendment for a second EU referendum, with several of them warning they would defy the whip in order to sink the plan.

Jeremy Corbyn finally threw his party’s weight behind another vote on Brexit on Monday evening, backing moves for a fresh referendum with remain on the ballot paper if Labour fails to get its own version of a Brexit deal passed this week.

Labour sources suggested there was a vocal backlash against the decision at a shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday, including against the fact it had not been discussed and agreed at a full meeting.

The shadow cabinet did not meet last week, and the Brexit move was considered in a series of meetings and conversations among a smaller group of shadow ministers including Corbyn, Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott.

Labour’s chairman, Ian Lavery, and the shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, have previously expressed scepticism about supporting a second referendum. “I suspect we’ll see a bit of back-pedalling today,” one Labour MP said.

The shadow ministers Tracy Brabin, Melanie Onn, Gloria de Piero, Judith Cummins, Yvonne Fovargue, Mike Kane, Emma Lewell-Buck and Jim McMahon all abstained on Yvette Cooper’s previous attempt to extend article 50.

The high-profile backbenchers Stephen Kinnock, Lucy Powell and Caroline Flint are among the others who would be highly likely to oppose a second referendum amendment. Powell said she believed at least 25 MPs would vote against any whip to back another referendum.

The Labour MP John Mann, a Brexit supporter, criticised the party’s “absurd” shift to support a second referendum. “Voters won’t have it. The last person to renege on their manifesto was Nick Clegg. It didn’t end very well for him on tuition fees,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“Our manifesto was unambiguous – we would accept the result of the referendum. A second referendum doesn’t do that and the voters – in very, very large numbers – will not accept that.”

Speaking on Today, Starmer said he was “well aware of different views across my own party”. The shadow Brexit secretary will hold a drop-in session for MPs later on Tuesday, at which a Labour source anticipated anger from shadow frontbenchers.

“There are enough Labour MPs who are opposed to this who can kill it off. The chief whip knows that, Keir knows that,” one MP said. “Every path eventually leads to defeat for a second referendum, more delay and eventually her deal or no deal. What do we do in that scenario? And no one will say.”

Overnight on Monday, Thornberry and Watson reacted furiously to a Labour source suggesting that the party would not accept a public vote that was between remain and the prime minister’s Brexit deal. “We would be seeking to prevent such a referendum,” the Labour source said.

Thornberry told broadcasters earlier that those would be terms of a future referendum, and she later stood by her remarks, publicly criticising the Labour briefing.

“I’ve seen some nonsense that I ‘misspoke’ earlier on a public vote,” she said. “Pretty hard to misspeak identically in 10 interviews, but for clarity: if Theresa May won’t accept our deal, then the public must decide: do we accept whatever deal she gets through, or do we remain? Got it?”

Watson also criticised the briefing. “Whoever briefed that my colleague ‘misspoke’ undermines the sovereignty of the current shadow cabinet,” he tweeted.