Lord Blunkett urges Labour MPs to plot against Jeremy Corbyn after 'dismal' local election results

Lord Blunkett has called on Labour MPs to set up a secret "leadership group" to form an alternative to Jeremy Corbyn, as the former home secretary tore into the party's local election performance.



Although Labour gained more than 70 seats and won three councils in the local elections on Thursday night, Mr Corbyn's party has been criticised for missing out on other target seats, especially in London.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Lord Blunkett - who served as Tony Blair's home secretary - lamented Labour's "dismal" performance and accused the opposition of failing to capitalise on a string of problems facing Theresa May's government.

"The internal Tory civil war over Brexit, the Windrush scandal and the breast-screening fiasco all resonate deeply in the capital," he said. "But even in London – now, more than ever, a Labour city – the Corbyn revolution is the dog that refused to bark.

"The party I have worked for all my life catastrophically failed to win targets such as Barnet, where voters, at least in part, turned away from Labour in droves because of the anti-Semitism furore.

"Outside London the picture was worse, with disastrous performances in Dudley, Derby and elsewhere."

The Labour peer called on his party's MPs to organise against Mr Corbyn, saying that while moderates had "remained dutifully silent" since a better-than-expected general election result last year, it had become "increasingly clear that Jeremy’s leadership is going nowhere".

"I was part of a Labour ‘project’ that won three general elections by appealing to people’s aspirations for a better future, not a return to the past," he said.

"The lesson then, as now, is Labour can only be politically successful if it creates a clear agenda based on a positive alternative, rather than defining ourselves as being ‘anti’ everybody and everything.

"The parliamentary party – backbenchers, committee members and Select Committee chairmen – must pick up the cudgel and begin formulating ideas and policies.

"From among them, a leadership group must be formed from which a genuine alternative can emerge."

'COMPLETE COWARDICE'

Lord Blunkett's call for a "renewed form of moderate New Labour" comes amid reports that more than 40 Labour peers are planning to defy Mr Corbyn next week by backing a cross-party Lords amendment seeking to soften Brexit.

According to the paper, the party leadership is instructing its peers to abstain in Tuesday's vote on UK membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), prompting fury from Labour's representatives on the red benches.

Lord Waheed Alli blasted Labour's top brass for being “paralysed by indecision”, accusing them of "complete cowardice", while fellow Labour peer Lord Cashman said: “Why the frontbench will not accept that as a negotiating position I completely fail to understand.”

Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's former spin doctor, told a conference yesterday that he believed Labour was “a long way from where we need to be to be anywhere near getting back into Downing Street”.

But Laura Parker, national coordinator of the pro-Corbyn Momentum campaign group, said: "The untold story of the night is Labour’s advance on last year’s snap election result. If this result were played out at a general election, the Tories would lose 12 parliamentary seats and be unable to form a government.”