Group representing poorer constituencies say leader is ‘not speaking to the country’ and is turning away from unions

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to the Labour party conference was criticised by some MPs representing northern English constituencies who said he had made a “self-indulgent speech that was not talking to the country”.



Speaking at a packed fringe, organised by the thinktank ResPublica, a group of northern MPs representing poorer constituencies raised concerns over the tenor of the speech and its content and worried that the “white working classes” would be left cold by the rhetoric.



John Mann, the outspoken Labour MP for Bassetlaw, warned that the “new politics looked very much like the old” and that the Labour leader had surrounded himself with “former Trots and members of Socialist Action”.



He warned that although Corbyn had attracted 160,000 new members they were mostly from the middle classes, saying: “Tony Blair was elected in 1994 by 750,000 trade union votes. This time we saw 60,000 union votes. We have got new members from the middle classes but lost 600,000 working-class ones.”



Mann warned that he had been told by Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the Unite union, about concerns that his members were “leaving for Ukip”. “We could be out of power for my whole lifetime.”



Simon Danczuk, another critic of the Corbyn leadership, described Tuesday’s speech as “self-indulgent”. He went on to criticise both the last Labour leader Ed Miliband and Corbyn over their attacks on the media, adding: “Why criticise the Mail and the Sun when millions of people read them?



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“You don’t win elections on a mantra of misery. Talking about poverty doesn’t win elections. It’s self-indulgent. Jeremy was not speaking to the country. It may be news to him but the country is not north London … He made a big mistake. I’m tempted after Corbyn’s speech [to say] come back, Ed Miliband, all is forgiven.”

Echoing these concerns was Graham Jones, a Labour MP who resigned from the frontbench after Corbyn won the leadership election. He said he had worked in factories and “my former colleagues think the Labour party no longer represents them”.



Maurice Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour ennobled by Ed Miliband, said the issue was that “the skilled working class left Labour in 2001. The rest in 2005. There’s a massive distance between the values of Labour as a liberal middle class party and the working class”.



However David Lammy, who nominated Corbyn and holds the neighbouring seat to the Labour leader, took issue with some of the critics.

He said that Corbyn was a “sincere man, authentic politician” and that he hoped he would reach out. The issue Lammy had was that he “didn’t get a sense of a breadth of challenge facing the Labour party from Corbyn’s speech”.



“In the last election we got 9.3 million votes. The Tories got 11.3 million. We did badly in suburbs, new towns. Turning this around is a huge project for Labour.”

