A close ally of Jeremy Corbyn who lost her seat in the Tory general election landslide has spoken of the open hostility to the Labour leader on the doorstep.

Former shadow employment rights secretary Laura Pidcock, who before Labour’s disastrous showing in the north of England had been spoken of as a possible successor to Corbyn, said some people told her they wanted to shoot the opposition leader.

In an open letter to her former constituents in North West Durham, Pidcock said: “On Jeremy. This bit is hard, because when I knocked on your doors in 2017, so many of you talked about what a good guy he seemed, that he was on the side of the people and that he was getting a very hard time from people inside the Labour party and out.

“People who were less friendly to Labour spoke about how damaging a divided party is, about things like the IRA and the connections internationally that you didn’t understand or agree with.

“By 2019, you seemed so much angrier about Jeremy Corbyn. I had a handful of angry people say, ‘I would shoot him’ or ‘take a gun to his head’, whilst in the next breath calling him an extremist. But mostly, people were not connecting with him for lots of different reasons.”

Pidcock attacked media coverage of the Labour leader. She said: “I know people on either side of the Brexit division wanted him to come down on the side of remain or leave. I don’t want to patronise anyone by saying that this was all the fault of the media.

“I know people make up their own minds. But I cannot and will not accept that the media had no part. So much of the coverage sought to demolish Jeremy from day one, not because of him as a person, but because of his politics.”