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Labour faces a split with MPs prepared to join a new party unless Jeremy Corbyn backs a second Brexit referendum, a senior backbencher warned.

Former ministers David Lammy claimed there could be an SDP-style walkout if the party leader continued to resist demands to support another EU vote.

He told Sky News: “There are a small group in our party who are frustrated, who have so much grievance, the fear is they are going to go off and form another party, I personally reject that."

"But the danger is that, just like 1983, a new party built around a relationship with Europe keeps the Labour Party out of power for a generation."

(Image: NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

The 'Gang of Four' Roy Jenkins, David own, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams left the Labour Party in 1981.

They went on to form the SDP and fought the 1983 election in an alliance with the Liberal Party.

It split the opposition vote giving Labour its worst electoral performance since 1918 and critics say it led to Labour being kept out for a generation.

But the split Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon hit back, saying: “I don't think the party's going to split.”.

Earlier this week a Labour frontbencher told the Daily Mirror Labour MP and prominent Remainer Chuka Ummuna was seriously planning a move to create another party.

(Image: Press Association)

Labour's policy, as decided at their conference in September, is to push for a general election so they can take charge of the Brexit negotiations.

If that fails, one of many options is to back a second referendum.

But the leadership has been keen to insist that all options are equal.

This puts them at odds with a number of their MPs and the vast majority of the party's members - more than 70% of whom back a second vote.

Mr Lammy said he doubted that there would be a general election because no Tories would vote no confidence in their own government.

“I think an election is extremely unlikely because members of the DUP are not going to put Jeremy Corbyn, who has been a long-term friend of Sinn Fein, into Number 10, let’s be clear and even Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry are not saying that they are going to vote no confidence in a Conservative government that they prefer to Jeremy Corbyn so I don’t see any prospects of a general election,” he said.