Jeremy Corbyn has been told to put Labour on an election footing due to concerns a snap general election could be called later this year.

Shadow defence minister Toby Perkins said Labour had to be prepared for David Cameron to quit after the EU referendum, even if he is on the winning side. Writing on the LabourList website, Perkins warned: “If Labour is confronted with a general election whilst intellectually and organisationally underprepared, divided and underresourced, we would be hurtling towards catastrophe.”

Jeremy Corbyn ‘preparing Labour for losses in local elections’ Read more

He said that although under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act the next election was not due until 2020, if a new Tory leader called for an early ballot Labour would have to agree. “The prospect of the prime minister standing down in the event of a vote to leave has been often mooted,” he wrote. “However, I believe that the forces unleashed within the Conservative party are so great that, whether Cameron wins or loses, many of their MPs and activists will feel it is time for a change at the top.

“Cameron fired the starting gun on the race to succeed him when he announced that he will not fight another general election and, as Tony Blair can testify, once the lid is off the bottle it can be very difficult to re-seal it.

“In the event that Cameron goes, I expect his successor to look very keenly at whether the Labour party is capable of fighting a snap general election.”

Perkins said it was wrong to assume that the law would prevent Cameron’s successor calling an election. An early election can be called if two-thirds of the House of Commons agrees, and Perkins said: “If a new Conservative leader demanded a general election it is impossible to imagine how Labour could refuse to go to the country.”