The former MP Bridget Prentice, who served as a minister in Tony Blair’s government, has resigned from the Labour party, branding it a “cult venerating the messiah” Jeremy Corbyn.

Prentice represented the London seat of Lewisham East for 18 years from 1992. After Labour came to power she became a whip, and later she was a junior minister in the Ministry of Justice.

In a furious letter to Corbyn’s chief of staff, Karie Murphy, Prentice claimed the party was now being run by a “familial clique” that was ignoring the views of grassroots members, in particular on Brexit.

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“I joined the Labour party, not a cult. Singing ‘oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ might be mildly amusing, but the inability to countenance any criticism of The Leader is not,” Prentice wrote in her letter, which she shared on Twitter.

She argued that during her 45 years of Labour membership, leaders had been criticised and asked to justify their position, “but that’s not allowed under the Corbyn cult”.

Prentice said Corbyn had won the Labour leadership on a “wave of enthusiasm, even idealism”, but that “instead of harnessing that enthusiasm and idealism for the greater good, as Clem Attlee or Keir Hardie would have done, it has been deliberately ignored on the issue that unites the majority of young people in the UK today: remaining in the EU.”

Corbyn’s claim that the local election results this month were a call by voters to get on with delivering Brexit “would be laughable if it were not so palpably wrong and pathetic,” Prentice said.

Her criticism comes after recent interventions by the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, and Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, both of whom have argued the party should embrace the idea of another EU referendum.

Corbyn was challenged by MPs at Monday night’s meeting of the parliamentary labour party (PLP), with several lamenting a lack of clarity in the party’s position ahead of the European elections on 23 May.

Corbyn, who launched Labour’s campaign for the European elections in Kent last week, has insisted his party will continue to try to appeal to both leavers and remainers.

He said at the launch of Labour’s campaign: “Some people seem to look at the issue the wrong way round: they seem to think the first question is leave or remain, as if that is an end in itself. I think they’re wrong. The first question is: what kind of society do we want to be?

“The real divide in our country is not how people voted in the EU referendum. The real divide is between the many and the few,.”

Prentice also attacked Corbyn for failing to tackle antisemitism, accusing him of the “sin of omission” and arguing it was “shameful” that Labour was being represented by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which the party set up just over a decade ago.

She concluded in her letter: “The party has been destroyed … it is no longer the party of Hardie and Attlee and Blair … This is no longer the Labour party. You should change its name.”

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A Labour party spokesperson said: “It is disappointing that Bridget Prentice has left the party but many claims in her letter are plainly untrue. Labour’s bold and popular policies under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership have changed the political conversation in this country and exposed the devastation caused by the Tories’ austerity agenda.

“Labour achieved the biggest increase in the share of the vote since 1945 in the 2017 general election and we are now one of the biggest political parties in Europe with an active and diverse membership.

“The Labour party is absolutely committed to challenging and campaigning against antisemitism in all its forms and wherever it occurs.”

One Labour source claimed Prentice was irritated because Labour had declined to nominate her for a fresh term as the party’s representative on the Electoral Commission. The source said: “Bridget Prentice is aggrieved that she was not renominated as Labour’s rep to the Electoral Commission, as she has made clear in private, while not raising any of the issues mentioned in her letter.”