Labour MP John Mann has called for Diane Abbott to resign and claimed she feigned illness to avoid last night’s Article 50 vote:

“It is quite extraordinary. We have some very, very ill people who have turned up to parliament to vote yesterday who are so sick they’ve not been able to carry on their work as MPs made it there and they voted. She gave herself a sick note at 5 o’clock. I think we all know what is going on here. She bottled the vote. It’s cowardice… You don’t abstain on the big votes. And it’s embarrassing to see that. She ought to be giving an apology to the Labour party for doing so. That is not leadership, that’s cowardice. She’s called it very, very badly… Hiding away from big votes is not the way we should be doing things. And she should have been in with me and Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in voting the Labour line. She wasn’t, and that’s not very clever.”