Labour leadership challenge could break up party

Britain's Labour Party faces a leadership battle which could result in its break up, as Angela Eagle on Monday officially launches a challenge against leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Ms Eagle, a former shadow business secretary, on Sunday suggested that her differences with Mr Corbyn were less about policy than electability.

“He doesn’t connect with Labour voters, he doesn’t connect enough to win an election and he doesn’t reach out in any meaningful way to other parts of the party. He’s lost the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues,”she said.

Ms Eagle’s formal challenge comes after two weeks of shadow-boxing between Labour MPs, 80 per cent of whom backed a motion of no confidence in the party leader, and Mr Corbyn’s supporters, who believe he retains the support of the party membership.

The party's National Executive Council (NEC) will rule on Tuesday on whether Mr Corbyn should automatically be on the ballot in a leadership election. Legal advice says the leader, along with other candidates, requires nominations from a fifth of Labour's MPs and MEPs. That would require Mr Corbyn to be nominated by 51 MPs or MEPs, which is unlikely.

Defiant

The Labour leader made clear on Sunday that he had no intention of resigning and would contest any leadership challenge. “I’m expecting to be on the ballot paper because the rules of the party indicated that the existing leader, if challenged, should be on the ballot paper anyway,” he said.

“I would just say to anyone in the party to think for a moment: is it really right that the members of the party should be denied a choice in this? Half a million people are members of the party because they want the party to succeed.”

Mr Corbyn’s supporters have warned that Ms Eagle’s challenge will divide the party at a time when Britain needs a strong opposition. But she said she was motivated by a desire to ensure that Labour supporters had an effective leader who could hold the government to account and stand a chance of winning the next general election.

‘Hurting people’

“The country has now got huge challenges post the EU referendum vote. This was a fight in the Tory party that has now ripped our society apart, it’s threatening our economy and it’s hurting people,” she said.

“This is not about splitting the Labour Party, this is about uniting the . . . party so we can heal divisions [of] six years of Conservative government, huge anti-austerity policies, cuts that have been visited on the most vulnerable areas.”

Ms Eagle voted in favour of the Iraq war and favours maintaining Britain's Trident nuclear defence system, both policy faultlines within the Labour Party. She said on Sunday that she opposed calling Tony Blair to account in Parliament for his role in taking Britain into the Iraq war.

“We would be far better learning the lessons and making certain that we don’t fall into the same mistakes if – God forbid – there should be a future [situation] . . . where these decisions are made,” she said.