Kinnock tells Corbyn: You cannot go on without backing from MPs

Labour grassroots support for Jeremy Corbyn is fading, Lord Kinnock said today as he held up a copy of the party’s rules on live television.

Kinnock said there had been a “significant shift” away from Corbyn recently.

The Labour peer, who was leader between 1983 and 1992. repeated his call for Corbyn to step down.

“There are a lot of people outside parliament who support him. It remains to be seen how many members of the Labour Party in a vote would support him because, as you will have seen from this morning and from recent days’ evidence, there has been a significant shift away from Jeremy”, Kinnock told the Andrew Marr Show.

“Members across the country including newly-joined people have got deep residual doubts about the possibility of him leading the party to election victory. And that means he should reconsider his position on those grounds.”

After a week of turmoil for Labour, which included a heavy defeat for Corbyn in a vote of confidence among MPs, Kinnock said Corbyn could not continue without “substantial” backing from his parliamentary colleagues.

“The constitution provides very sensibly for a party in parliament and also provides that the leader of the party must have a substantial amount of backing from Labour members of parliament… unless the leader can have that substantial support in parliament then there should be a contest or the leader  should consider his position and due his duty to the party resign.”

Kinnock, who fought off the hard-left Militant wing in the 1980s, also repeated his view that Corbyn would need to attract a fresh round of MP nominations if he were to stand again as leader.

“In circumstances in which 172 Labour MPs voted for a motion of no confidence in Jeremy and only 40 voted against then… obviously there is no basis on which Jeremy really could or should stay,”

Corbyn and his aides are convinced he is due a place on the ballot paper automatically, in the event of a leadership election, and are convinced he can win heavily just as he did last summer.