McDonnell’s Plea For End To Labour Civil War

Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham, has retracted her resignation as shadow minister for preventing child abuse and domestic violence.

A shadow minister who quit her post in protest at Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership a month ago has unresigned.

The spokesman said: ‘There’s always work to be done.

The complaint is the latest in a string of controversies surrounding the embattled Labour leader, whose leadership has been challenged by Owen Smith after a large section of party MPs expressed their lack of confidence in Corbyn.

At the time, she said: “I can only do what I feel is right, even though it’s breaking my heart”.

In a series of messages on Twitter she said Mr Corbyn’s position was untenable and warned: “If we’re not united, we’re doomed”.

Michael Dugher MP, a former adviser to ex-Labour PM Gordon Brown, said: “I think she’ll be persuaded to seize the chance to go to the country sooner rather than later – maybe as early as October – if Jeremy Corbyn is still leader”.

In a statement, Mr McGinn said he and other Labour MPs had been subjected to a “torrent of abuse and threats” from supporters of Mr Corbyn.

However one of Mr Corbyn’s key allies, Unite trade union boss Len McCluskey, accused critics of exaggerating the abuse which he suggested was being orchestrated by the security services to discredit the Labour leader.

Malhotra wants a parliamentary inquiry into what she claims was an “illegal” attempt by Murphy to enter her office and two incidents of “unauthorised access” by McDonnell’s office manager.

McGinn said he had been told by fellow whips that after Corbyn had been angered by an interview McGinn gave, Corbyn had proposed telephoning McGinn’s father, who is a Sinn Féin councillor, to seek his intervention.

“But I don’t know enough about the details”. “I don’t do any abuse, I don’t do any bullying, I don’t allow it to be done anywhere to do with any of my campaign teams and I’m very surprised and very disappointed they should say that because politics has to be about bringing people in”.

And when asked whom they believed the majority of registered supporters would vote for, 53.4% named Mr Corbyn with just 10.3% expecting Mr Smith to win the bulk of the backing.

Labour signed up more than 183,000 new registered supporters in 48 hours last week, all of whom will now be eligible to vote, after paying the £25 fee imposed by the party’s national executive.

The Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University polled 350 Labour Party councillors across the 250 most marginal parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom (the 125 seats Labour won and the 125 Labour lost by the lowest margins in the 2015 election).