A breakaway party to the left of Labour should be known as the “Farage assistance group”, former Labour leader Lord Neil Kinnock has said.
Lord Kinnock told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that any “splintering” would “only be of assistance to the enemies of Labour”.
Speaking on Friday, Jeremy Corbyn said that “discussions are ongoing” about the shape of a prospective new political party, after Zarah Sultana said she was quitting Labour to “co-lead the founding” of a new outfit with the ex-party leader.
Ms Sultana, who lost the Labour whip in the Commons last year, said the project would also include other independent MPs and campaigners.
Lord Kinnock, who led Labour between 1983 and 1992, told Sky: “I understand they’re having a bit of difficulty over thinking of a name.
“In a comradely way, I’d suggest one. It would be the ‘Farage assistance group’.”
He said that a “division” in the “anti-right-wing vote can only assist the parties of the right, the Conservatives, especially now under Mrs Badenoch and under Farage, the Reform party”.
“So the splintering… offered by a new party of the left… can only be of assistance to the enemies of Labour, of the working-class – the people who have no means of sustaining themselves other than the sale of their labour by hand and by brain – and can only be of benefit to the egos of those who are running such a party,” he said.
It comes as Labour are trailing Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the polls.
On Friday, the Home Secretary appeared to shrug off Ms Sultana’s announcement of a new party, and on Sunday, the Education Secretary said that “some of those involved” had “checked out” of the Labour Party some time ago.
“Now it’s for them to forge their way forward,” she said.
“But what will determine the next election is whether people really see in their lives, in their families, in their communities, the difference a Labour Government has brought.”
