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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Frances Perraudin and Kevin Rawlinson

Labour MPs applaud colleagues who quit at party meeting - as it happened

Closing summary

We’re going to close down this live blog now. Thanks for reading and commenting – here’s a summary of the afternoon’s events:

  • After seven Labour MPs resigned, the Parliamentary Labour Party held a “heated” meeting. Some MPs concerned by the party’s handling of the issue of antisemitism left the meeting unconvinced by the speech given by the chairman, Ian Lavery. “He gave me no reassurance at all that the Labour party would deal with it in the proper way,” said one. The deputy leader, Tom Watson, said the party needed to change if it wants to avoid more resignations. “I love this party but sometimes I no longer recognise it,” he said.
  • Four cabinet ministers demanded the prime minister stop using the threat of no deal as a negotiating tactic. A report suggested some ministers were willing to resign from the government over the issue, while another indicated one was willing to join a new political party set up the seven MPs who left Labour this morning.
  • The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said those seven should stand down and fight byelections. “All of these MPs stood on our manifesto in 2017 – Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto. They all increased their majorities. Now they’re on a different platform so the honourable thing, the usual thing for them to do now, is for them to stand down and fight by-elections back in their constituencies.”
  • Within hours of resigning from the Labour party, in part over its response to racism allegations, Angela Smith apologised for referring to people of a “funny tinge”. She said: “I’m very sorry about any offence caused and I’m very upset that I misspoke so badly. It’s not what I am. I am committed to fighting racism wherever I find it in our society.”
  • For a summary of the day’s earlier events, see here.

That’s all from us this evening. If you’d like to read more, my colleagues Rowena Mason and Jessica Elgot have this:

MPs leaving tonight’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party said Ian Lavery had praised the party’s manifesto and its popularity and vociferously denied the party was institutionally antisemitic. Many felt the robust response had misjudged the atmosphere. According to Louise Ellman:

[Lavery] said he was disappointed with them (the MPs who resigned). I didn’t feel there was reflection or action at all... he gave me no reassurance at all that the Labour party would deal with it in the proper way ... To me, he made it worse, virtually everyone who spoke was outraged.

Ellman said she would not be leaving the party herself.

I’m just as concerned as all the people who left this morning are, but I’m going to carry on and try and fight this from within the party.

Stella Creasy said the MPs who had been forced out had effectively been “constructive dismissals” and urged the leadership to learn the lessons.

This is about us, this is about our morality... right now, out there, people are looking at our morals and finding them wanting. I am sick of hearing warm words when I know there are many in my own local party who deserve to be thrown out of the Labour party.

There are reports around this evening that Derek Hatton, who was expelled from Labour in 1986 for belonging to the leftwing Militant Tendency, has been readmitted.

We understand those reports are, indeed, accurate.

Hatton is the former deputy leader of Liverpool council who caused a national outcry in the 1980s by setting an illegal council budget and was denounced at the 1985 Labour conference for using taxis to send redundancy notices to thousands of council workers.

He claimed to have rejoined the party last year. At that time, Labour said he was not a member. But it was understood then that the party had found no reason to deny an application from him, should one be submitted.

There remains prominent dissent within Labour ranks after the party’s chairman, Ian Lavery, addressed a “heated” meeting of collegaues this evening.

Some MPs have complained Lavery failed to adequately address the issue of antisemitism and warned more MPs could consider quitting. Ian Austin, a long-standing critic of Jeremy Corbyn, said:

The party has got to show it is tackling antisemitism. If that is the best the leadership can do, I can see more people taking the same course of action. I don’t think he came close to demonstrating the leadership understand the scale of the problem we have. I think it will result in people thinking long and hard about their position in the party.

Austin said Lavery had expressed anger that some critics of the party had described it as “institutionally antisemitic”.

In an emotional intervention, the Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth was said to have complained that a party member had told her and another Jewish MP, Lousie Ellman, that they “didn’t have human blood”, but that no action had been taken against the individual concerned.

Ellman said:

It was appalling. He (Lavery) showed no understanding of the enormity of what is going on.

Another Labour MP left the meeting, saying:

It was a complete and utter waste of time – a dialogue of the deaf.

The Telegraph goes yet further with a story published in the past few moments (premium) claiming a Conservative government minister is among those willing to join the new Independent Group if Theresa May pursues a no-deal Brexit.

A Tory minister and four Conservative backbenchers appear poised to defect to the new Independent Group set up by disgruntled Labour MPs, it has been claimed.

Describing the breakaway group as ‘remarkably sensible people’, the minister told the Telegraph he was prepared to join the new party if the government presses ahead with a no-deal Brexit.

It came as Anna Soubry sparked speculation she is preparing to jump ship after removing a Conservative party slogan from her social media profile.

Updated

While much of the focus has been on the Labour party’s travails today, it hasn’t exactly been an easy ride for the prime minister either. As my colleague, Jessica Elgot, reports:

Four cabinet ministers have demanded the prime minister stop using the threat of no deal as a negotiating tactic, telling Theresa May that businesses and manufacturers now needed to be given certainty.

The demand was made in a meeting with the prime minister on Monday by the justice secretary, David Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, the business secretary, Greg Clark, and the Scottish secretary, David Mundell.

The Telegraph’s Steven Swinford goes even further, reporting that a host of ministers is willing to resign over the issue:

It appears that Ruth Smeeth, the Labour MP who’s been heavily critical of the party’s response to claims of antisemitism within its ranks, will not be resigning:

Concerns were expressed that other might, however:

Another MP to attack the party’s record on antisemitism this evening is Stella Creasy:

Updated

Some more information from inside the PLP meeting room:

We’re beginning to get some of the content of that PLP meeting. We’ll bring you more as it happens and, hopefully, a more comprehensive summary once it’s over:

The Labour MP, Chris Bryant, has written an article for the New Statesman explaining why he will not be making the seven into an eight. “You need a team to win a match, a crowd to move a mountain and a movement to change the political weather,” he writes.

Labour has a special role to play at this moment in our nation’s history. We need to make a superhuman effort to be generous, warm and magnanimous, because it’s only if we can widen our appeal, and strengthen our bonds to those outside our party, that we can ever hope to win votes in the Commons at this critical juncture, let alone win a general election. So I’m going to continue seeing Luciana, Chris, Chuka and the rest as allies.

Above all, I feel sad today. It’s not just that we will miss the late Paul Flynn, possibly the most pro-European lefty in the party or in parliament, though we will. It’s not just that it’s never good to lose old comrades. It’s just that I fear chaos on the left always plays into the hands of the right – and the far-right are just waiting to mount their takeover of the Conservatives.

In Westminster, what could turn out to be a lively meeting of the diminished Parliamentary Labour Party is underway:

London’s Ham & High newspaper has an interview with Lord Bill Rodgers, a member of the “gang of four” who resigned from the Labour party to form the SDP in 1981, drawing inevitable comparisons with the actions of those seven MPs today.

He’s told the paper he’s “much impressed by the courage and strength of the new independent Labour MPs”, adding that Brexit was principle among his reasons for supporting their decisions to resign from Labour.

Given my long political life – I campaigned in the 1945 general election when I was sixteen – Parliament is now in chaos and Brexit would be a disaster. Breaking the stalemate is a modest but welcome step towards sanity.

Updated

Away from the Labour news for a moment, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, has said no British troops or officials will be asked to put themselves in harm’s way to rescue any Briton who travelled to Syria to support terrorism.

But Javid has acknowledged his powers to prevent British nationals, such as Shamima Begum, from returning to the UK altogether are severely limited.

Certainly, anyone that went to support terrorism in any way whatsoever, we are not going to risk the lives of any British officials – soldiers or anyone – to help them or rescue them.

Javid said more than 900 people went to Syria or Iraq, adding:

Whatever role they took in the so-called caliphate, they all supported a terrorist organisation and in doing so they have shown they hate our country and the values we stand for.

Now, this so-called caliphate is crumbling, some of them want to return and I have been very clear where I can and where any threat remains I will not hesitate to prevent this.

The powers available to me include banning non-British people from this country and stripping dangerous dual nationals of their British citizenship. Over 100 people have already been deprived in this way.

But we must, of course, observe international law and we cannot do this if it would leave someone stateless – so, where individuals do manage to return they will be questioned, investigated and potentially prosecuted.

Updated

The Tory MP for Grantham and Stamford, Nick Boles – whose relationship to his own local party is under considerably scrutiny at the moment amid anger from activists at his opposition to a no-deal Brexit - has responded to the Labour split.

In his remarks he plays down the possibility of joining them - although he doesn’t definitively rule it out.

“They’re all good people and I understand completely why they felt driven to leave Labour,” he said. “I have not spoken with any of them about their plans and am totally focused on working with MPs of all parties to stop a no-deal Brexit on March 29.”

With the meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party at 6pm, we’ll keep this blog running for a while yet. My colleague Kevin Rawlinson will be taking over shortly. Thanks for all your comments.

Updated

Here’s a little round up of some Guardian commentary on today’s split. The paper’s editorial says the decision by the seven MPs to leave was a mistake, but also acts as a warning that Labour “is in the midst of one of its periodic tacks, to the Corbynite left in this case, which put the broader, long-term coalition of Labour at some risk”.

Guardian commentators, writing here, have pretty differing views, and so do our readers.

The Guardian is running an event in March, ten days before the UK is due to leave the EU, where a panel of pro-Remain politicians, including MPs Owen Smith and Chuka Umunna, discuss what’s next for the 48%. You can find out more about it here –

A leading Labour critic of Jeremy Corbyn, the former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, has said a majority of the party’s Scottish MPs and MSPs now backed a second EU referendum.

Speaking at a People’s Vote press conference in Edinburgh, Dugdale suggested there was deepening opposition among backbenchers to Corbyn’s stance on Brexit, even among those who are otherwise loyal to his leadership.

That extended to Labour MSPs at Holyrood, most of whom now backed a referendum on Brexit, she said. Two Scottish Labour MPs, Ian Murray in Edinburgh South and Martin Whitfield in East Lothian, already back the proposal.

Many Scottish Labour figures believe Corbyn’s pro-Brexit stance will cost the party seats and votes at the next general election, with the Scottish National party the most likely to benefit.

Dugdale said that over the weekend Paul Sweeney, the widely-tipped Labour MP for Glasgow North East and Ged Killen, the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, also supported a second referendum. Killen resigned from his frontbench role as a parliamentary aide last year over Corbyn’s Brexit stance.

That suggests Richard Leonard, Dugdale’s successor as Scottish leader, faces deepening splits on Europe even though no Scottish Labour parliamentarians have so far backed the new breakaway group.

Leonard implied the breakaway group could make it harder for Labour to defeat the Tories. He said in a statement:

When young people are fighting for action on climate change, it is time to come together for the future, not divide. The Tory party’s failed solutions represent a dead end. We must do nothing to let them off the hook.

Dugdale, who resigned as Scottish leader in 2017 partly because of her deep differences with Corbyn, distanced herself from the breakaway group on Monday by insisting she still wanted to see a Labour government. But she added:

I believe there’s a majority of Labour MSPs in the parliament who would back a final say [on Brexit] but crucially over the weekend you saw a big development in the Scottish parliamentary Labour group with Paul Sweeney saying he would back having a final say.

That means a majority of Scottish Labour MPs back it too so the momentum towards a people’s vote is growing in the Labour party and as a consequence I think the likelihood of a people’s vote across the country is also increasing. I have never been more optimistic about a people’s vote taking place than I am today.

Updated

Angela Smith apologises for "funny tinge" comment

Angela Smith has apologised for comments she made during a TV debate about racism.

Appearing on the BBC’s Politics Live programme today, Smith appeared to talk about people being a “funny tinge”. “The recent history of the party I’ve just left suggested it’s not just about being black or a funny tin ... you know, a different... from the BAME community,” she said.

In a video statement, Smith said: “I’ve seen the clip from Politics Live. I’m very sorry about any offence caused and I’m very upset that I misspoke so badly. It’s not what I am. I am committed to fighting racism wherever I find it in our society.”

Updated

Tom Watson: Labour must change to avoid more resignations

Tom Watson responds to Labour resignations.

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has issued a statement on Facebook, saying that the party must change if it wants to avoid more resignations.

He said that there was no time to waste if Labour wanted to stop more people from leaving and that the party needed to be “kinder and gentler”.

“I love this party but sometimes I no longer recognise it,” he said. Watson said he did not regard the seven MPs who resigned as traitors, but thought they had drawn the wrong conclusion to a serious question.

“This is a moment for regret and reflection, not for a mood of anger or a tone of triumph,” he said. “There are those who are already celebrating the departure of colleagues with whom they disagree. The tragedy of the hard left is they they can be too easily tempted into the language of heresy and treachery. Betrayal narratives and shouting insults at the departed might make some feel better briefly, but it does nothing to address the reasons why good colleagues might want to leave.”

Speaking about Luciana Berger’s decision to quit the party, citing the leadership’s failure to do enough to tackle anti-semitism, he said: “I’d like to place on record my complete respect for Luciana and my understanding of the decision to which she has been driven.

“They say antisemitism is a light sleeper and this is certainly a wake-up call for the Labour party. We were slow to acknowledge that we had a problem and even slower to deal with it. Even a single incident of antisemitism in the Labour party shames us and shames us all. Now we’ve lost Luciana, one of our most dedicated and courageous MPs. If someone like her no longer believes there is a role for her in the Labour party then many other colleagues will be asking themselves how they can stay.”

Updated

Some of you who tuned in for this morning’s press conference – in which seven Labour MPs announced they would quit the party – might have heard a surprising commentary. “Between this and Brexit we are actually fucked,” an unknown male voice could be heard saying as the event was broadcast live across the BBC Two and BBC News channels. “It’s going to be so divided … The Conservatives are going to win.”

A BBC spokesperson said: “Due to an error, we inadvertently broadcast some background comments from another microphone during our coverage of the press conference this morning. We apologised on air once we realised our mistake.”

Here’s the full story:

Updated

This is interesting from Guardian media editor Jim Waterson –

Resigned MPs should face byelections, says John McDonnell

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has responded to this morning’s resignations by echoing calls for the seven MPs to stand down and fight byelections. “We should be working together for the long-term interests of the country, so I’m disappointed,” he said.

“But all of these MPs stood on our manifesto in 2017 – Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto. They all increased their majorities. Now they’re on a different platform so the honourable thing, the usual thing for them to do now, is for them to stand down and fight by-elections back in their constituencies.”

Updated

Here’s some non-Labour news from the Guardian’s Brexit correspondent Lisa O’Carroll.

Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, has insisted the country would not be “steamrolled” into giving ground on the border backstop.

After meeting the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on the fringes of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, the tánaiste again rejected any suggestion that the mechanism to ensure a free-flowing border could be altered.

He said the blame for the impasse lay not with Ireland, but with the UK parliament, and the solution lay with the British government.

“The responsibility to resolve this problem in terms of the way forward needs to lie where the problem is, which is in London not Dublin. We would be very foolish if we allowed the onus to solve that problem to switch away from Westminster to Dublin,” he said.

“We have been consistent, we have been fair, we have negotiated as part of an EU team with the British government in good faith and we will continue to do that but we will not be steamrolled in this process.”

He also said Brussels was open to the Labour party’s proposal for permanent membership of the customs union as a means of resolving the border issue.

Updated

George Galloway has written to the Labour party to ask to be readmitted as a member in light of the resignation of seven MPs this morning.

In the video, entitled “Galloway on the Dance of the Seven Veils #SevenDwarfs”, he said “there’s a whole raft of rats about to jump ship”. He accused the seven MPs of “rolling out the poisonous lie” that the Labour leadership is antisemitic, something he described as the “greatest, grossest defamations in all political history”. He said the group had ties to Labour Friends of Israel and were more concerned with criticism of the Israeli government than antisemitism.

Galloway said he hoped his membership would be supported by people who “recognise that I have a big voice and a big reach in British society and indeed further afield and that unlike the seven dwarves who ditched the Labour party today, I believe in Labour”.

I loved the Labour party much more than those who kicked me out of it ever loved it. Indeed, they are the people who almost killed it. Jeremy Corbyn has brought it back to life. So watch this space, there will be others leaving, but – like me – I hope there will be others joining.

Updated

Angela Smith, one of the seven MPs to resign from the Labour party today, has been criticised after appearing to talk about people having a “funny tinge” in a debate about racism. Appearing on the BBC’s Politics Live programme, Smith said: “The recent history of the party I’ve just left suggested it’s not just about being black or a funny tin ... you know, a different ... from the BAME community”.

Updated

Christine Jardine, one of the four Scottish Liberal Democrat MPs who won or regained seats in the 2017 snap election, has refused to rule out a future merger between the Lib Dems and the new breakaway group of former Labour MPs.

There has been growing speculation a new centrist party could soon be formed by the breakaway group coalescing around Chuka Umunna, the Lib Dems and pro-European Tories, funded by powerful donors such as Lord Sainsbury.

Anti-Corbyn figures in Scottish Labour see it as a likely outcome, with the Lib Dems failing to capitalise electorally on the factional conflicts inside the Labour and Tory parties.

Asked at a People’s Vote event in Edinburgh whether she felt there was a case for that merger, Jardine said:

It’s very early days. I recognise it must have been an incredibly difficult decision for everybody who has been in any political party for decades to walk away, and that has to be recognised.

And going forward, if we share common ideals and people find a way to work with them, then what that will be it’s far too early to say but we do welcome working with anyone who shares our ideals and our principles, whether they’re in a new party or the Labour party. So I think at the moment we just have to wait and see where this is going.

Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary, says the seven MPs should call byelections.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, has been speaking to BBC News. He said the seven breakaway MPs should call byelections. “If they regard themselves as democrats, I wonder if they are going to stand down and create byelections,” he said. “A lot of them talked about how proud they are to represent their constituents. Well, if they’re so proud of that why don’t they give their constituents the opportunity to see if they want them elected.”

He said the split had clearly been being planned for a while. “It is what it is. It’s a group of individuals who have decided to go a different path from the platform that they stood on just 18 months ago. There’s a strong whiff of hypocrisy here,” he said.

“They stood as Labour MPs on a platform in the general election 18 months ago. All of them got massive increases in their majorities. I have to tell them it wasn’t because of their own personal charisma. It was because of a manifesto which promised to respect the 2016 referendum and take us out of Europe, so all of their heartbreak sounds a little bit hollow.”

In a statement, Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, said:

I regret that seven MPs have decided they no longer wish to represent their constituencies in parliament as Labour MPs, especially as that was how they were elected. On a Labour ticket at a general election that inspired millions to vote Labour and saw the party increase its vote by the largest share since 1945.

Their decision to walk out into the political wilderness – remember the fate of the SDP? – is sad, but not unexpected. The Labour party’s membership has grown enormously under Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party’s genuinely socialist manifesto was incredibly popular at the last election.

Reaction from Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, the UK’s biggest trade union, struck a very different tone:

Updated

Today’s launch of “the Independent Group” – a group of seven former Labour MPs who will now sit as a separate entity in parliament – has run up against some technical difficulties. The group’s website doesn’t seem to have been working since this morning and now people are pointing out that Chuka Umunna’s website is down too.

Lunchtime summary

  • Seven Labour MPs have resigned from the party over Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, saying they will sit as a new independent group in parliament. The MPs – Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith, Chris Leslie, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey – accused the party of being “institutionally racist” and betraying its members over Brexit. Here is a summary of what we know about “the Independent Group”.
  • Jeremy Corbyn has said he is “disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labour policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945”.
  • Many Labour MPs – from across the various wings of the party – have expressed dismay at the split. Ed Miliband said: “Labour’s values are still my values and a Labour government is the best hope for the country”. The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, has demanded to know if the seven MPs will field candidates in Labour/Tory marginals. The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, retweeted a call for the seven MPs to stand down and call byelections as independents.
  • The final report of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee’s 18-month fake news investigation has accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections. The reports denounces Facebook and its executives as “digital gangsters”. It says the company deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation.

Updated

The seven MPs have started to put their resignation statements on social media.

Here is the Conservative party’s response, via chairman Brandon Lewis, to this morning’s events:

The resignations and speeches today confirm in former Labour MPs’ own words, that the Labour party has changed irreversibly under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour has become the Jeremy Corbyn party – failing to take action on everything from tackling anti-Jewish racism to keeping our country safe.

We must never let him do to our country what he is doing to the Labour party today.

Updated

Here’s a roundup of some Labour reaction to the split announcement.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has written on Facebook that it is a “desperately sad day” for Labour and that he will stick with the party. “These seven MPs are all friends of mine. I served alongside them in parliament,” he wrote.

I agree that the only way through the mess of Brexit is to give the public the final say, and that the Labour party needs to do much more to root out the evil of anti-semitism.

However, history clearly shows that the only way to get real change in our society – whether fighting for a public vote, tackling inequality, or ending austerity – is within the Labour party. When the Labour party splits it only leads to one outcome – a Tory government – and that means a hard Tory Brexit.

The shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, tweeted:

The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, posted on Facebook:

If you criticise or abuse these individuals, if you impugn their motives, and if you encourage any others to join them, you are helping them not hurting them, because you are taking your eyes off the prize and allowing our movement to be distracted and divided, which is exactly what they want.

The only thing that anyone should do in response to the action of these MPs today is to respectfully and politely ask them a simple question: Do they intend to put up candidates in Labour-Tory marginals, and split the Labour vote?

Laura Parker, the national co-ordinator of Momentum, said:

Labour’s common-sense socialism has widespread support amongst the public, has inspired hundreds of thousands to join the party and caused the most spectacular electoral comeback in British history.

Labour now has a plan to rebuild Britain. These MPs want to take us back to the politics of the past. With a back-to-the-Blair-years programme of privatisation, tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of the banks, they offer no concrete solutions, no new ideas and have no support amongst the public.

And Ed Milliband tweeted:

Updated

Ian Murray, the Scottish Labour MP closest to the breakaway group, has warned Jeremy Corbyn he faces a deeper split and further Labour backbench resignations unless he shifts ground on Europe and anti-semitism.

In a statement issued on Monday, Murray, the staunchly anti-Brexit MP for Edinburgh South seen by many as a potential recruit to the new independent party, said:

The current Labour leadership is breaking the broad church that this party once built its electoral success upon – a broad church which delivered Labour governments that lifted millions and millions of people out of poverty.

The challenge now is for Jeremy Corbyn to listen and learn, and decide if he wants to keep the Labour Party together or if he will continue to foster a culture of bullying and intolerance where his own MPs feel unwelcome and are being forced out.

Murray has refused to rule out joining the breakaway group but said at the weekend he wanted Labour to remain a broad church, and wanted to see a Labour government.

Who are the Independent Group?

That’s it from the press conference. Seven MPs have left the Labour party and announced they will form a new independent group in parliament. They said they were disgusted by the party’s handling of anti-semitism and its Brexit policy. People have speculated that this might happen ever since Corbyn’s 2015 leadership win and now it finally has.

The MPs are –

  • Chuka Umunna, MP for Streatham and former shadow business secretary.
  • Luciana Berger, MP for Liverpool Wavertree and former shadow minister for mental health.
  • Gavin Shuker, MP for Luton South and former shadow international development minister.
  • Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge and former shadow deputy leader of the House of Commons.
  • Chris Leslie, MP Nottingham East and former shadow chancellor.
  • Mike Gapes, MP for Ilford South and former chair of the foreign affairs select committee.
  • Ann Coffey, MP for Stockport and former parliamentary private secretary to Alistair Darling when he was chancellor of the exchequer.

The group is not yet a political party, although they said at the press conference earlier that they could develop into one over time. They will have their first formal meeting in the next few days to assign roles and responsibilities.

The group’s website seems to be having teething troubles, so I can’t link to the group’s statement, but here are some key passages.

Labour now pursues policies that would weaken our national security; accepts the narratives of states hostile to our country; has failed to take a lead in addressing the challenge of Brexit and to provide a strong and coherent alternative to the Conservatives’ approach; is passive in circumstances of international humanitarian distress; is hostile to businesses large and small; and threatens to destabilise the British economy in pursuit of ideological objectives.

For a party that once committed to pursue a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect, it has changed beyond recognition. Today, visceral hatreds of other people, views and opinions are common-place in and around the Labour Party.

It is not simply that our values are no longer welcome in the Labour Party; the values we hold mean that, in all conscience, we can have no confidence in the party’s collective leadership, competence or culture.

Values –

Britain works best as a diverse, mixed social market economy, in which well-regulated private enterprise can reward aspiration and drive economic progress and where government has the responsibility to ensure the sound stewardship of taxpayers’ money and a stable, fair and balanced economy;

A strong economy means we can invest in our public services. We believe the collective provision of public services and the NHS can be delivered through government action, improving health and educational life chances, protecting the public, safeguarding the vulnerable, ensuring dignity at every stage of life and placing individuals at the heart of decision-making.

...

The barriers of poverty, prejudice and discrimination facing individuals should be removed and advancement occur on the basis of merit, with inequalities reduced through the extension of opportunity, giving individuals the skills and means to open new doors and fulfil their ambitions.

Individuals are capable of taking responsibility if opportunities are offered to them, everybody can and should make a contribution to society and that contribution should be recognised. Paid work should be secure and pay should be fair.

...

In order to face the challenges and opportunities presented by globalisation, migration and technological advances, we believe the multilateral, international rules-based order must be strengthened and reformed. We believe in maintaining strong alliances with our closest European and international allies on trade, regulation, defence, security and counter-terrorism.

As part of the global community we have a responsibility to future generations to protect our environment, safeguard the planet, plan development sustainably and to act on the urgency of climate change.

Power should be devolved to the most appropriate level, trusting and involving local communities. More powers and representation should be given to local government to act in the best interests of their communities.

Updated

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, who himself left Labour for the SDP in 1982, has tweeted about the split.

Various Labour MPs – from all wings of the party – are responding in dismay to today’s announcement.

The youth wing of the UK Labour Party has tweeted a line from The Red Flag in reaction.

Updated

Luciana Berger is being asked about the antisemitism issue. She says they saw the unprecedented sight of a minority community taking to parliament square to protest against racism in her majesty’s opposition. She talks about the battle to get the party to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Angela Smith says it is incumbent on everyone to acknowledge the problem with antisemitism in the Labour party. She says it is one of the major reasons for their departure.

Updated

Umunna says they whole-heartedly support the People’s Vote campaign. He says it’s “been like getting blood from a stone getting the Labour party to do the right thing by our constituents on this issue”.

Good summary from ITV’s Paul Brand here –

Updated

Chris Leslie says, to people who say “nothing ever changes”, “if you don’t try, you’ll never know”. Umunna adds: “You can’t change the status quo if you rejoin it ... We are saying there needs to be a new offer and a new alternative.” He says they will not be joining the Liberal Democrats.

Updated

The new “Independent Group” has launched its twitter account and a website.

The group’s statement doesn’t seem to be available yet.

Corbyn says he is disappointed by news of the split

Jeremy Corbyn has reacted to the news that seven Labour MPs have decided to leave the party and form a new group in parliament.

Here is the full statement:

I am disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labour policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945.

Labour won people over on a programme for the many not the few – redistributing wealth and power, taking vital resources into public ownership, investing in every region and nation, and tackling climate change.

The Conservative Government is bungling Brexit, while Labour has set out a unifying and credible alternative plan. When millions are facing the misery of Universal Credit, rising crime, homelessness and poverty, now more than ever is the time to bring people together to build a better future for us all.

Updated

Now, the MPs are open for questions. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asks the MPs about the suggestion that them leaving will make a Tory win at the next election more likely.

Mike Gapes says: “This is not the Labour party that I fought against Trotskyists in student politics. This is a Labour party that has changed beyond recognition.” He says it’s about moral integrity and that he has come to his own breaking point.

Angela Smith says that lots of people feel politically homeless at the moment and that they cannot be complicit in this broken politics.

Updated

Chuka Umunna, the MP for Streatham, says the current parties are part of the problem, not the solution. “It is time we dumped this country’s old-fashioned politics,” he says. The UK needs a political party “fit for the here and now” and the “first step in leaving the tribal politics behind”.

“You don’t join a political party to fight the people within it,” he says. The new group will have its first formal meeting in the coming days. Umunna says the bottom line is: “Politics is broken. It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s change it.”

Updated

Ann Coffey, the MP for Stockport, says the Labour party is no longer a broad church. “The current leadership has been very successful at changing the party beyond recognition,” she says. “Loyalty cannot be an end in itself.”

She says the new independent group will work to change a political system in which they feel they have no voice. Coffey remains committed to her constituents: “Our values haven’t changed. My values haven’t changed.”

Mike Gapes, MP for Ilford South, says he is sickened by antisemitism in the party and is furious that the Labour leadership is facilitating Brexit.

“Jeremy Corbyn and those around him are on the wrong side in so many international issues, from Russia, to Syria to Venezuela,” he says.

Updated

Gavin Shuker, the MP for Luton South, says the new independent group “does not think every problem in the world has been created by the west”.

“We back well-regulated business but in return we expect them to provide decent, secure and well-paid jobs,” he says. “These are values that once would have been considered mainstream in our parties of government,.”

Shuker says political parties in the UK are broken and that there is complete absence of leadership at the moment the country needs it most.

“The Labour party has turned its back on the British public, their hopes and ambitions,” he concludes.

Updated

Now Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, says she is from a Labour-supporting, working-class family who were ambitious for her. “Most people are like my family. They do not want to be patronised by leftwing intellectuals who think that being poor and working-class is a state of grace.” She says her decision to resign her membership has been very painful.

Updated

Leslie says it would be irresponsible to allow Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister, which is something other Labour MPs will say privately. He accuses the leadership of having a “narrow and outdated ideology”. “To them, the world divides between oppressor and oppressed, class enemies, when in truth the modern world is more complicated than this.”

Updated

Chris Leslie, MP for Nottingham East, is speaking now. He says it has not been an easy decision and that they have all been MPs for very many years. The Labour party they joined, campaigned for and believed in has been hijacked by the “machine politics of the hard left”, he says.

Luciana Berger says she cannot remain in a party that is “institutionally antisemitic”. She says the leadership has failed to address hatred against Jewish people within its ranks and that she is leaving behind “a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation”. They will publish a full statement setting out their position shortly.

Updated

Seven MPs announce they have resigned from the Labour party

Seven MPs have entered the room. Luciana Berger, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, is speaking. She says they have all resigned from the Labour party this morning and will now sit in parliament as an independent group of MPs.

She says she has become embarrassed and ashamed to be in the Labour party.

Updated

The event in Westminster, where a group of Labour MPs could say they are leaving the party, should begin any minute now. You can watch the live stream of the announcement at the top of this blog.

Today’s Guardian front page, which has been overshadowed by news of a possible Labour split, reveals that the final report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s 18-month fake news investigation has accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections.

The reports denounces Facebook and its executives as “digital gangsters”. It says the company deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation.

“Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day,” warned the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins.

You can read the story here –

The SDP Gang of Four
The original ‘gang of four’ on the steps of the city hall in Perth, where the SDP conference opened. Photograph: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Ima

If a group of Labour MPs do indeed leave the party at this morning’s press conference, it will be the biggest breakaway since four senior Labour figures quit on 26 March 1981 to form the Social Democratic party.

The group, nicknamed “the gang of four”, were MPs David Owen and Bill Rodgers, Roy Jenkins (who left Parliament in 1977 to serve as president of the European commission) and Shirley Williams (who had lost her seat in the 1979 general election). In what became known as the Limehouse Declaration – because it was made from Owen’s house in Limehouse – the group announced they were leaving the party due to its decision to commit to unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community.

Andy Beckett’s piece from 2016 provides some nice historical context for today’s event.

Updated

Journalists are gathering excitedly at County Hall in Westminster for the “announcement by a group of Labour MPs relating to the future of British politics”, and are searching for clues for what is to come later this morning. The event is due to start at 10am.

A number of Labour MPs have tweeting their continued commitment to the party.

ITV News’s political editor Robert Peston has posted on his Facebook page about the expected announcement that a group of Labour MPs will leave the party. He says the mystery is not why they are going – their anger at the leadership’s handling of Brexit and antisemitism is well documented – but why now.

The mystery is why today, rather than in a fortnight or six weeks, when perhaps the UK’s EU destiny will be a bit clearer.

The point is that those running the People’s Vote campaign for a referendum have been desperately trying to persuade Ummuna and Leslie to delay their split - because they think if they were to leave the party now, that would entrench the reluctance of Corbyn and those close to him to back a referendum.

As and when Umunna and co formally leave Labour, the call for a referendum will be closely associated with those who have set themselves up as the enemies of Corbyn and his socialist project. So the referendum-sceptics around Corbyn will tell him that conceding a People’s Vote would be to capitulate to those who want to destroy him.

So the big question for Umunna and the Labour refuseniks today is whether in leaving Labour because they want a referendum they are not in practice undermining the prospect of a referendum.

Updated

Tributes pour in for MP Paul Flynn

Labour MP Paul Flynn has died aged 84.
Labour MP Paul Flynn has died aged 84. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Tributes are pouring in to Paul Flynn, the Labour MP for Newport West, who died yesterday. Flynn, 84, represented his constituency since 1987. He had announced his intention to stand down as an MP in October due to ill health.

His local Labour association announced his death on Twitter on Sunday night: “It’s with great sadness that we let you know that our MP, Paul Flynn, has died today.

“Paul is a hero to many of us in the Newport Labour family and we mourn for his family’s loss. We would ask that the privacy of Paul’s family is respected at this difficult time.”

Jeremy Corbyn tweeted:

The Guardian’s Whitehall Correspondent has tweeted pages from Flynn’s book How to Be an MP:

Updated

Labour MPs set to leave the party

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s politics live blog.

A small group of Labour MPs are expected to announce they will quit the party this morning due to anger over how the party is dealing with Brexit and allegations of antisemitism.

About five MPs are likely to announce their departure, including Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, Luciana Berger and Angela Smith.

Rowena Mason, the Guardian’s deputy political editor, says: “Despite the small number, it would be the biggest split in the party since four senior Labour figures quit in the 1980s to form the Social Democratic party.”

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock told BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour on Sunday: “The talk has been going on so long that I say with great regret that yes, there probably will be some kind of splintering. It just seems to have been in the rumour mill so long that it’s unlikely that wouldn’t be the outcome.”

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said on Sunday that he did not see “any need for anybody to split from the party”, but said Labour would look at a proposal put forward by backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson to back a second Brexit referendum in the next round of Brexit votes on 27 February.

An event due to be held at 10am in Westminster has been described as: “Announcement by a group of Labour MPs relating to the future of British politics.”

I’ll bring you the latest on this story throughout the day.

Updated

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