Jeremy Corbyn is to face a leadership challenge as early as this weekend after
furious Labour MPs blamed him for Brexit, HuffPost UK has been told.
The Labour leader is held responsible by many of his own party in Parliament for the huge vote in working class areas that took the UK out of the EU.
One senior Labour backbencher told HuffPost UK that the required 51 MPs and MEPs needed to back a new leadership contender were already ‘in the bag’.
Under the plan, once the individual letters are sent to party general secretary Iain McNicol, the party will then stage a special conference and ballot timed to have a new leader in place by September.
“We cannot go into this election with this bloke. All his comments about free movement in Europe showed a complete lack of understanding of the electorate and it was an incompetent campaign,” the MP said.
“There will be a new Tory leader by the autumn and the best guess is there may be a new Labour leader too.”
There are no plans for a single letter with 51 signatures, but rather individual letters sent in to McNicol - a move that formally triggers a leadership election.
However, veteran MPs Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey have now submitted a separate letter to the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) chairman John Cryer, calling for a ‘motion of no confidence’ in Corbyn at Monday’s meeting in the Commons.
The motion would be followed by a ballot of the PLP on Tuesday, to give a symbolic show of collective criticism with the leadership.