Former member of Tony Blair's cabinet accuses senior Labour MPs of behaving "disgracefully" towards Jeremy Corbyn

Clare Short - image Paul Heartfield

A former member of Tony Blair’s cabinet has accused senior Labour MPs of behaving “disgracefully”, following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader.

In an exclusive interview with Holyrood magazine, Clare Short, who was Secretary of State under Tony Blair before resigning over the invasion of Iraq, has warned that Labour faces electoral meltdown in the coming general election, while accusing senior Labour MPs of “flouncing off to the backbenches in a huff” and dividing the party.

Speaking to Mandy Rhodes, Short described Corbyn as “a radical and a critic”, with the former MP putting his election down to dissatisfaction with the new Labour project, along with a sense of entitlement among those challenging for the leadership.

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She said: “People thought the party needed a kick up the pants and Jeremy was the kick up the pants.”

Corbyn won the leadership elections twice, taking 59.5 per cent of first-preference votes in the first round of voting in the 2015 party’s contest, before defeating a challenge from Owen Smith in 2016 by winning 61.8 per cent of the vote.

But Short also warned Corbyn’s history as a “complete oppositionist” limited his ability to affect change.

She told Holyrood: “It’s a problem then when one of them [a radical] becomes a leader because they’ve got no tradition of holding people together or turning radicalism into realisable things.”

Discussing Corbyn’s leadership, Short said: “Honestly, I think he’s coming through better now that we’re in the election campaign but where’s he been for the last couple of years? I don’t think it’s his fault, I think some of the people around him are more sectarian than he is – the old right-left thing, and I think the Parliamentary Labour Party behaved badly, disgracefully, with senior MPs flouncing off to the backbenches in a huff, but from what I understand, his office also behaved badly. The tragedy is that a divided party is always in trouble, we know that.

“I don’t think Jeremy ever thought he’d be in the position he’s in and I think one of the reasons he won the leadership contest is that he came across well in the meetings and the others came across so badly; they were complacent, they were ministers and they thought they were entitled. They were also part of New Labour and people were fed up of New Labour and yet no one was discussing what was wrong with it. People thought the party needed a kick up the pants and Jeremy was the kick up the pants.”

Read the full interview in Holyrood magazine.