Labour council group leader quits and tells MPs to form breakaway party

A long-serving Labour councillor said he would be “morally obliged to campaign against any government that had Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in it”

John Ferrett criticised the party as ‘a protest movement that has no interest in winning power’

The leader of Portsmouth City Council’s Labour group has resigned from the party and called on Labour’s moderate MPs to form a new party that “provides a reasoned social democratic alternative” to the Conservatives.

John Ferrett, who has been a member of the party for 27 years, said the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn had “destroyed the chances of the party ever governing again.”

Mr Ferrett stood as a parliamentary candidate in the 2010 and 2015 elections. In an explosive resignation letter, he said under Mr Corbyn the party had become a “protest movement that has no interest in winning power”.

He added: “Since the disastrous decision of MPs to nominate Corbyn even though they did not support him, the party has been plunged in to an internecine conflict that I believe has destroyed the chances of the party ever governing again.

“Moreover, I cannot advocate to voters that they elect a Labour Government with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm. Indeed, l would be morally obliged to campaign against any administration that included Corbyn and John McDonnell, given my belief that they would seriously imperil our nation’s national security if ever given the reins of power.

“Finally, I call on the PLP and all moderates within the Labour Party to work together to create a new political party that places our nation’s security as its number one priority and provides a reasoned social democratic alternative to the current Conservative Government.”

Labour controlled Portsmouth City Council in the late 1990s, but Mr Ferrett had led a group that had fallen to just three by the elections of 2014.

Mr Ferrett said he made the decision to resign “with a heavy heart”.

“Labour traditionally has had fairly strong base in Portsmouth but the last five years, even under Ed Miliband, it’s been really really hard to establish Labour as a credible party and now under Jeremy Corbyn we’d find it almost impossible to win in places like Portsmouth,” he said.