Michael Dugher: 'A remarkable achievement' for Jeremy Corbyn to be doing so badly

The outgoing Barnsley East MP said he had learned about socialism growing up in a pit village during the strike, not an 'expensive private school'

Mr Dugher said Jeremy Corbyn had 'learned about socialism in an expensive private school' (Justin Sutcliffe)

Outgoing Labour MP Michael Dugher has said Jeremy Corbyn has set the Labour Party back on every issue, with every demographic and in every region of the country, describing these various phenomena together as a "remarkable achievement."

"It is a remarkable achievement for the leadership to have taken a catastrophic situation in Scotland and made it quite a lot worse,” the outgoing MP for Barnsley East said in an interview with the New Statesman. "We seem to be doing worse in Wales ... We’ve gone backwards amongst every demographic, every region of the country. Jeremy is behind Theresa May on managing the NHS! It’s quite a special achievement to put all of that together in a short period of time. Hats off to Jeremy and Seumas [Milne], Diane [Abbott] and John [McDonnell]. That’s pretty special."

Mr Dugher, said the last two years had been "thoroughly miserable."

"Opposition is always really, really hard,” he said. “People who like opposition and skip into the chamber every day, I kind of wonder whether all the lights are on ... The only point of being in opposition is to try and get into government."

Mr Dugher, who comes from a working class background in Doncaster, added: “Unlike Jeremy and Seumas and others, who have no idea about government, who learned about socialism in expensive private schools, my politics was because of where I was from. I was born into the politics of Labour because I grew up in a pit village in the strike ... There was a lot of poverty when I was a child, I have very strong memories of that. That’s made me who I am and that’s why representing that working class constituency, ex-pit villages, I’m really proud of that.”