MPs fear Labour has been taken over so completely by the hard left it cannot return to sanity

There was something particularly moving — and shocking — about watching the heavily pregnant Jewish MP Luciana Berger announce that she was leaving Labour because she was “embarrassed and ashamed” to be a member of a party that she had concluded was “institutionally antisemitic”.

This brave politician has been the subject of appalling abuse from the hard left, culminating in the attempt to deselect her weeks before giving birth. Labour is supposed to be the party of equality, fairness and human rights yet one of its most high-profile Jewish women has been hounded out by racists and the leader and his supporters do not care. As she sat down after her calm, dignified statement, the Corbynistas at Young Labour tweeted: “Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the red flag flying here.”

Yesterday’s announcement by seven MPs that they have quit the Labour Party to form a new independent grouping is the start of something much bigger at Westminster because it is not just about policies, it is about values and culture. The truth is that many other MPs agree wholeheartedly with Chris Leslie that “the Labour Party we joined is no longer today’s Labour Party” and that it would be “irresponsible” to allow Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister. Although they are not yet ready to resign the whip, a large chunk of the parliamentary Labour Party share Mike Gapes’s view that the Labour leader would pose a “threat to national security and international alliances” if he got to No 10 and sympathise with Ann Coffey’s frustration that “any criticism of the leadership is met with abuse and accusations of treachery”.

Indeed Peter Kyle, the Hove MP who has himself been the subject of a deselection campaign by the left-wing pressure group Momentum, was visibly shaken as he watched the press conference live on Sky. “These are my friends,” he said afterwards, insisting that those who remained in the party had serious questions to answer. “A Jewish woman has been bullied out of the Labour Party — what side of that line do you stand on?” Another former minister told me that, while he was not quitting, it was completely “understandable” that his colleagues had run out of patience. “There are far more people who are unhappy with the culture of the Labour Party, which has become a very unwelcoming place for moderates since Jeremy Corbyn took over,” he said. “If they don’t completely change their approach and make clear it’s a broad church, stop the sanctioned cruelty and deselection threats then others will also conclude that it’s time to leave.”

Opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves his house in north London.

I am told that as many as 50 other Labour MPs are considering their positions and could be prepared to resign the party whip once the Brexit issue has been resolved. One senior figure describes yesterday as “wave one” of the rebellion with a much bigger “wave two” to come if Mr Corbyn does not shift his position and approach. Some hope that Tom Watson, the party’s elected deputy leader, could become the most senior member of a breakaway block of MPs, sitting separately from the Corbynites in the Commons. Yesterday he described the decision by the seven to quit as “premature” but he conspicuously refused to criticise them. Instead he condemned leftwingers who were using the language of “heresy and treachery” and attacked the “virulent form of identity politics” that had seized Labour. “I love this party, but sometimes I no longer recognise it,” he said.

The Labour leader’s refusal to take a clear stand on Europe, combined with his failure to tackle antisemitism, have created an intense sense of frustration and a growing number of MPs now fear that the party has been taken over so completely by the hard left that it cannot be returned to sanity. Lord Mandelson, the former cabinet minister, says the situation is worse for the party than it was in the 1980s, when Labour was gripped by the Militant tendency and the Gang of Four broke away to form the SDP.

“When the leadership, the organisation and the machine and no doubt in due course the rules are all moving in one direction, is it saveable? I hope it is.” But with many Labour MPs sharing their analysis, the quitters have “put a hole in the dam”, he told me. “The question is will it spread or will it be contained? A lot of that now is down to Jeremy Corbyn and the leadership and how they react. If they take a narrow, sectarian attitude rather than understand why it has happened the hole in the dam will get bigger.”

The SDP is always held up as an example of failure but it was the catalyst for change in the Labour Party, forcing it back to the centre ground. In any case, the situation is different now at Westminster because the Conservative Party has also been taken over by extremists.

Moderate MPs such as Nick Boles and Anna Soubry have been targeted for deselection by local parties that have been infiltrated by former Ukip members, just as Labour has been flooded by Momentum supporters. With uncanny symmetry, the centrists are described as “traitors” by the zealots on left and right and if a hardline Brexiteer becomes leader at least a dozen MPs would quit. “You have already seen one great party taken over by a sect and destroyed. I worry that the Conservative Party is on the brink,” says Mr Boles, who admits he feels closer politically to Labour politicians including Yvette Cooper than Tory rightwingers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Luciana Berger speaks during a press conference to announce the new political party, The Independent Group, in London,

The independents who left Labour yesterday could soon be joined by Conservatives who feel equally uncomfortable in their party — and possibly also Liberal Democrats if they are willing to relinquish their tainted brand. “The SDP was Labour mark two but what makes this new and different is that it is a cross-party liberal progressive alliance,” says one of those involved in the independent group. A Tory MP confirms that discussions are taking place across party lines, explaining: “The main parties are not representing millions of people. Something has to change. We can’t go on like this.”

The political Rubik’s Cube has been scrambled by Brexit and now red, blue, yellow and green are all muddled up. At Westminster, the party whipping system is all but defunct as Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs form alliances to defeat the government. With cultural and generational differences becoming more important than the old left-right divides, the traditional parties look increasingly obsolete.

According to a recent YouGov poll, 68 per cent of voters say that none of the mainstream parties represents them. Chuka Umunna’s promise to leave the “old tribal politics” behind will appeal to many who want something different. In these uncertain times, one thing is clear: there is a gap in the political market on the centre ground. The new independent group of MPs is the first step towards it being filled.

The Times