Labour MP quits, calls Jeremy Corbyn a security risk

British Labour MP quits the party before letting fly with an extraordinary parting shot at ‘unsafe’ leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Britain's Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn addresses a protest against the UK visit of US President Donald Trump last week.

A British MP who quit Labour this week has said a government led by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would present a security risk to the United Kingdom.

John Woodcock, MP for Barrow and Furness, resigned the party whip on Wednesday in protest at the Labour leadership’s handling of antisemitism. He also heaped censure on what he said was a hard-left takeover of the party.

In an interview with The Times, he predicted that parliamentary colleagues would follow his lead, saying: “I strongly believe that, although I may have been the first [Labour MP] to go, I most certainly will not be the last.”

His harshest criticism was reserved for the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the security implications if they swept to power.

“The Labour Party has been my life, but I think it would put the security of the nation at risk if Jeremy Corbyn were to become prime minister,” he said. He said voting for Labour could mean “handing over the reins of power in this country to two elected people — Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell — and a coterie around those people who could do an incredible amount of damage, within a space of days and weeks, to our security services, to our posture on nuclear deterrents, to the credibility of deployed armed forces, in a way which is to me totally unconscionable.”

Declaring the security of the realm to be the primary responsibility of a government, Mr Woodcock added: “It would make us unsafe to allow those people control of nuclear weapons and our security services.”

He said he trusted Theresa May to protect the nation more than he trusted Mr Corbyn. “I think our response on a key national security issue of Russia’s attack and the threat it is posing has been credible and broadly right from this prime minister. I have no faith that it would be from Jeremy Corbyn,” he said. “You would have nothing like the totally necessary robust response that you had to that use of chemical weapons on our soil.”

Mr Woodcock, 39, raised concerns that the left-wing leadership of Labour believed the West has been a “malign force” in world affairs and accused Mr Corbyn of extending sympathy to “every enemy of the UK and the US”. He said: “The world recoiled in horror when President Trump stood next to Putin and took his side over his own country’s security services … and on current form, it is hard to imagine prime minister Corbyn doing differently, which is a genuinely frightening thing.”

There are “many, many Labour MPs” who shared his misgivings over issues of national security, he claimed.

Mr Woodcock was suspended from Labour in April over claims he sent inappropriate text messages to a former female member of staff between 2014 and 2016, which he denies. He has said he will refer himself to a new parliamentary process for investigating claims of sexual harassment.

In his resignation letter he accused the party of a stitch-up against him and said “the process has been manipulated for factional purposes”.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn suggested earlier this week that Mr Woodcock should stand down as an MP and trigger a by-election.

It was reported that a box of Roses chocolates was left outside his parliamentary office with several cards signed: “Good riddance, from the Hard Left.”

By Lucy Fisher, Chief Political Correspondent, Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson

— The Times