Chuka Umunna only left Labour because ‘he knew he could never be leader’, shadow cabinet member Barry Gardiner says

MP also questions whether antisemitism was ‘sole’ motivation for defectors joining Independent Group

Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner has claimed fellow MP Chuka Umunna only helped to form the Independent Group because “he knew he could never be the leader of the Labour Party”.

The show cabinet member also cast doubt on antisemitism as a primary motivation for most of the defecting Labour MPs.

Several of the eight opposition MPs who announced earlier this week they were joining a new independent collective cited the party’s failure to tackle antisemitic abuse as a key reasons for quitting.

Mr Gardiner said he was “deeply saddened” that one of the MPs, Luciana Berger, felt she had to leave over the harassment she suffered in her constituency.

“I have no time for the others at all, because actually their reasons are varied but different,” he told Sky News’s Ridge on Sunday.

“What I’m clear about is that I don’t believe that [antisemitism] is the sole focus of why they’ve left the Labour Party.”

The MP for Brent North accused Mr Umunna, one of the leading figures in the new collective of breakaway MPs, of being motivated by frustrated personal ambitions inside Labour.

“It was fairly clear to me that in effect the reason he wanted to leave the Labour Party was he knew he could never be the leader of the Labour Party,” he said.

The Labour spokesman also said only a small number of Labour members were guilty of antisemitism.

“We’re talking about a very tiny minority in the party that are causing huge distress by the appalling way in which they are behaving,” said Mr Gardiner.

The frontbencher claimed 61 members of the party had been expelled or had quit in the process of disciplinary investigation into antisemitism over the past 18 months.

“We have changed the way in which we deal with them to deal with them faster, we weren’t dealing with them fast enough,” he added.

Earlier on Sunday, however, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson said the party still had more work to do to stamp out antisemitism and revealed he had passed on 50 cases of abuse to leader Jeremy Corbyn this week alone.

“Jeremy needs to understand that to be in No 10 he needs to change the Labour Party. We have got to eradicate antisemitism, anti-Jewish racism in all its forms.”

“This week I have had 50 complaints of antisemitism from my party colleagues which I shared with Jeremy. I think he needs to take a personal lead on examining those cases and, if necessary, recommend to our NEC what has to be done.”

On Saturday Mr Corbyn denied there was a widespread antisemitism problem in the party and said any “bad behaviour” was dealt with.