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Ex-Labour minster quits party with astonishing attack on the ‘Corbyn Cult’

A former Labour minister has quit the party with a savage attack on the “Corbyn Cult” she claims has taken over the leadership.

Bridget Prentice, who served as a junior minister in the Ministry of Justice under Tony Blair, compared the Labour party to North Korea were “disloyalty to the leader is a criminal offence.”

Prentice, who served as the MP for Lewisham East from 1992 to 2010 before stepping down, declared she was a proud Blairite but the Labour party had now been “destroyed”.

A Labour source dismissed the letter, claiming Prentice was “aggrieved” over not being renoinated as Labour's representative to the Electoral Commission.

Her letter, which she shared on Twitter, stated: “I joined the Labour Party, not a cult. Singing ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ at Glastonbury might be mildly amusing but the inability to countenance any criticism of The Leader is not. Never in my life in the Party has a Leader not been criticised, questions, asked to justify a position – and rightly so. But that’s not allowed under the Corbyn Cult.”

Prentice accused Corbyn of “pandering to the baser view of racists” by backing the end to free movement as she tore into his stance on Brexit.

She wrote: “It’s clear to any objective observer that Jeremy has no wish to remain in Europe; that in his limited thinking, Europe is 'a bad thing', apparently completely ignorant of the benefits it has brought to working people in this country to say nothing of the internationalist outlook any half-decent socialist ought to express.”

Prentice claimed Luciana Berger, who quit Labour earlier this year to form The Independent Group – now Change UK – had been “bullied out of the party by racists and thugs”.

She added: “It is easy to say Jeremy is not racist. But there is the sin of omission. By not standing up to the bullies and the anti-semites, by not standing shoulder to shoulder with comrades who were being vilified and trolled through social media, whose lives were threatened and families under stress, Jeremy showed no leadership.”

A party spokesperson said the claims in her letter were "plainly untrue".

They said: “Labour’s bold and popular policies under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership have changed the political conversation in this country and exposed the devastation caused by the Tories’ austerity agenda.

“Labour achieved the biggest increase in the share of the vote since 1945 in the 2017 General Election and we are now one of the biggest political parties in Europe with an active and diverse membership.

“The Labour Party is absolutely committed to challenging and campaigning against antisemitism in all its forms and wherever it occurs.”