Mr McDonnell described rebellious MPs who confronted Mr Corbyn at a meeting on Monday night as acting “like a lynch mob without a rope” and said the Labour leader would not be “bullied” into quitting.
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The majority of Labour’s MPs backed a vote of no confidence in Mr Corbyn on Tuesday in a bid to force him to resign from the post just nine months after he was elected with 60 per cent support.
If she wants to challenge the leader, party rules say she would require the support of at least 20% of their parliamentary colleagues – at current levels, with 229 MPs, that equates to nearly 50 signatures. “Our people need Labor party members, trade unionists and MPs to unite behind my leadership at a critical time for our country”.
As reporters attempted to press Mr Corbyn on the dire position he is facing, Shami Chakrabarti, who carried out the anti-Semitism review, intervened to stop the line of questioning while the leader stood silently. “For heaven’s sake, man, go!”.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said that he believes there will be a leadership election, as he urges calm among the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Labour’s parliamentarians fear the party has little chance of winning a general election that could happen sooner than planned if Corbyn remains at the helm, with some saying he is better suited to protest than government.
Mr Corbyn has been blamed by some supporters for a lacklustre European Union referendum campaign, and there have been mass resignations from his shadow cabinet over the last few days. It also led to the announcement of the resignation of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned extensively for the United Kingdom to stay in the EU.
Mr Corbyn had ignored the criticism of Ms Smeeth during the event, instead focusing on the contents of the review carried out by Shami Chakrabarti.
Earlier on Wednesday, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson said the party risked an “existential crisis” as Corbyn refused to bow to pressure to resign. “I know the honorable gentleman says he put his back into it. All I would say is I would hate to see him when he’s not trying”. “I’ve reluctantly reached the conclusion that his position is untenable”, the former party leader said.
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In unprecedented scenes, UKIP’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, was booed by other MPs at the session, in the wake of a cataclysmic vote which has thrown the markets, and left Britain in what Dutch PM Mark Rutte this week called a collapse “politically, monetarily, constitutionally, and economically”.
