She said: “While I voted in support of Jeremy against today’s motion, the result makes it clear that he has lost the confidence of a vast majority of our MPs and so we are unable to be as united and as effective as we need to be for the sake of the nation.
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I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60 per cent of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning”, he stated. “Today’s vote by MPs has no constitutional legitimacy”, he said.
The measure, which passed by a vote of 172-40, with four abstentions, opens the way for a challenge to Corbyn’s leadership.
Labour declined to confirm those numbers but said it had accepted a motion that the party’s lawmakers had no confidence in Mr. Corbyn as leader.
Yet the Labour leader remained defiant, with aides insisting he would not be toppled by the “corridor coup” and challenging rivals to beat him in a formal leadership contest.
If more than two candidates stand, Tory MPs will vote next week to whittle down the field to two nominees, before the new leader is chosen by a postal ballot of party members, who now number around 150,000.
He also suggested that Labour could lose its last seat north of the border if Mr Corbyn remained in his post.
She added: “My primary focus as leader of the Scottish Labour party is on the impact of Brexit on jobs and the Scottish economy, and what support I can offer the Scottish Government on that basis”.
Mr Dromey, who resigned as a shadow home office minister earlier in the week, said in his resignation letter to Mr Corbyn: “I had discussions with the leadership of the two giant Jaguar Land Rover plants in Birmingham – the Jaguar in my constituency, Erdington, and Solihull Land Rover plant, together with some of the main component companies”.
Corbyn said he still has support in the party’s rank and file.
“Jeremy and I were elected leader of the United Kingdom and Scottish parties at similar times with similar mandates”. However, Mr Corbyn was nonplussed by the enormity of the threat to his leadership, with one witness saying “the reaction was absolutely nil”.
The weight of the vote against Corbyn is even higher than some of the rebels had expected, with concerns that those who would like to see a new leader would back him anyway to avoid the ire of their pro-Corbyn constituency activists.
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A spokesman for Corbyn said the party does not comment on internal surveys.
