Joan Ryan Becomes Eighth MP To Quit Labour To Join Independent Group

Ryan will join Luciana Berger, Chuka Ummuna, Chris Leslie, Mike Gapes, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker and Ann Coffey in walking out on Corbyn’s Labour to sit as independent MPs. 

It comes as there remains just 38 days before the UK is due to leave the EU, with scores of Corbyn’s backbenchers demanding a second referendum.

In her press statement, Ryan picked out “courageous” Berger and “stalwart allies such as Tom Watson”, the deputy Labour leader whose response to the initial breakaway on Monday targeted the “tragedy” of the hard left. 

The MP also took aim at Corbyn’s reluctance to condemn Vladimir Putin despite the widespread belief the Russian state was behind the Salisbury poisoning.

Describing Putin as the “head of a country which launched a chemical weapons attack on British soil”, she said “Jeremy Corbyn repeatedly refused to blame the Russian state”. 

Ryan concludes her statement by hitting out at Theresa May’s “crippling hard Brexit” and says: “Jeremy Corbyn and the Stalinist clique that surrounds him offers no real opposition to any of this, instead they are too busy purging their perceived ideological enemies within and obsessing over issues that are of little interest to the British people.” 

HuffPost UK has approached the Labour Party for comment. 

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