Labour MPs should ready themselves to serve on Jeremy Corbyn's frontbench, says Harriet Harman

The former Labour deputy leader also said Mr Corbyn can 'take credit' for the party's gains at the general election

Harriet Harman with Jeremy Corbyn following the Labour leadership race in 2015 (EPA)

Labour’s former deputy leader, Harriet Harman, has said Jeremy Corbyn can “take credit” for the party’s electoral gains as she urged colleagues to accept any invitations to serve on the leader’s frontbench in the coming days.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Ms Harman, who was also interim leader following Ed Miliband’s general election defeat in 2015, said said she would “expect” Labour MPs to step up the party’s Shadow Cabinet if the opportunity arises.

She also conceded that Mr Corbyn had confounded expectations, adding: “We’ve gained seats under his leadership and he can take the credit from that.” Less than a year ago she accused the Labour leader of attempting to “to take Labour down with him” following the vote of no confidence in Mr Corbyn’s leadership after the EU referendum.

But her comments come ahead of the first meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) on Tuesday following the general election last week when Mr Corbyn’s party won 33 seats across Britain.

John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, said on Monday his close ally Mr Corbyn would “draw on all talents” from the party as he finalises his frontbench but added: “I don’t want to break up that winning team”.

“What a long time in politics a week is,” Ms Harman continued. “The atmosphere in the PLP was morbid before the election: we were expecting the Tories to lay waste to us, and instead it turned around and we come back coherent, united, the atmosphere is verging on one hand relief to jubilant the Tories are in disarray and Jeremy Corbyn has to take credit for that because he was the leader and we’ve gone forward.

Ms Harman, who was first elected to the Commons in 1982, added: “I think he can chose who he wants to have in his Shadow Cabinet and I would expect that anybody he asks in the PLP would be prepared to serve now, because what he’s shown is that he can lead us forward at a time the Conservatives were expecting to make gains.“

“Theresa May has undermined her own authority – we were expecting to go into the abyss and instead she’s fallen into the abyss.”

Labour’s former deputy leader also added on Radio 4 that it would be in the national interest for her party to “stop the pig’s ear of a job that the Tories have been doing” on Britain’s exit from the European Union ahead of the negotiations that are due to begin in less than a week.

Outlining the Labour leadership's Brexit position, she added: “They are all saying the same thing, which is we're out of the EU and we are going to be therefore not in the single market or the customs union but we want to negotiate a deal which gives us red tape-free access, tariff-free access as much as we possibly can, and I think people are trying to find differences, actually, where there aren't any.

“The place where there's differences is on the Conservative side and there is rank uncertainty.