Jeremy Corbyn should remain as leader if Labour loses to 'stabilise' party, says Clive Lewis

The former shadow Business Secretary declines to say whether he could see himself as the next leader

Mr Lewis said in the event of a Labour loss the leader should avoid immediately standing down in order to maintain stability (Rex)

Jeremy Corbyn should remain leader of the Labour Party “whatever happens” in the general election, according to Clive Lewis, a former member of his shadow cabinet.

In the event of a Labour loss Mr Corbyn should avoid immediately standing down in order to maintain stability, he said.

However, Mr Lewis indicated however that Mr Corbyn should ultimately pass on the leadership, saying he should hand down the party “in good order”.

“One of the things we've learnt after Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown is that when leaders of the party leave immediately after it can be quite destabilising,” said the former shadow Business Secretary.

“So I think there's an argument that whatever happens, Jeremy Corbyn stays on and makes sure that he hands the Labour Party on in good order.”

Asked if he could see himself as party leader in the future, he declined to answer.

Mr Lewis stood down from the party's frontbench in February, following its decision to trigger Article 50.

He denied his support for the Progressive Alliance, a campaign group which is spearheading a tactical voting movement towards cross-party alliances, was an act of defiance, despite the Labour Party's refusal to cooperate with it.

Speaking at a rally organised by the group earlier this week, he said: “It's not an act of defiance. It's about understanding that there are lots of people, hundreds and thousands of people, who actually want to see politics done differently. Jeremy Corbin came in on a platform of doing politics differently.

“This is about doing politics differently in a constructive way and I think that's a good thing. It's about people working together for the common good and for better politics in this country, reaching out to millions of people who feel disenfranchised with politics in our country. And I don't anyone should really have a problem with that.”

Mr Lewis, who is defending a majority of more than 8,000 in his Norwich South seat, said Labour must work alongside other parties to "speak to many parts of the electorate", he added.

“What we're seeing now is that the electorate has changed. It's no longer the same electorate it was in 1945. There are no longer four million manual workers, a million coal miners. And now many parties speak to many different parts of the electorate,” he said.

“You can either say we are the wave of light and we will absorb all of them or you can actually say well we want to be a strong Labour Party. We understand that we're perhaps the biggest tent but on a campsite of others, because what we have st the moment is a electoral system that is shoehorning a multi-party system into a two-party electoral system.

“And that's wrong. We can see that politics is broken, and I think Brexit is a symptom of that. And I think people want to see a change and this is part of that.”

He later told the near 1,000 strong crowd: “I’m proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone from any party who shares my values.

“To my friends and comrades in the Labour Party, I urge you to be true to our history - we must embrace a readiness to cooperate.

On the prospects for future collaboration between progressive forces, Mr Lewis added: “The future is not inevitable, the future is what we collectively make it. We have fought and overcome bigger obstacles in our history.

“But we are only strong when we stand together and offer a vision that says we stand for something bigger, something bolder, something better.

“When we acknowledge our collective potential to not just be less bad than our potential opponents but when we offer something materially different and better we know that we are on the right path.”