Corbyn resignation: Labour to make ‘appropriate decisions’ about leader after crushing election loss, McDonnell says

Exit poll suggests opposition are on course for a historically poor result

Labour will take “appropriate decisions” with regards to the party leadership if the election results are as bad as the exit poll suggest, Jeremy Corbyn’s chief lieutenant has suggested.

In the minutes following the news that the Conservatives look on course for a large majority, John McDonnell told the BBC that the results would be “extremely disappointing”.

Asked whether Mr Corbyn would resign, Mr McDonnell said: “We’ll see the results in the morning and then decisions will be made, I’m sure then. Let’s see the results. We’ll make the appropriate decisions. We’ll always make the decisions in the best interests of our party.”

Meanwhile Jon Lansman, the founder of left-wing group Momentum, commented "Jeremy will have to make those decisions himself. Jeremy has always been a reluctant leader." He added that the decision did not need to be taken “until the New Year”.

Mr Corbyn is likely to come under pressure to quit in the coming days if the results of the exit poll are borne out. As the votes were counted, one Labour's, Siobhain McDonagh, said the result was "one mans fault" – that of the Labour leader.

Mr McDonnell blamed the apparent poor result on the campaign’s focus on Brexit dividing the party's coalition of voters.

“I hate to use the expression, I think people probably did want to ‘get it done’,” he admitted, calling back to the Tory campaign slogan.

But he issued a warning to voters: “Let me be clear: I’m not sure Brexit will be done as a result of this. I think what will happen is that people almost in despair wanted to get Brexit over and done with because they’ve had enough of what’s going on ... I think people on all sides were just frustrated and wanted Brexit out of the way. But the disappointment that they’ll find is that Brexit isn’t going to go away. What will happen is that there’ll be negotiations for a long time.”

Labour's Gareth Snell, who is expected to lose his Stoke seat added: "It would be remiss of me not to mention that Jeremy Corbyn has come up on the doorsteps. Some people really like him. Some people really dislike him, and that has been a turnoff.

"But John [McDonnell] is right to say that it’s Brexit. The Labour party had a choice when Theresa May presented her deal. We could either have stopped the Tories or we could have stopped Brexit. And unfortunately some of the siren voices in the shadow cabinet who have big Liberal Democrat votes in their London seats decided that stopping Brexit, and therefore lining themselves up for future leadership bids, was much more important than respecting the votes in marginal constituencies in the midlands and in the north west and the north east. And they’ve sacrificed us for whatever political ambitions they want to do next."

Others disagreed. In a tweet, Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw said that his local party had gathered data and that "among every voting group the overwhelming negative for us was the leadership, not Brexit".

On the overall scale of the apparent defeat, Mr McDonnell said: “If it is anywhere near this this will be extremely disappointing for the party overall and for our movement, yes it will. I thought it would be closer, I think most people thought the polls were narrowing. We knew it would be tough because Brexit has dominated this election,” he said.

“I think Brexit has dominated everything by the looks of it. We thought other issues could cut through and there could be a wider debate. From this evidence they clearly didn’t.”

Defending Mr Corbyn’s leadership, he added: “There were issues raised because of the media campaign against him [Corbyn] of course there were, but as we moved through the campaign we saw that actually his polling ratings began to rise quite well.”

He rejected the idea that voters were put off by Labour’s radical manifesto, telling the broadcaster: “I would dispute that – what’s clearly come through I think, these results, is that this was the Brexit election.”