Voters are punishing Labour for its Brexit ‘fudge’, angry MPs warn Corbyn after shock election losses

Big swings from Labour to pro-EU Liberal Democrats and Greens prove need to guarantee new referendum, Labour leader told – but he insists ‘a deal has to be done’

Voters are punishing Labour for its Brexit “fudge”, angry MPs have warned Jeremy Corbyn, after the party was the shock loser from the local elections – urging him to finally guarantee a fresh referendum.

A disastrous night for both big parties saw the Conservatives lose more than 1,200 seats and fresh calls for Theresa May to quit, including from a Tory heckler in Wales, who demanded to know: “Why don’t you go?”

As the Liberal Democrats and independent candidates surged, little more than half of the public backed the Conservatives or Labour – who were tied on just 28 per cent of votes each.

But pro-EU Labour MPs seized on the evidence that their party – even in Leave areas – had lost out to parties demanding a Final Say public vote, as the Greens as well as the Lib Dems were rewarded.

Between them, the two Remain parties claimed more than 850 seats, enjoying big swings from Labour in places including St Helens (18.8 per cent), Barnsley (17.3 per cent), Sunderland (13.4 per cent), Peterborough (6.9 per cent) and Derby (6.2 per cent), an analysis by the People’s Vote campaign found.

“Nye Bevan said it: people who sit in the middle of the road get run over. That is what happened to Labour last night,” said David Lammy, a Labour MP in London.

“We fudged and hedged on a people’s vote, hoping we could string voters along, but the bluff has been called.”

Phil Wilson, a northeast MP, said: “The lesson for Labour is don’t sit on the fence. Show leadership and support a confirmatory ballot.”

Margaret Hodge, another London MP, tweeted: “Election Lesson 1: if you don’t give people something to vote for then they will not vote for you.”

And Owen Smith, a Wales MP and former leadership contender, said: “Our reward for bailing the Tories out on Brexit was to share the losses with them – to Lib Dems, Greens and others who are clear that they oppose Brexit.”

The comment followed an extraordinary TV claim by Barry Gardiner, the shadow business secretary, that Labour was “trying to bail out” the Tories in order to deliver Brexit.

The party lost a famous face when Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick in the Blackadder series, announced he was quitting after 45 years over “duplicity on Brexit”, antisemitism and “because its leadership is complete s***”.

But a defiant Mr Corbyn vowed to continue to seek a Brexit agreement, saying: “A deal has to be done, parliament has got to resolve this issue, I think that is very, very clear.”

Many dismissed the swings to pro-EU parties as a traditional protest, which went to those parties in the absence of the Brexit Party and with Ukip too toxic, or simply not standing.

However, Labour Remainers fear an even worse performance in the European elections in a fortnight, after Mr Corbyn crushed an attempt to commit him to a referendum on any Brexit deal.

Cross-party talks will resume on Tuesday, after the prime minister admitted she was ready to strike a deal with Labour based around a form of customs union.

But the election results also provoked fresh trauma in the Tory party – which has even greater cause to fear the Euro polls, faced with a resurgent Nigel Farage at the head of his new Brexit Party.

In extraordinarily candid comments, Sajid Javid, the home secretary, warned his “divided party” was set to lose power, while foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted to “a slap in the face”.

Brexiteers Priti Patel, Bernard Jenkin and Crispin Blunt repeated their calls for the prime minister to resign, while David Amess – until now a May backer – demanded the party move against her “immediately”.

The Tories lost around 40 councils and suffered in true-blue heartlands in the south, including Chelmsford, Somerset and Ms May’s backyard of Windsor and Maidenhead, where a majority of 38 was slashed to just five.

Speaking at a Tory conference in Wales, the prime minister blamed the Brexit crisis, saying: “There was a simple message from yesterday’s elections to both us and the Labour Party – just get on and deliver Brexit.”

Strikingly, many voters used the elections to physically register their protest at the state of politics, sharing images of voting slips with messages including ‘Get May out’, ‘Brexit betrayal’ and ‘Traitors’ written across them.

Explaining why he spoiled his ballot, one Worcester voter said: “The major parties have been lying for three years straight about Brexit and, in a two-party system, neither of them deserve to be voted for at any level.”

There were huge number of spoiled ballots in Great Yarmouth (968), Swindon (825), Basildon (796), Folkestone and Hythe (637), Tendring (600) and North Norfolk (563).