Ian Austin's exit shows Labour's woes are a lot bigger than Brexit
The MP represents exactly the sort of Leave-supporting seat the party is desperate to keep, writes Sky's Tamara Cohen.
Friday 22 February 2019 14:33, UK
Another one bites the dust, as Ian Austin, Gordon Brown's one-time adviser and fixer, has announced he is leaving the Labour party after 35 years.
Mr Austin's departure is hardly a shock in the sense that he is one of Jeremy Corbyn's most vociferous critics, particularly on antisemitism.
He told his local paper he is "ashamed" of the party's descent into "a culture of extremism, antisemitism and intolerance driving out good MPs and decent people who have committed their life to mainstream politics".
The MP has been open about how his politics were shaped by the experiences of his adoptive father, who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovkia for Britain as a 10-year-old as the Nazis marched in, and would never see his family again.
Jeremy Corbyn, Mr Austin says, has "spent his entire political career working with and supporting all sorts of extremists, and in some cases terrorists and antisemites."
He adds: "I always thought he was unfit to lead the Labour party and I certainly think he's unfit to lead our country."
The MP's battles with the leadership are well-documented, and reached their height last year when Mr Austin was investigated by the party for allegedly abusive behaviour following a antisemitism row, a probe which was later dropped.
But while he has made clear he agrees with plenty of what his ex-Labour colleagues said at the launch of their independent group on Monday about Jeremy Corbyn and his record, he is not joining their group.
Representing Dudley North, which voted by more than 70% to leave the EU, he was one of just three Labour MPs who voted for Theresa May's much-maligned withdrawal agreement and says many of his constituents supported his decision.
He wants to deliver Brexit, and that puts him at odds with the eight Labour and three Conservative MPs who have left their parties earlier this week, all of whom are pushing for a second referendum with the hope Britain will remain in the EU.
The MP insists he hasn't spoken to the other splitters - although some have offered their public support for his decision - but has ploughed his own furrow.
Going it alone allows him to avoid the charge, levelled by the leadership, that the rebels are collaborating with Conservatives MPs who imposed austerity.
In a letter to his constituents, he says he will carrying on fighting for his constituency which has been "hit hard by a decade of cutbacks" which have fuelled homelessness, cut police numbers and put pressure on the NHS.
His departure will cement the view that this week's breakaway, for all the other genuine and keenly-felt reasons behind it is, at least for now, a Remain bastion which is likely to subsume or work as a bloc with the struggling Liberal Democrats.
A Labour spokesperson said the party regrets Mr Austin's decision to leave and encouraged him to call a by-election in the constituency, which he clung on to in 2017 with a wafer-thin majority of just 22 votes over the Conservatives.
While his departure allows those loyal to the Labour leader to crow that the independents have already become an infighting People's Front of Judea, the fact is that Labour would have a run for their money in any by-election there, even if he stood down.
Austin was elected in 2005 to the seat, which has been Labour's since its creation in 1997, but concerns about immigration and under-investment have fuelled a significant UKIP vote in recent years.
The great irony of his departure is that the reason the Labour leadership is unwilling to go all out for a second referendum is because of fears they will alienate voters in formerly safe seats which backed Leave.
Seats just like Ian Austin's.
Labour's fragile coalition on Brexit is already barely holding together.
The 2017 election may have papered over other cracks, but Mr Austin's departure, because he cannot in all conscience support Jeremy Corbyn, shows that its woes run far deeper than that.