Jeremy Corbyn angered Labour MPs last night when he addressed his parliamentary party for the first time this year but failed to take any questions.
The Labour leader used his appearance to say that he was confident of a good result in forthcoming elections in England, Scotland and Wales. In a sign that his team is preparing for the possibility that he could be the first opposition leader in decades to suffer council losses, he added that the party faced “a big job” before the elections.
However, moderate MPs who had been planning to quiz Mr Corbyn over his leadership stormed out of the meeting after it emerged that he would not be returning after a Commons vote to answer their questions.
His team said that he had been forced to leave the meeting before it finished because of an arranged television interview. They said that he would attend next week’s meeting to take questions from MPs.
There is concern among senior Labour figures over the elections and some were not reassured by Mr Corbyn’s address, in which he said that Labour had done well in recent council by-elections and had slightly closed the big Conservative lead in national opinion polls. One MP said that his speech was “worse than the worst report by the worst councillor”.
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“He said Labour now had more members — but there was no analysis, nothing inspirational,” one MP said. “What a disaster.”
Other MPs were deeply concerned by the presentation on local elections given by Jon Trickett, a shadow cabinet minister. He said that Labour’s key messages would be to tell voters that the party would “stand up for a fairer economy” and “stand up for you”.
One MP said that they were “word for word” the slogans used in Ed Miliband’s election campaign, which “led to one of the worst defeats in our history”.
It is also understood that Mr Trickett told MPs “not to do anything that could damage the party” before the local elections. One muttered: “It’s a bit late for that.”
On Saturday Mr Corbyn infuriated MPs by attending a march opposing Britain’s nuclear weapons system. Many Labour MPs, including Tom Watson, the deputy leader, have said that they were standing by the party’s previous support for renewing the Trident nuclear deterrent.
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It also emerged that Labour will look into claims of smear tactics and bullying in the election of Labour’s top youth representative. Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, a former Labour leader in the Lords, will investigate the election of Jasmin Beckett to the party’s national executive committee at the weekend. It will be part of a wider inquiry investigating allegations of antisemitism in the Oxford University Labour Club.