British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday told the leader of the main Opposition Labour party Jeremy Corbyn, who is facing a revolt from MPs, to step down in the national interest.
“It might be in my party’s interests for him to sit there, it’s not in the national interests and I would say, for heaven’s sake man, go,” Mr. Cameron said to Mr. Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions in Britain’s Parliament.
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Labour MPs voted against Mr. Corbyn in a no-confidence motion on Tuesday by 172 to 40 after dozens of members of his frontbench team stepped down in recent days.
But Mr. Corbyn has refused to go. “I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60 per cent of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning,” he said after the no-trust vote was passed.
Centrists have criticised the veteran socialist’s leadership for months but the row came to a head when he was accused of not campaigning enough in Britain’s EU referendum, which delivered a shock ‘Leave’ result last week.
Mr. Corbyn was elected Labour leader last year on a wave of support from grassroots Labour members but has struggled to build broad support among MPs.
Mr. Cameron has said he will step down in the wake of the referendum.
Piketty resigns Meanwhile, French economist Thomas Piketty has quit as an adviser to Mr. Corbyn after what he described as the Labour leader’s “weak campaign” for Britain to remain in the EU, The Guardian reported.
Mr. Piketty, whose book Capital , documenting rising inequality, became a bestseller in 2013, told Sky News that he was “deeply concerned with the Brexit vote and with the very weak campaign of Labour”.
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