Lamiat Sabin reports from Parliament

LABOUR put plans to hold a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the back-burner following talks today with other opposition parties, agreeing instead to look at legislative options for stopping a no-deal Brexit.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other opposition leaders agreed to consider new legislation after Labour’s plan to install Mr Corbyn as a caretaker prime minister did not garner enough cross-party support.

They have yet to agree on a methodology for how the legislation will be implemented.

But the leaders agreed to keep a vote of no-confidence in the government as a back-up plan. Labour had repeatedly vowed to table such a vote in the first week of September, on the return of Parliament.

Labour, the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the Independent Group for Change said in a joint statement: “The leaders of the opposition parties held a productive and detailed meeting on stopping a disastrous no-deal exit from the EU.

“Jeremy Corbyn outlined the legal advice he has received from shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti which calls Boris Johnson’s plans to suspend Parliament to force through a no-deal ‘the gravest abuse of power and attack upon UK constitutional principle in living memory’.”

The party leaders have agreed to hold further meetings.

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Robert Griffiths said that most MPs sitting in the meeting in Mr Corbyn’s office had two aims: to stop any kind of Brexit, with or without a deal, and to undermine any prospect of Mr Corbyn becoming prime minister.

“That’s as true of Labour MPs such as Keir Starmer as it is of the Lib Dems and the Welsh and Scottish nationalists,” he said.

Leave Fight Transform spokeswoman Sarah Cundy told the Star that the principal aim of the Lib Dems and pro-Remain MPs is “to block any Left-led Labour government from power.”

She said: “Today is another example of just this.

“We’re disappointed that the Parliamentary Labour Party, all of whom were elected on a manifesto to respect the result of the referendum, is now working with the very people who’ve made it their aim to remove the left from power in the Labour Party. 

“As socialists, we should be refusing to rally behind this undemocratic liberal banner of blocking the referendum result which pushes at every turn to restore Blairite hegemony in the Labour Party.”