A group of Labour MPs have announced their split from the party in protest over Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

Former shadow cabinet ministers Chuka Umunna and Chris Leslie will resign the whip, alongside Ann Coffey, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes, Luciana Berger and Gavin Shuker. 

They will now be known as The Independence Group. 

Read more: Who are The Independence Group?

Luciana Berger told how she had become “ashamed and sickened” by the Labour Party, reaching the “sickening conclusion” that Labour is “institutionally anti-Semitic. 

Chris Leslie added: “In all good conscience we can no longer knock on doors supporting a government led by Jeremy Corbyn and the team around him.”

Dudley News:

Gavin Shuker said the Labour party had "turned its back on the British public, their hopes and ambitions."

He said The Independent Group will "back well-regulated business but in return we expect them to provide decent, secure and well-paid jobs".

“These are values that once would have been considered main-stream in our parties of government,” he says. Shuker says political parties in the UK are broken and that there is complete absence of leadership at the moment the country needs it most. “The Labourparty has turned its back on the British public, their hopes and ambitions,” he concludes.

Dudley News:

There has been anger from some pro-EU Labour MPs at Mr Corbyn's refusal to throw the party's weight behind calls for a so-called People's Vote on Brexit.

Mr Corbyn refused to comment as he left his north London home on Monday morning.

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock told BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour on Sunday: "The talk has been going on so long that I say with great regret that, yes, there probably will be some kind of splintering.

"It just seems to have been in the rumour mill so long that it's unlikely that wouldn't be the outcome."

On Sunday morning, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he did not see "any need for anybody to split from the party".

Read more: Ian Murray says Jeremy Corbyn's stance on Brexit pushing pro-Remain Labour MPs 'to the brink'

Mr McDonnell also revealed that Labour would "look at" a proposal put forward by backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson to back a second Brexit referendum in the next round of votes on February 27.

Former Labour vice chairman Michael Dugher said at the weekend that he is intending to leave the party, saying he regards it as "institutionally anti-Semitic".

Mr Dugher, who was elected MP for Barnsley East in 2010 and left Parliament in May 2017, claimed the party he joined nearly three decades ago "no longer exists".

Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the TSSA transport union which backs a second EU referendum, said: "I'd urge anyone in our party thinking of bolting not to do so.

"Brexit, or any other issue, isn't an excuse for breaking away. Labour is the only show in town for creating a fairer Britain.

"Our voters need our MPs to be made of sterner stuff."