LABOUR grandee and Blairite Lord Mandelson has accused party leader Jeremy Corbyn of sabotaging the campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
And the head of the official Remain campaign, former Labour election candidate Will Straw, said he felt "let down" by Mr Corbyn's "lukewarm" support in the referendum, complaining that it took six months for him even to secure a meeting with one of the leader's advisers.
Their comments are made in a BBC2 programme on the EU referendum, Brexit - The Battle for Britain - which will be shown tomorrow evening at 9pm.
Following the Leave victory on June 23, Mr Corbyn came under attack from within Labour ranks for what was widely seen as a half-hearted campaign, in which he refused to join politicians from other parties on Britain Stronger In Europe (BSIE) platforms, opting instead to work with the single-party Labour In group. This was also the reason given for the mass defections from the Labour front bench.
Former cabinet minister and European commissioner Lord Mandelson said Remain campaigners were left puzzling over whether the Labour leader - who told a chat show during the campaign that he would only rate the EU seven out of 10 - really wanted Britain to stay in the 28-nation bloc.
He said: "It was very difficult to know what Jeremy Corbyn's motives were. Did he just sort of get out of bed the wrong side every day and not feel (in a) very sort of friendly, happy mood and want to help us?
"Or was there something deeper - did he simply not want to find himself on the same side as the Prime Minister and the Government? Or perhaps he just deep down actually doesn't think we should remain in the European Union? Who knows?"
He added: "We were greatly damaged by Jeremy Corbyn's stance, no doubt at all about that. Not only was he most of the time absent from the battle, but he was holding back the efforts of Alan Johnson and the Labour In campaign. I mean they felt undermined, at times they felt actually their efforts were being sabotaged by Jeremy Corbyn and the people around him."
Straw, who was executive director of the BSIE campaign, told the programme: "With just a couple of weeks to go there were far too many people who didn't know Labour's position on the referendum.
And I think that was because of a lack of concerted campaigning by the leadership over many months leading up to that point ... I felt let down, yes."
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry defended Mr Corbyn's campaign, telling the programme: "I think that all leading members of the Labour Party were out actively campaigning ... and Jeremy played his part in that collective effort by doing a lot of media appearances, by doing a lot of, a lot of meetings up and down the country.
"He played his part and we all played our part in campaigning for that. I think that we are now going through a factious time in the Labour Party, clearly, but I don't think that it's appropriate for people to try to blame one individual."
Lord Mandelson was also critical of David Cameron's handling of the referendum, accusing him of "holding back" the Remain campaign because of his unwillingness to go on the attack against fellow Tories.
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