A Labour peer has lashed out at Jeremy Corbyn for failing to lead the fight against Brexit - blaming the party's "debilitation" for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.

Lord Liddle, a former special adviser on European matters to Tony Blair, said Mr Corbyn has failed to fight plans for a hard Brexit and instead marched his MPs through the division lobbies to vote for it.

And he hit out at "blue Labour" wings of his party who have called for cuts to immigration, accusing them of betraying Labour's founding fathers by pandering to populism and jingoism.

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Speaking on the second day of the marathon debate on the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill in the Lords, Lord Liddle said: "Today we are debating this miserable measure to trigger the process of detaching the UK from the most successful peace project in world history.

"I hang my head in shame that the leaders of this country, and my party, were not able to win the majority for Remain last June, and it will live with me to my dying day."

He hit out at David Cameron's "miscalculated opportunism" in calling the referendum, but laid much of the blame for the vote last June at the door of his own party.

Lord Liddle said: "But let's be frank, and I do say this with terrible sadness, the debilitation of our own party contributed to Brexit.

"We have a leader who, unlike the vast majority of Labour members including many of those who joined up in order to support him, has never been a European true believer.

"And in the referendum he failed the key test of democratic politics, which is to cut through media cynicism and the mass of seething public discontents with a compelling and positive case for Europe which forced voters to listen.

"And now I see no clarion call for the fight, only a three line whip in the Commons to force Labour MPs to troop through the lobbies alongside a right-wing Tory Government dancing to Iain Duncan Smith's tune."

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His words were met with agreeing murmurs and a shout of "shame" from fellow Labour peers.

Lord Liddle continued: "And this was even on third reading when all our so-called red line amendments had been defeated."

The Labour peer also dismissed "remnants of the 70's hard-left, they are still stuck on socialism in one country" as he hit out at pro-Brexit wings of the party.

He added: "Then of course there are the blue-Labour intellectuals who think that vast cuts in immigration are the way for Labour to reconnect with the working class.

"Their analysis is highly questionable, their policies unimplementable without unacceptable cost."

Such policies contradict the principles which guided Labour's founding fathers, he added.

Lord Liddle said: "Our internationalist forefathers would be shocked by our present state.

"Keir Hardie, who left school at eight, bravely condemned racism in South Africa, backed independence for India, fought to build solidarity with European social democratic parties in the hope of averting the catastrophe of the First World War.

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"He never flinched in the face of the jingoists and the imperialists of the day, many of them of course in the working class electorate.

"And the same could be said of (Ernest) Bevin in opposing Nazism and Munich in the 1930s.

"And I say this, if all Labour leaders of the past had bowed to the needs of populism would the great Labour governments of Harold Wilson with Roy Jenkins as home secretary ever have abolished hanging? Ever have legalised homosexuality? Or ever introduced the first laws on racial equality?

"Labour faces two choices - accept a catastrophic hard Brexit, or expose it for its multiple deceits that it represents and campaign for public opinion to shift before it's too late."