Fury, despair, misery and denial.

These, said Labour veteran Margaret Hodge, were the feelings of parliamentary colleagues as Jeremy Corbyn addressed his despondent comrades and sought to explain Labour’s election rout.

An arch-critic of the party leader, who clashed heavily with him on the issue of anti-Semitism, Dame Margaret claimed the leadership had shown “corporate amnesia” as to why Labour had suffered its worst defeat since 1935.

“On the whole it was fury, despair, miserable and the top table were in total denial,” declared the MP for Barking in Greater London.

Dame Margaret insisted that, at the meeting, “Nobody mentioned Scotland, where we are left with one MP; one MP!”

She added: “There’s fury he didn’t visit the right constituencies. Liz Kendall said they had even run out of stickers. There was fury at the level of organisation.”

Ian Murray, the one Scottish Labour MP whom Dame Margaret had mentioned, emerged from Committee Room 14 in the Commons and confirmed with apparent dismay: “Corbyn didn’t mention Scotland or Wales.”

Inside there were long spells of silence as Mr Corbyn sought to explain how Labour had gone down to its fourth consecutive election defeat. As MPs made their contributions there were sporadic rounds of applause and, occasionally, a raised voice could be heard as a gaggle of journalists strained to hear from the corridor outside.

One backbencher rushed out, rolled his eyes and declared: “Madness, pure madness.”

After 90 minutes with the Labour post-mortem continuing, Rachel Reeves, the MP for Leeds West, emerged to unburden herself, after telling her leader, to applause from colleagues, that the party came across as “economically illiterate”.

She told reporters: “Jeremy can make all the excuses in the world about Brexit, the mainstream media, about people not voting, but the biggest drag on support in this election was him and his leadership.

“And if we want to change the lives of the people we came into politics to serve, then we have to win power and that’s not been possible two times under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. We need radical change, we need a party and a leader that the country can trust, we need economic policies that add up and we need someone who wants to win because they know it’s only through power we can change the lives of people.”

Earlier, Mr Corbyn performed a mea culpa; of sorts.

"I am very sorry for the result for which I take responsibility," he is understood to have the PLP while defending his election policies.

"I will continue to lead the party until a new leader is elected. I want us to have the smoothest possible transition for the sake of the party as a whole and for those Labour mayors and councillors who are up for re-election in May."

Mr Corbyn is believed to have maintained his defence that Brexit was a major reason voters lost their trust in Labour and repeated his criticism of the fourth estate.

"The Tory campaign amplified by most of the media managed to persuade many that only Boris Johnson could 'get Brexit done'. That will soon be exposed for the falsehood it is. We need to go to places where we lost and genuinely listen to what people want and what they believe is possible."

One ally Claudia Webbe, whose selection for the safe seat of Leicester East caused controversy, sparked laughter when she spoke in support of Mr Corbyn, declaring: "We have lots to celebrate."

Outside the meeting, Lloyd Russell-Moyle said Labour MPs' criticism of Mr Corbyn centred on his leadership, his Brexit position and his manifesto for lacking an "overarching narrative".

"Not one person said go right now,” noted the Brighton MP. “They all recognise that he has apologised and that he wants to go as soon as possible and that the duty was to save the party and do it in an orderly way."

But he added: "People were emotional; very emotional."