A Labour MP mocked Owen Jones after he revealed he had quit the party in fury at Sir Keir Starmer.
Sir Chris Bryant joked that the Corbynista tearing up his membership card was “almost as shocking” as when Sir Elton John revealed he was gay.
Speaking on BBC Politics Live, the Rhondda MP said: “I was absolutely shocked.
“You could have blown me over with a feather when Owen Jones left the Labour Party.
“It was almost as shocking as when Elton John announced that he was gay.”
Mr Jones used his Guardian column last week to announce he had left Labour.
The left-wing activist claimed the party “won’t even do the bare minimum to improve people’s lives”.
He blamed the ditching of policies Sir Keir promised during his 2020 leadership campaign to replace Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Jones said: “My decision isn’t based on a desire to see Labour forever in the wilderness.
“Reaching it has been a gradual, painful process of realising the party won’t even do the bare minimum to improve people’s lives, or to tackle the crises that have led Britain to catastrophe; and that it will, in fact, wage war on anyone who wants to do either – making anyone with politics to the left of Peter Mandelson feel like a pariah on borrowed time.”
Mr Jones said the premise of Sir Keir’s leadership bid “was that popular policies such as taxing the rich to invest in public services, scrapping tuition fees and promoting public ownership were not to blame for the party’s 2019 electoral rout”.
But he added: “Yet five years on, Labour has become a hostile environment for anyone believing in the very policies Starmer relied upon to secure the leadership.”
Mr Jones also criticised Sir Keir’s position on the Gaza conflict and his refusal to restore the whip to Diane Abbott.
