During Thursday afternoon’s BBC Politics Live, the Daily Telegraph’s Tim Stanley expressed incredulity at the Shadow Home Secretary’s confession, blasting: “How can she put it like that? She’s a member of the Labour Party! She is a frontbencher, she’s a member of the shadow cabinet!”

Host Jo Coburn weighed in, remarking: “Well, she hasn’t done it easily it sounds like, has she?”

Ms Abbott’s tweet, released earlier on Thursday morning, read: “Like you, I have supported Labour’s Brexit strategy so far.

“But like you, I am beginning to worry.”

Co-panellist Lord Falconer leapt to Ms Abbott’s defence, saying: “We’re in a new era where policy is debated in a very open way.

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“And that’s not just the Labour Party but the whole of parliament appears to be debating policy in a much less rigid way.

“But is she not saying we have got to be sure that we can stop no deal?

“And the whole of this year has been people telling Mrs May ‘you’re just trying to run down the clock’ and it’s all got out of hand because Mrs May is now exiting stage left.

“And two people whose position, Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson, is completely unclear whether they really know what their own position is at the moment…”

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Ms Abbott’s intervention will add to the pressure on the Labour leader to fully embrace a second EU referendum – something he has so far resisted.

It follows a reportedly fractious shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday when Mr Corbyn again delayed a decision on whether the party needed to change course.

Following Labour’s dismal showing in last month’s European elections, deputy leader Tom Watson and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry have both publicly called for the party to come out in favour of another public vote.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, another of Mr Corbyn’s close allies, is also reported to have voiced frustration at the continuing stalemate on the issue.

But with many voters in Labour’s traditional heartlands strongly supporting Brexit, a party source said there were “no easy answers” as to the way forward.

“Jeremy is trying to bring the whole movement together around a common position on this deeply polarising issue,” the source said.

“No-one should pretend there are any easy answers.”

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