Harriet Harman admits Labour felt like ‘Dignitas waiting room’ before election

HARRIET Harman last night admitted that Labour was like "a Dignitas waiting room" before the General Election.

The Labour veteran said the party was "looking over the cliff edge" because MPs assumed they would lose badly - but now she hails Jeremy Corbyn as the new Tony Blair.

Ms Harman, formerly a critic of Mr Corbyn, confessed she has totally changed her mind about the hard-left leader.

Speaking at the Politics Festival in North London last night, she described the glum tone of MPs' gatherings after Theresa May called the snap election with the Tories 24 points ahead in the polls.

She said: "The parliamentary Labour party was like a crumpled heap.

"Meetings had all the atmosphere of a Dignitas waiting room - we were saying goodbye to each other.

"We were having anxiety problems, we were looking over the cliff edge."

But during the campaign, she added, Mr Corbyn managed to improve his reputation among the public - and smarten up his appearance.

Ms Harman said: "Suddenly he appeared at the debate and he was wearing a dark suit and red tie, not a brown corduroy jacket!"

The Sun first revealed shortly before the election that the Labour leader had been ordered to dress in a more disciplined way by his worried aides.

Ms Harman, the former deputy leader of Labour, told the festival that during the first post-election meeting of MPs she found herself giving Mr Corbyn "a full-throated cheer".

She even compared him to Mr Blair, saying that in the late 90s the ex-PM was "the man of the moment" to defeat the Tories.

Similarly, she continued, "It seems as if Jeremy Corbyn is the man of the moment for getting Labour into power - and I still can't get my head around it."

Recanting her previous opposition to Mr Corbyn, Ms Harman said: "My concern about Jeremy was that he couldn't win for Labour."

And asked if she was still angry at his feeble anti-Brexit campaign, she replied: "I'm not going to say anything even halfway bad about Jeremy Corbyn."

Before the election, she spoke out against the leader saying his reaction to web trolls who harass his critics was "not good enough".

Ms Harman, who has served as MP for Camberwell and Peckham since 1983, claimed that Tory MPs have shown "contempt" for Mrs May since the PM's dismal election showing.

She joked: "The only thing keeping the Tory party together is the fear that if they topple over the edge, we will be on them like a pack of wolves."

Returning to her favourite theme of gender equality in politics, the ex-minister suggested that Labour has a moral duty to pick a woman as the next party leader.

She claimed she has been encouraging high-flying men in the party to aim for deputy leader instead so their female colleagues will have a clear run at the top job when it comes free.

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