Jeremy Corbyn is mocked for saying 2019 was ‘quite a year’ for Labour

Jeremy Corbyn has been branded ‘deluded’ for saying it had been ‘quite the year’ for Labour, which he described as ‘the resistance’ to Boris Johnson.

The outgoing party leader used his New Year message to rail against billionaires and to champion the ‘movement’ he built, but failed to address his party’s cataclysmic election defeat.

‘We are the resistance to Boris Johnson,’ he said. ‘We will be campaigning every day. We will be on the front line, both in Parliament and on the streets.’

And he said the party should continue to focus on the NHS, climate change and poverty over the next decade.

Mr Corbyn will stand down by March next year and make way for a new leader, with Rebecca Long Bailey and Keir Starmer said to be in the frame.

But his final end of year message will be seen as extraordinary as it fails to acknowledge Labour’s terrible showing in the election and does not include an apology to the many Labour MPs who lost their seats.

There is also no mention of inclusion after the party’s anti-Semitism scandal – and Mr Corbyn’s failure to deal with it.

In his message Mr Corbyn said: ‘2019 has been quite the year for our country and for our Labour movement. And now we are not just entering a new year but a new decade. And the period ahead could not be more important.

He said the party should continue to focus on the NHS, climate change and poverty

‘It will be crucial if we are to stop irreversible damage being caused by the climate crisis and the particular effects that has on people in the global south; if we are to stop the pain plaguing our country: food banks, poverty and people struggling to get by; if we are to protect our precious NHS.

‘Our movement is very strong. We are half a million people and growing. We are in every region and nation of our country.’

He railed against billionaires and newspaper owners and warned that 2020 will be ‘tough’.

‘We’re not backed by the press barons, by the billionaires or by the millionaires who work for the billionaires. We’re backed by you. We are by the many, for the many.

‘We’re up for the fight, to protect what we hold dear, and to build to win and to transform,’ he said.

Former Labour MP Ian Austin, who stood down at the last election after criticising anti-Semitism within the party, said Mr Corbyn’s message was ‘deluded’.

‘What will it take for Jeremy Corbyn to understand the damage his dreadful leadership has done to the Labour Party and the extent to which he and the party were rejected by the public?

‘Under his leadership the party was poisoned with racism, extremism and intolerance. He ought to be apologising to the Labour supporters he let down and the MPs who lost their seats.’

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘Labour have withdrawn into a virtual chatroom. This leadership election now is in danger of becoming an exercise in virtue signalling to the hard-Left.’