LABOUR has been accused of embracing Ukip, as splits over Europe threaten to tear apart the fragile post election truce between Jeremy Corbyn and his MPs.

Corbyn was criticised on Sunday after he blamed EU workers for destroying conditions in the UK.

The Labour leader told Andrew Marr “What there wouldn’t be is the wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe in order to destroy conditions, particularly in the construction industry.”

On Monday Mark Lazarowicz, former Edinburgh North and Leith Labour MP said he was shocked by Corbyn’s Nigel Farage like comments.

READ MORE: The National View: Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-immigration rhetoric shames Labour

“Shocked at this language from Jeremy Corbyn. Comments about Central European migrants could have been made by Ukip.“ Anton Muscatelli, the principal of Glasgow University, said on Twitter that the remarks were wrong, and pointed to research by the Centre for Economic Research which showed there was no evidence for immigration reducing the pay and condition of UK born workers.

That report showed that the areas of the UK with large increases in EU immigration did not suffer greater falls in the jobs and pay and that the big falls in wages after 2008 were due to the global financial crisis and a weak economic recovery.

Meanwhile, the chaos over the party’s position on membership of the single market and the customs union continues.

During the election Labour made no explicit commitment to staying or leaving the single market or customs union.

But on the Marr show on Sunday Corbyn said Labour would take Britain out of the single market.

On Monday Barry Gardiner, his international trade spokesman said a Labour government would also take the UK out of the customs union.

Labour’s leader in Wales, Carwyn Jones criticised Corbyn’s position on the single market.

He was joined yesterday by Labour MP Heidi Alexander, who said Gardiner’s arguments for taking the UK out of the EU single market and customs union “could have come straight out of Tory central office”.

She argued that Labour’s current position would hurt low and middle-income earners hit by longer hours and squeezed household budgets.

While Alexander and Jones represent a bloc in the party increasingly coming round to the idea of the UK remaining in the EEA like Norway, SNP MSP Joan McAlpine said it still wasn’t clear what Kezia Dugdale and Scottish Labour’s position was on the single market or customs union.

McAlpine said: “There is no majority in the House of Commons for the Tories’ extreme Brexit without Labour’s support – Labour can help stop it, but instead they are arguing themselves into supporting a harder Brexit than the Tories.

“We’ve already seen people like Ruth Davidson and David Mundell capitulate to the hard Brexiteers within the Tory party – and with a battle clearly going on in the Labour party, Kezia Dudgale must speak out in favour of the jobs-first Brexit she claims to support. It would be an abdication of leadership not to do so.”

A Scottish Labour spokesperson said: “Joan McAlpine’s obsession with Labour is becoming embarrassing.

“Kezia Dugdale has been clear that Labour supports a jobs-first Brexit, with tariff-free access to the single market for the UK.

“The priority for Labour is jobs and the economy. Sadly, the priority for the SNP is picking a fight with Labour rather than fighting for the best deal for the UK.”

Europe is the poison coursing through the Tory party’s veins,” one minister says. “We can’t have a leadership election until Brexit is resolved because it would turn into a battle about this toxic subject and that would destroy us.”

In a series of revealing interviews with a newspaper senior figures in the Tory Government have anonymously shared their fears over the future.

One senior pro-European minister said: “This row is about the future versus the past. The Brexiteers somehow think we are going to go sailing off into some glorious imperial world without realising that in the modern age we are interdependent.”

“We are stuck in a ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’ bind. If we try to cancel exit we destroy ourselves; if we go ahead with it we destroy the country. People voted for a fantasy”.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump talked up the prospects of a “very big and exciting” post-Brexit trade.

He tweeted: “Working on major Trade Deal with the United Kingdom. Could be very big & exciting. JOBS! The E.U. is very protectionist with the U.S. STOP!”

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the the US President’s comments showed there was “a big world for the UK outside the EU”.