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Emily Thornberry has broken her silence on the Labour leadership election, giving her backing to Jeremy Corbyn and hitting out at party officials for trying to “put members back in their box”.

The Islington South and Finsbury MP declined to comment on the leadership poll earlier this summer, saying she wanted to focus fully on her role as shadow foreign secretary.

But she has been fiercely critical of an attempt by shadow cabinet colleagues to force Mr Corbyn out by resigning en masse.

However, after returning from holiday this week she gave her views in no uncertain terms in a lengthy post on Facebook addressed to party members in her constituency.

“Having remained tot­ally loyal to the democratically-elected leader of our party since his election, I will stay loyal to Jeremy during the contest that has arisen from that coup, and he will have my vote in this election,” she wrote.

“I have not agreed with everything Jeremy has said and done since becoming Labour leader last year, but where I have had disagreements with him I have always found him and his team willing to get around a table, listen, reflect and discuss a way forward.

“And as long as that is possible, I would never consider walking away from that table.”

The intervention of Ms Thornberry, one of Mr Corbyn’s most senior backers, comes after a string of high-profile Labour figures came out in favour of his challenger, Owen Smith.

A more “fundamental” reason for her support of Mr Corbyn was that the Labour hierarchy and leadership had become “totally detached” from the party membership over the past two decades, she wrote.

“What had begun as the necessary modernisation of the Labour Party in 1994… had become distorted into an agenda where the test of every new policy from the leadership was how much it would antagonise the Labour Party’s core membership.

“When Jeremy stood for the leadership after the disaster of the 2015 election, the difference was palpable. Here finally was a candidate interested in listening to the party’s members, reflecting their views, and promising to represent them.

“As a result, hundreds of thousands more joined, including huge numbers who had left because of Iraq, tuition fees and other issues.

“Here we are now, less than a year after Jeremy’s overwhelming victory, and the party hierarchy – through decisions of the National Executive Committee – is attempting to overturn that result, quash Jeremy’s mandate and put the party’s members back in their box. And they are doing so in the most naked way.”

Ms Thornberry added that she was “disgusted” at the way Labour’s ruling body tried to deny Mr Corbyn a place on the ballot.

She condemned its attempts to restrict the number of new members eligible to vote in the poll. “I do not understand why anyone in the Labour Party would want to turn their back on that membership, in the way that the party hierarchy have tried to do this summer,” she added.

“Instead, it is time to unite as a party… and together take our fight into the only contest that matters: getting this dreadful Tory government out of office.”

Last month, a poll of Labour members in Islington South saw 121 back Mr Corbyn against 54 who supported Mr Smith.