Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, said his main focus was on safeguarding the jobs of members in the defence industry, as Labour prepares to confront an issue that is splitting the shadow cabinet.
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I have not voted Labour for many a long year, because “new” Labour cheerfully signed us all up to the neo-liberal consensus that thinks regressive taxation measures penalising poor and low-paid workers is the way to go rather than tackling mega-rich institutions and individuals who are tax exempt and tax dodging.
A little later, Labour delegates voted not to debate Trident during the four-day conference in Brighton, southern England.
“We are both very much against mandatory re-selection but unfortunately that decision is made by our party conference”, he told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics.
The review will be announced by shadow cabinet minister Angela Eagle, who chairs Labour’s National Policy Forum, and will also look at the “use of technology” in the policy-making process.
Its commitment to the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, “austerity” economics and welfare will all be up for debate between a parliamentary group which largely describes itself as “moderate” and a membership which overwhelmingly elected an alternative.
“I want us to fulfill our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” Corbyn said Sunday, as Labour’s annual conference opened in the seaside resort of Brighton – with a debate on nuclear weapons scheduled for the first time in many years.
“So to make the centerpiece of your first conference a turn towards unilateralism is a resounding signal to the public that you don’t want to be a party of government“, he said.
“I understand colleagues’ views, I hope to persuade them that a nuclear free world is a good thing”, he told Marr on Sunday morning.
On Trident and abolishing the monarchy, Corbyn spoke of the importance of his party deciding issues – and mocked the idea that two different opinions in one party was always a bad thing – and said that though he was opposed to a hereditary principle in power, he accepted that most people were in favour of the monarchy, and that was fine.
Mr Johnson, who is leading Labour’s campaign to stay in the European Union, added it would be “perverse” to think of any circumstances which would result in Brexit.
“Labour have an opportunity to join a progressive alliance against the immoral, obscene and completely redundant weapons of mass destruction that Westminster continues to dump on the Clyde”.
Mr Corbyn said he was asking a question “from a woman called Marie – “what does the Government intend to do about the chronic lack of affordable housing and the extortionate rents charged by some private sector landlords in this country“?”
Earlier, Mr Corbyn faced criticism from the party’s former interim leader Harriet Harman over his appointment of men to the senior positions of shadow chancellor and shadow home secretary.
He told a fringe meeting: “It’s not plausible for us as an opposition not to have a position on the defence of the realm. We are a team in this and I am going to be working with him to make sure the Labour Party has an election-winning programme in 2020″.
Labour’s overall approach could, potentially, become even more complicated as policy north of the border would be set by the Scottish Labour Party.
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“The danger is we end up with a proxy war between Russian Federation and others in Syria on top of an incredibly unpleasant, nasty civil war within Syria”, he said.
