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Corbyn Defies Stop The War Dinner Appeal

Tristram Hunt said the anti-war group had been “irresponsible” before and after the vote on Syria air strikes.

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A spokesman for Mr Corbyn confirmed that he planned to go ahead with the engagement. “But he will not accept attempts to portray campaigning, lobbying and protest as somehow beyond the pale”.

The vote laid bare the deepening rift at the heart of Labour. Two MPs have reported death threats to the police.

The Metropolitan Police has launched an investigation.

An anonymous caller is said to have threatened a Doncaster MP’s staff member with abuse over the phone in the run up to the House of Commons vote on airstrikes in Syria.

She met residents on Sunday to explain her stance, and later tweeted: “Thank you Walthamstow for making time for today’s discussion on Syria – really appreciate you all taking time to meet in person!”

However Mr Wrack – a long-time ally of Mr Corbyn whose union recently re-affiliated to Labour – said MPs could not expect to be selected at the age of 25 and then remain “for the next 40 years without having to have some dialogue and debate with the people who put them there”.

Mr Hunt also used his TV appearance to condemn Stop The War’s picketing of Labour Party headquarters.

He told BBC’s Andrew Marr Programme: “They are a really disreputable organisation”.

Alan Johnson, Home Secretary in the last Labour government, said: “I believe that Isil/Daesh must be confronted and destroyed if we are properly to defend our country and our way of life”.

One MP who has received such abuse is Hilary Benn, who made a speech in favour of airstrikes in the House of Commons shortly before the vote. He is entitled to his errors, but Stop the War and others are entitled to peacefully protest against them, and we shall continue to do so’.

“Tristram Hunt’s attack on Stop the War Coalition is unfounded and unjustified”, she said.

“The new leader was also elected with an overwhelming mandate on a political programme that seeks to take the party in a direction that reflects the current views of party members”, he wrote. “It seems to me that every time Jeremy says he wants a gentler, kinder politics we seem to have a swathe of outrage from certain parts of the party”.

And Mr Corbyn’s office defended the organisation’s aims and activities.

“The anti-war movement has been a vital democratic campaign, which organised the biggest demonstrations in British history and has repeatedly called it right over 14 years of disastrous wars in the wider Middle East”, the spokesman said.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, admitted that Mr Corbyn’s election as Labour leader had been a “massive cultural shock” to many MPs, but he insisted “there is no going back”.

“There is so much happening at the moment it is absolutely essential that the Labour Party looks outwards and takes the fight to the Tories”, she told Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics.

Labour has said it will not comment on newspaper reports that Mr Corbyn could seek to stamp his authority on the party after weeks of infighting by changing the make-up of his top team.

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His comments will heighten fears among moderate Labour MPs that they could be targeted for de-selection by Mr Corbyn’s supporters, despite the leader’s insistence that he does not want to see MPs ousted.

Nick Boles MP