ITV’s political editor Robert Peston says: “Watson’s leadership-election reform proposals are not yet another attempt to unseat Corbyn”.
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He said: “It’s presented as apparently being a sort of conciliatory gesture by Jeremy”.
But Mr Smith has dismissed the idea of involving members, who overwhelmingly support Mr Corbyn, as an attempt to shore up the leader’s position, while former frontbenchers such as Chris Bryant and Liz Kendall have expressed concerns.
He also said Corbyn was entitled to remove him as chairman of the party if he so wished.
Blaydon MP Dave Anderson MP, who is shadow Northern Ireland Secretary and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, added: “It is one of a number of proposals going to the National Executive Committee this week and they will decide whether to take them to conference next week”.
The NEC failed to come to a compromise after eight hours of tense talks, and further negotiations will now take place at the party’s conference, which starts on Saturday.
As part of his reconciliation efforts, the Labour leader has said he is willing to restore elections to the shadow cabinet.
He said the party’s MPs were the “heart of the Labour party” and should be the ones to elect a shadow cabinet, although he added he was “open-minded” about party members having a say. MPs had previously been allowed to elect their own frontbench in opposition, but that was scrapped under Ed Miliband. However he warned expanding shadow cabinet elections to include members would cost £250,000 each time and there were “cultural and technical barriers”.
The former shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie and former shadow housing minister Emma Reynolds are running or understood to be seriously considering a bid to be the Labour chair of the new Brexit select committee that will mirror David Davis’s department.
An agreement between the two parties means it is possible to be a member of both groups, and a total of 26 MPs now sit in parliament on a joint Co-op/Labour ticket. “That then becomes, surely, a very strong campaigning basis for the Labour movement, becomes a campaigning factor in towns and cities where there’s never been very much activity before”, he said. What it is, is simply describing the process.
Mr Corbyn did not answer questions when members of the NEC finally emerged from the meeting at 8.30pm.
It is thought that Mr Corbyn will try to block discussion of OMOV at this stage, on the grounds that it is wrong to table such a major change at the last minute without proper consultation.
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“I think we’ve got change what we do, how we campaign. whoever wins that leadership we’ve got to swing in around that leader”.
