The former shadow minister is said to have been urged by allies to mount a challenge to oust Mr Corbyn as the only Labour leadership hopeful with a “realistic” chance of winning an election in 2020.
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“It’s not a fair comment, and I would hope that he would reflect on that because clearly there are diverse views within the party on issues in the Middle East, but there is absolute unity in the party of opposing any form of anti-Semitism, any form of racism in the party”, the Labour leader said.
Corbyn was confirmed in his position yesterday with 61.8 per cent of the vote among party members and supporters, seeing off a challenger backed by the majority of his lawmakers, who believe he can never lead them into government.
“The relationship between an MP and their constituency is a complex one”. It’s not necessarily all the policy tick-boxing exercise. “Let’s have a democratic discussion, and I think the vast majority of members of Parliament will have no problems whatsoever”.
He said: “My message is, concentrate on policies, concentrate on campaigning, concentrate on what we’ve got to put out there as a message”.
Mr Khan told the Sunday Times: “The idea of deselecting MPs is wrong. The review of boundaries should not be an excuse for Conservatives or others to reduce the number of Labour MPs”. Now it is far more serious than that.
Labour’s General Secretary Iain McNicol said it was the party’s largest ever development programme.
Sunday Politics reporter Adam Fleming has been watching events unfold at the Labour conference in Liverpool. But Corbyn would like the proposals to be considered alongside his own plans for throwing open decision-making to the membership, which now numbers more than 500,000.
Appearing on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show, he was asked about deselection, which is being openly advocated by some of his backers, with the Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, saying disloyal MPs were “asking for it”. “This party is able to win the elections”.
“But even more than that, he surrounds himself with a coterie of people who hold violent, violent anti-Israel views and allied with it they are very hostile to Jews so, in my view, they’re pretty bad guys”.
“The strength of the Labour Party is that it is a broad church”.
He said: “If you go for hard Brexit, then there is a huge hit going to be taken on the manufacturing industry in Britain”.
Mr Hunt also said he was still not prepared to serve in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet because he had “deep political and philosophical differences” with the leader.
“If you look at Corbyn’s policies on taxation, he wants to whack up taxation, he wants to borrow money, I think his economic policies are a unsafe, left-wing, 1970s, Dave Spart-style agenda”, he told the same programme.
“Jeremy has got the opportunity now to reach out and I want to see him do that successfully because I want to see us come together”.
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Corbyn said Labour MPs across the country would have to stand for selection as constituency boundaries change.
