Last night a frontbencher in Mr Corbyn’s team Barry Gardiner said that Labour MPs who refuse to unite behind the leader should be “out of the party” in an interview with The House magazine.
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“He’s not giving ground on Watson’s idea of allowing MPs to elect the shadow cabinet”, said one senior party figure.
But an all-day meeting of Labour’s governing national executive committee failed to agree formal proposals on Tuesday.
Leadership rival Owen Smith has consistently said he would refuse to serve in Mr Corbyn’s cabinet should he lose the leadership race.
“Despite a lot of very personal criticism that have been made of me, very unpleasant remarks that have been made about me by a very large number of Labour MPs – I’ve not replied to any of them”, he said.
Many believe Mr Corbyn will succeed in retaining the top job when the results are announced on Saturday at a special conference in Liverpool.
But Corbyn’s aides insist that the result showed that his qualms about the European Union chimed with many Labour voters. The NEC meets on Saturday and we’ll have further discussions at that point.
Former foreign secretary David Miliband has claimed the Labour Party is “unelectable” and has not been further from power since the 1930s as part of a stinging attack on Jeremy Corbyn. We have a system at the moment of registered supporters being able to vote and those who are in unions affiliated to the party can also register to vote.
Mr Smith all but acknowledged his defeat in a downbeat message to supporters, saying the policies he put forward during the three-month campaign “will remain as relevant after this contest as they have been during this contest”.
Mr Corbyn said that regardless of the outcome of the leadership contest, “I will want to work with Owen Smith and all members of our party”.
“Our party is at a crossroads, and the choice we face is between renewing our party to pursue unity and power, or satisfying ourselves with ongoing division and opposition”, he said.
The bearded vegetarian, who set up a mass protest movement against the Iraq War, has a messianic appeal to supporters, with some 300,000 joining since summer 2015 and turning Labour into what they say is now Europe’s biggest political party with 550,000 members. The theory goes: if we show how much in common we all have with Corbyn’s politics the membership will overturn its hard left idol and join with us in the task of getting more votes than the Tories.
Asked if this could be the end for Labour, Mr Campbell said: “I think it could be”.
Corbyn, however, is predicted to gain less support than the 59.5% he managed to get in the previous round past year.
“I don’t think there’s more difference in policies”, Chapman told BBC Radio 5 Live.
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Ahead of Mr Corbyn’s apparent re-election as leader on Saturday, his campaign team said 40,000 volunteers had signed up to help him retain his leadership.
