Jeremy Corbyn must put leadership of the Labour party before his commitments to outside protest movements, Lord Prescott has said.
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In an interview with left-wing writer Owen Jones, she said: “I am ambitious for the Labour Party and if I thought that me being the leader of the Labour Party would help more people like the Labour Party then yeah, I would do that, absolutely”.
The former deputy prime minister said there was a faction in the party, who he branded the “Bitterites”, that want to “continue the war” for control that they had lost.
‘If that’s not going to happen, and I’ve said that to him and to his staff to their faces, the day it becomes that you are hurting us more than you helping us – I won’t knife you in the back, I’ll knife you in the front’. It’s only a few MPs demanding that, by the way, not all the MPs.
Asked about reports in the Sun on Sunday that the former London mayor Ken Livingstone could be given a peerage by Corbyn, Prescott replied: “Nothing’s a surprise with Livingstone, is it?”
Mary Beard does not want Tyson Fury as a dinner party guest, but she wants him to stay in the race for BBC Sports Personality of the Year – so that we can all vote for someone else.
Criticisms of Mr Corbyn were coming from “a small number” of MPs who were “having a hard time coming to terms” with the changing nature of the party, he said.
In a speech to 200 activists who paid at least £50 a head for a three-course meal, he said Stop the War was “a vital force at the heart of our democracy”.
Unfortunately for Corbyn, she adds that while she is happy to support him and make the most of his positive attributes, she does need to have “something to work with” in order to do this.
Green MP Caroline Lucas earlier this week quit as a patron of Stop the War, citing concerns about the positions it has adopted.
The peer said an “awful lot of people” supported the Labour leader and accused the media of being “obsessed” with Mr Corbyn.
Labour frontbencher Louise Haigh, who nominated Mr Corbyn to be leader, yesterday said her leader should distance himself from Stop the War.
“I think they’re a really disreputable organisation and I would hope Jeremy would step back and not go to their fundraiser”.
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“And it’s a topsy-turvy world we’re in when attending Stop the War events is controversial but still pretending that Tony Blair and others got it right in Iraq is [not controversial]”.
