“We have had conversations with a not insignificant number of the parliamentary party and some of the names would surprise you”, said a spokesperson from Mr Corbyn’s office.
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David Miliband has claimed the Labour Party has not been further from power since the 1930s as part of a stinging attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
However Mr Miliband, a former Foreign Secretary, took a different approach and argued Mr Corbyn’s ideas are wrong, in an article for the left-wing New Statesman magazine.
“The main charge against Jeremy Corbyn is not just that his strategy is undesirable because it makes the party unelectable”, Miliband wrote.
Voting in the contest closed on Wednesday, with the result to be announced at a special conference in Liverpool on Saturday.
“Stop obsessing about the party issues and devote your considerable talent and experience to the one thing that really matters – the fast-approaching catastrophe of Brexit”, pleaded commentator Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, a newspaper read by many Labour supporters.
The conflict threatens to overshadow the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, in northwest England, where the victor of the leadership contest between Corbyn and Welsh MP Owen Smith will be announced.
Mr Miliband is particularly critical of Mr Corbyn’s “egregious” stance on foreign policy.
Mr Miliband also criticised Mr Corbyn’s domestic policies, warning that nationalisation “cannot be the answer to everything”. It wouldn’t work. People are not stupid’.
But after a divisive leadership contest, Corbyn has pledged to “wipe the slate clean” and work with critics within the party if re-elected.
The current system for the leadership elections sees Labour MPs, members and trade unions each hold one third of the vote.
Mr Corbyn’s team told Sky that he genuinely wanted rebels to return and confirmed that the leader was working hard behind the scenes to bring people back to his top table in time for Saturday.
He said Mr Corbyn’s politics did not just make Labour weak in the eyes of the voters but insisted his policies would be actively bad for Britain.
“I think if this is a way of uniting the Labour Party it is a good start – it’s an olive branch and I suggest Jeremy grabs it with both hands”.
The decision to defer whether Labour adopts shadow cabinet elections until after the leadership result was backed by Corbyn, who said after Tuesday’s talks there needed to be a “discussion about the necessity of the leader being able to appoint key positions in the shadow cabinet”.
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“He will get a shadow cabinet together but without elections it won’t be the best or the most balanced”.
