Deputy leader Tom Watson had put forward a plan for MPs to vote on membership of the shadow cabinet, a responsibility which now rests with leader Jeremy Corbyn.
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As a Labour Party supporter I’ve recently found myself supporting Owen Smith in the Labour Party contest for the new leader, not because I dislike Jeremy Corbyn but because of the stench of failure that he seems to have acquired.
Watson said he believed Theresa May was likely to call an early general election which meant Labour would need to get “the band back together” in order to challenge the Conservatives.
Mr Corbyn told Peston a discussion would take place on the proposals at a Labour National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on Tuesday.
Mr Corbyn’s efforts at reconciliation with disaffected Labour MPs have been overshadowed by threats of deselection and suggestions members could be involved in picking the shadow cabinet.
Labour leadership challengers Jeremy Corbyn (left) and Owen Smith.
But the BBC’s assistant political editor Norman Smith said the move would be seen as an attempt to make it much harder for a left winger like Mr Corbyn to be elected.
“Whether they’re going to love me at the end of it?”
However, he retains significant grassroots support from party members.
Corbyn told the Today programme this morning: “Of course I’m going to reach out to them as I’ve reached out to them in the past”.
“The tragedy is not just in the misunderstanding of the country – who elected Tony Blair three times, because they thought he was someone with the ideas and the leadership qualities to change the country for the better, and were proved right by the change we delivered after 1997”, he said. I guess for a leader they would have to balance up whether they wanted people with an alternative base of authority rather than coming from fellow colleagues in Westminster or from a leader. “I think it’s going to be tough … to meet the levels that we got a year ago and I say that because they have thrown everything against us”, he added.
But in a plea for unity, he said: “We’ve had a very bruising summer”.
The move has been derided by Corbyn’s critics as an attempt to “deepen divisions” in the party and to further cement his own position at the top of Labour. Corbyn is widely seen as unelectable and lacking the national support needed for a Labour victory in 2020.
Speaking at the party’s conference on 10 September, chair Gareth Thomas said: “The Co-operative party has a strong interest in seeing the Labour party come through its current travails, because they are our electoral partner and many of us are members of both parties”.
He said: “Alan hasn’t fully understood what my concerns were in the past”.
“When he tried to bring in, and indeed did bring in, tuition fees, I opposed him on that”.
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“We’re here to win an election, and I’m determined to do that election”.
