Leadership hopeful Liz Kendall said she would fight boycotts “with every fibre in my body” while Yvette Cooper said the Labour party should be “very clear” about opposition to the boycott describing it as “counter-productive”.
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Meanwhile, Ms Kendall has criticised comments in The Times by shadow justice secretary Lord Falconer – a supporter of Mr Burnham’s – who said neither she nor Ms Cooper would be able to unite the party to steer it through the “challenging” years ahead.
It is not unreasonable to assume those who – in great numbers – now support Mr Corbyn to become the next head of their party do so because they believe it is in Labour’s interest to recalibrate itself, shifting to a more traditionally left-wing position.
“It’s not going to happen”.
Professor John Gaffney, Professor of Politics at Aston University and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe, says: “Of course Corbyn is the most popular candidate for leader”. We lost in 2015 with an election out of the playback from the 1980s, from the period of Star Trek, when we stepped even further away from it and lost even worse.
The poll came as Lord Prescott rounded on Tony Blair for saying anyone whose heart told them they should back Mr Corbyn should “get a transplant“.
Blair said that Labour under his own helm Labour had “discovered winning successfully” but had now “rediscovered losing successfully”. I think Corbyn is the only leader who actually perceives the Labour Party as embedded in a broader progressive movement that includes NGOs, as well as “rival” leftwing parties.
While Blair didn’t back any of the other three candidates, he stressed that Labour must present a strategy for government and not just be a “platform for protest” against austerity if it wants to regain power.
Suck up to big business, fawn on Washington and make cosy deals with the monopoly media and life can be very comfortable indeed, except when you have to take time out from lucrative consultations with Middle Eastern despots to tick off your party for remembering its principles.
Praising the example of the city’s mayor, she said: “You look at what Joe Anderson’s doing, being a mayor for jobs and for education and for a vibrant dynamic economy for Liverpool for the future – fighting against the Tories and delivering Labour’s values because he’s elected and in Government”.
After a bruising day of recriminations the architect of its most successful electoral era said Ed Miliband’s tenure had left Labour with a “terrible legacy”.
Mr Burnham last night made a surprise declaration that he would be prepared to serve in the shadow cabinet if Mr Corbyn became leader.
McTernan claimed on Newsnight that the Labour MPs who nominated Corbyn just to allow him to take part in the leadership contest were “morons”.
“It was a complete mess”.
“That will help to pay for some of the things that we need to pay for”.
“We’ve got to be a champion for more power for Liverpool and the city region”, she said.
Nor do those who demand we learn from the man George Osborne calls “the master” seem to have noticed that the Thatcherite bonanza ended with the global economic crash in 2008, one which the Tories seem determined to repeat with their house price and debt-fuelled “recovery” at the expense of working people’s wages.
She drew a comparison with former prime minister Harold Wilson’s famous “white heat of technology” speech.
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But let’s not forget Mr Blair won elections. “That is something we can pull behind”, she said.
