To write off student debt

Mr Blair any thanks, he replied: “I’ve no idea this conversation actually took place. Also, I don’t quite see why people should go to the party leader and say we want to influence what’s going on in the constituency.

As a backbencher, the now Labour leader voted against his own government more than 500 times and there was upset among the rank and file in his Islington North constituency, according to Baroness Armstrong.

But the then Prime Minister was “very clear” that he would not support such a move, the Labour peer insisted.

The peer told Carolyn Quinn on BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour that Mr Corbyn was “the greatest rebel ever” but Mr Blair was reluctant to discipline him as he believed the party could “tolerate that level of difference”.

Universities minister Jo Johnson said: “Jeremy Corbyn and his top team made a welter of outlandish promises to young people during the election – including the abolition of student debt – that they are now shamelessly abandoning.

“The Labour party’s policy platform for students is disintegrating before our eyes.