Corbyn backed by ‘malign Trots’ warns Kinnock
NEIL Kinnock yesterday warned that ‘malign’ Trotskyites are helping Jeremy Corbyn to victory in the Labour leadership contest.
The former party leader – who fought to expel hard Left factions in the 1980s – urged members to back Andy Burnham instead.
He warned of ‘entryism’, claiming mischief-makers could swing the result using new rules allowing anyone paying a £3 registration fee to vote.
As veteran Marxist Mr Corbyn pleaded for unity amid warnings that his election could split the party, it also emerged that senior Labour figures may refuse to serve under him.
It was reported that leadership rivals Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, Shadow Chancellor Chris Leslie and defence spokesman Vernon Coaker are among eight who would say no to a job.
Lord Kinnock, leader from 1983 to 1992, warned Mr Corbyn’s backers that ‘it won’t be enough’ for Labour to become a party of protest.
‘In the leadership election, we are not choosing the chair of a discussion group who can preside over two years or more of fascinating debate while the Tories play hell with cuts,’ he wrote in The Observer. ‘We have to elect a leader capable of taking us to victory in the 2020 election and of being a Labour prime minister.’
Endorsing Mr Burnham for his ability to ‘attract votes from the breadth of the British people’, he added: ‘ The Trotskyite Left and the Telegraph Right who might participate in this election clearly have their own malign purposes. I hope that everyone else voting in the leadership election – the great majority who are true Labour people – will make their decision with the greatest possible sincerity and realism.’
Mr Corbyn, who has become the frontrunner on a platform of antiausterity measures, dismissed warnings of entryism as ‘ absolute nonsense’.
Posting a Facebook picture showing ‘hundreds’ of supporters at a public meeting in Coventry yesterday, he insisted newly-registered supporters were ‘serious about their politics’ and have ‘felt rather unrepresented in the past years’.
One senior party figure said Mr Corbyn would struggle to field a complete team of shadow ministers if elected.
But the Islington North MP said he was ready to offer a job to Miss Kendall and other Blairite MPs. Admitting there were ‘differences of opin- ion’, he added: ‘ Some colleagues have said they would not be very keen on working with me, but I am sure these things were said in the heat of the moment.’
Former MP Dave Nellist, who was expelled from Labour by Mr Kinnock in 1991 over his links to Militant Tendency and is now chairman of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, said Mr Corbyn would need ‘a new party’ if he is elected.
He told the Independent on Sunday: ‘ Jeremy will be a prisoner inside the parliamentary party. More than 90 per cent of them won’t be on his side.’
Miss Kendall insisted that ‘things will change’ before the new leader is announced on September 12. Mr Burnham questioned whether Mr Corbyn’s anti-austerity agenda was ‘affordable, deliverable, credible’.
He told the Sunday Express Mr Corbyn had ‘connected’ with party members who want a change from the ‘retail politics’ of recent years.