Kinnock: I doubt I’ll live to see Labour win an election

NEIL Kinnock predicts he will not see the crisis-hit Labour Party take office again in his lifetime.

The former leader, who fought against Militant in the 1980s, warns that Jeremy Corbyn is turning his party into a branch of the ‘sectarian ultra-Left’.

‘Stretching back to the 1930s by any examination this is the greatest crisis the Labour Party has faced,’ Lord Kinnock told BBC1’s Panorama, which is being broadcast tonight.

‘I’m 74, and unless things change radically, and rapidly, it’s very doubtful that I’ll see another Labour government in my lifetime.’

He accused the Momentum faction that backs Mr Corbyn of ‘endangering the standing and appeal of the Labour Party, which is why I regard them to be political foes’.

Mr Corbyn is expected to be re-elected leader on Saturday and take a stronger grip over his party.

He confirmed yesterday that he will seek to change the rules so that members can elect a proportion of the shadow cabinet and take up more seats on the party’s ruling NEC.

And he suggested that over the next few months there would be ‘selections’ of MPs once the boundary review takes effect.

Mr Corbyn told ITV’s Peston on Sunday that it was not a veiled threat to point out that some Labour MPs may have to fight for their seats. ‘There are going to be 600 new constituency Labour parties formed, as there will be for other parties, and they will go through a selection process,’ he said.

He did not deny claims in the Mail on Sunday that he and his inner circle have discussed plans to oust Tom Watson from his elected position as deputy leader, alongside Labour general secretary Iain McNicol.

The Labour leader said Mr Watson and Mr McNicol were ‘obviously part’ of the discussion the group were having about the future of the party.

Len McCluskey, the militant general secretary of Unite, told Panorama that opponents of Mr Corbyn should face deselection. ‘Some of the MPs have behaved absolutely despicably and disgracefully and they’ve not shown any respect whatsoever to the leader,’ he said. ‘They should be held to account.’

Clive Lewis, the party’s defence spokesman, said there was a ‘legitimate argument’ for deselections.

‘You call it deselection – well the other word for it is actually democratic election of your representatives in parliament,’ he told the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC yesterday.

A Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, to be aired tonight, has uncovered evidence that members of Momentum are pushing to oust moderates. The documentary filmed Mark Sandell, suspended chairman of Brighton and Hove Labour Party, saying local MP Peter Kyle had ‘every good reason to feel nervous’.

Mr Kyle told BBC One’s Sunday Politics: ‘There are people who’ve fought for other parties for their whole lives who’ve now joined in the last few weeks and they’re now trying to beat the Labour Party by getting rid of me.’

James Schneider of Momentum dismissed allegations the group were pressing for mandatory re- selections. He told Sky News’s Murnaghan programme: ‘Momentum has been extremely clear all the way through, we are not campaigning for any deselection.’

ANGELA Eagle has revealed she has received 47,000 abusive messages on Facebook.

Miss Eagle put herself forward as a rival to Mr Corbyn as party leader but stood down after Owen Smith won the backing of more MPs. When she announced her decision to stand, she had a brick thrown through her constituency office in Merseyside.

‘I’ve had death threats,’ she told BBC Radio 4. ‘We’ve had to unplug our phones in the constituency office because we got constant abusive phone calls. I changed the photograph on my Facebook page and I got 47,000 pieces of abuse.’

‘Endangering the Labour Party’