Labour in-fighting steps up ahead of leadership vote

Tony Blair has echoed his former spin doctor Alastair Campbell by warning the Labour party faces a “cliff edge” if it elects leadership front-runner Jeremy Corbyn.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the left, right or centre of the party, whether you used to support me or hate me,” he wrote in the Guardian.

“The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below.”

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Leadership candidates Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper also stepped up their attacks on Corbyn.

"We can’t just sit on the sidelines shouting,” Cooper said. “We have to have the best possible chance of winning the Election. Jeremy isn’t the best chance.”

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone accused “embittered” Blairites of misunderstanding Corbyn’s manifesto.

“What I find appalling about all of this is you listen to Jeremy Corbyn, he’s going on about how you can avoid borrowing money, how you can get the deficit down, how we can build new homes – it’s all about policy,” he told the Today programme on BBC Radio this morning.

“It’s all just about their personal views. Tony Blair clearly hasn’t read Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto because he’s not going back to the 1980s, he’s dealing with the problems we have got now.”

Labour MP Diane Abbott told BBC news yesterday the party wouldn’t be split if Corbyn won, and said the party establishment should have more confidence in ordinary members.

“It must be a good thing to have so many people energised; it must be a good thing to have so many new young people joining the party; and many of the things that Jeremy is talking about are things that Labour supporters want to see happen,” she said.

Corbyn is holding rallies in Aberdeen and Dundee today. A YouGov poll this week showed the veteran left winger was in the lead.