Labour leadership hopeful Liz Kendall won’t include Jeremy Corbyn in top team

LABOUR must reach out to Conservative voters as well as their traditional backers, a candidate for the party’s leadership has warned.

Aides later claimed Mr Burnham was joking, adding he could not “envisage any circumstances” where Mr Corbyn would be a Shadow Minister.

When Kendall – who is considered the most rightwing of the candidates – was asked during Sunday’s hustings if she would have Corbyn in her shadow cabinet, she said: “I haven’t made any decisions about that yet, but I don’t think Jeremy’s and my politics is anything like the same”. “We may not have the same economic direction”.

Yvette Cooper has 41 and Liz Kendall, who has been accused of being a “red Tory”, lags behind with 10.

Mr Corbyn has defied his initial rank outsider status to replace Ed Miliband by securing the most nominations so far from constituency parties and reportedly topping some private opinion polls.

“I think she would return us to being a party that owns the future again, which really fills me with hope and excitement that Labour can, and will, give our city and country the fair and optimistic vision we so desperately need”.

The actual number of people involved in this migration of voters is actually relatively small – only two-per-cent of people who voted in May were Labour to Conservative defectors, but with the British electoral system set up to produce such close races, this change was all that was needed to swing the balance, in addition to the landslide changes in Scotland.

Construction Union UCATT has backed Andy Burnham for the leadership of the Labour Party, praising the shadow health secretary’s housebuilding policies.

Andy Burnham remains the favourite to become leader with odds of 10/11 though he is followed closely by Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on 11/4.

The bookmaker said if the “relentless” backing continues, “it’s only a matter of time before Corbyn moves into second spot in the betting”.

The party is to put down an amendment objecting to elements of the Bill – such as capping welfare payments – but if and when that fails, acting leader Harriet Harman wants MPs to abstain in the main vote, arguing that opposing the Bill as a whole sends the “wrong signal” to the electorate.

“We had this discussion with the electorate at the last election and they have told us what they thought”.