Brian Eno buys Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s hat for £250 at auction

Jeremy Corbyn has launched a staunch defence of the Stop the War Coalition in the face of criticism from senior figures in his own party.

“He’s keeping to what he thinks are his principles and I have to say the electorate did seem to like to have a politician who still continues to do what he believed in”.

The Labour leader issued a defiant statement in support of Stop the War, calling it “one of the most important democratic campaigns of modern times”, despite complaints from some Labour MPs regarding the organisation’s stance on Syria and the deletion of certain posts on Stop the War’s website.

She said: “I frequently go up to him and his staff and go what are you thinking?”

During an interview to the Guardian journalist, Owen Jones, Phillips stated that “I would do anything that I felt was going to make the Labour party win the next election because if I don’t have that attitude all I’m doing is colluding with the Tories”. She says “there is always going to be collateral damage, people will always be killed”.

But Corbyn’s carefully planned entrance on Friday night meant that he avoided encountering the likes of Amina Brimo, a Syrian refugee who turned up to show her support for British airstrikes on Isis fanatics in her homeland. There’s nothing contentious but for two areas: Trident – and that is coming up – and foreign policy when it comes to decisions about war and peace.

A quarter of voters believe the radical left-winger is “turning out to be a good leader of the Labour Party” compared with 17% for his predecessor in the months after he was elected, the ComRes survey for The Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror finds.

“As the leader, he has earned the right democratically to lead the party”, said the former Labour deputy prime minister.

“I keep saying to Jeremy that our job is to help smooth that path, which is why all this stuff about deselection is just rubbish”.

“We should make a virtue of our differences and be able to have debates”.

“We are talking about a small number who are having a hard time coming to terms with it”.

The comments will increase the pressure on Mr Corbyn to distance himself from the movement, which he chaired before taking charge of the party in September.

The movement, which describes itself as the successor to Mr Corbyn’s leadership campaign, has come under fire in recent weeks for its members’ alleged involvement in the harassment of his critics.