Lord Mandelson warns over Labour’s future amid leadership contest turmoil

The latest poll results show the left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to be the favourite for Labour leader.

Ms Cooper’s allies are privately anxious that Mr Corbyn’s surprise lead in the contest could benefit Mr Burnham.

Meanwhile, Ms Kendall has criticised comments in The Times by shadow justice secretary Lord Falconer – a supporter of Mr Burnham’s – who said neither she nor Ms Cooper would be able to unite the party to steer it through the “challenging” years ahead.

Mr Corbyn is on 53 % which led to the intervention of former Labour leader Tony Blair saying a Jeremy Corbyn win would be a disaster for the Labour party and would put the party back in the wilderness in the dark days of when people like Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock ruled the roost.

After May, all polls should be treated with scepticism, but this survey mirrors the high number of constituency parties nominating Mr Corbyn.

Liverpool was the scene of one of the fiercest battles in Labour party history in the 1980s when then-leader Neil Kinnock confronted “militant” members. In his remarks, Mr. Blair stated that those who backed Mr Corbyn in their hearts should get a transplant was “unacceptable“.

The Labour Party hasn’t won a general election without Tony Blair since 1976.

It would be quite apparent that Liz Kendal the only Blairite in the contest would be Blair’s favoured candidate however as said by guests and pundits on BBC2’s current affairs programme “Newsnight” it is unlikely she will secure enough support to gain the leadership of the Labour party but is a fighter and will stick it out come what may.

He added: “If the Labour Party really does have a death wish that’s where it will go”. “It’s nonsense, ‘ says one Burnham source”.

Nicknamed “Comrade Corbyn” by the press, he is anti-austerity and opposed the 2003 Iraq war over which Blair is still deeply unpopular among many Britons.

The far-left politician, who is to be supported in the September leadership contest by the UK’s largest trade union Unite, has courted controversy in recent weeks.

While Blair didn’t back any of the other three candidates, he stressed that Labour must present a strategy for government and not just be a “platform for protest” against austerity if it wants to regain power.

Yes, there is genuine interest in his policies, but there is also a real feeling among people that Jeremy understands them, that Jeremy isn’t like the others, and at a time when many people feel let down by or disillusioned with the Westminster system, someone speaking to them from outside of it is of course going to gather a lot of support. Just as it worked to reign in my more destructive tendencies back then, it would be a pretty good strategy for whoever wins the Labour leadership election to take forward into his or her first year of leading the opposition.

This is a guy who was Chief of Staff to the humiliated Scottish Labour Party leader Jim Murphy. “The last five years have left us with a bad legacy to overcome with the existence of the Labour party as an effective electoral force now at stake”.

“Those of us who stayed and fought to save the Labour party in the 1980s will be experiencing a growing sense of deja vu”, he said.