‘Jeremy Corbyn lacks credibility in the 21st century’, says Labour leader

‘I understand Jeremy has strong support.

Yvette Cooper has accused Labour leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn of lacking credibility in the 21st century.

But not all Labour supporters in the area are so enamoured of Mr Corbyn and his left-wing policies, with many fearing a Corbyn victory could leave the party split and frozen out of power, as it was in the 1980s.

Corbyn, 66, is a socialist who opposes austerity cuts, supports scrapping nuclear weapons and has never held a frontline ministerial position.

Corbyn was persuaded to put up his hand for the party leadership role to “widen the debate”, and he got the required 35 nominations from Labour members of Parliament only at the last minute, when some of them decided to throw a bone to the party’s activists.

Voting begins on Friday in a four-way leadership contest triggered by a crushing election defeat in May.

Mr Corbyn is set to launch his 10-point Standing to Deliver plan for Labour in Glasgow and will post a copy to all party members in the hope of securing their vote as the 600,000 ballot papers start to arrive on doormats.

It comes as former Labour PM Tony Blair warned voters against placing their trust in Mr Corbyn, saying the party risked “annihilation” and was “walking eyes shut, arms outstretched over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below”.

Mr Burnham is up against Jeremy Corbyn, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall in the race to succeed Mr Miliband.

However Mr Corbyn’s campaign has generated momentum and polls now have him as the front runner.

Labour is frantically continuing its efforts to weed out supporters of other parties suspected of seeking to skew the result in Mr Corbyn’s favour either because they back hard left policies or want to harm the party.

On Wednesday, alast-minute surge of people wanting to register to vote caused the party’s website to crash, meaning supporters were given an extra three hours to sign up. “So I don’t see any good coming out of this at all”.

Ms Kendall, regarded as the Blairite candidate in the field, said in a radio interview: “I don’t think Jeremy’s policies are right for 2015, let alone 2020 or 2025”.

“I’m not sure if it’s happening to all affiliated members and supporters, or if I’ve been picked out of a hat for a random audit, or if something seems fishy about my circumstances or if something about my particularly weird political background triggered a warning light”, he said.