Labour leadership: back anyone but Corbyn, says Kendall

Yvette Cooper is making a similar intervention this morning, finally turning on Corbyn, which is admirable but something the party’s other leadership contenders should all have done from the very beginning.

A YouGov poll on Tuesday gave him a commanding lead while bookmakers installed him as favourite to see off the challenge of Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall.

“But it’s unfortunate that we’re having two meetings at the same time in the same building”.

In the end, of course, Labour may vote for Cooper or Burnham.

Sources in Ms Cooper’s camp have played down reports that Gordon Brown is set to endorse her for the leadership, but the shadow home secretary has said she has spoken to the former prime minister.

As the party prepared to send ballot papers to the more than 600,000 who will have a vote in the contest, candidates continued to raise concerns about the fairness of the rules.

A number of Corbyn supporters are anxious about the possibility they will be excluded after receiving notifications of further checks or hearing nothing back after trying to sign up.

With the polls indicating Ms Kendall could finish fourth, her supporters’ choice of second preference could influence the result.

Speaking in Manchester, Ms Cooper said she did not dismiss the values and intentions of veteran left-winger Mr Corbyn and his supporters.

Voting in the Labour leadership election begins this weekend, with registrations closed.

“I will be using my second and third preferences and I would urge others to do the same because I don’t want to see our party go back to the politics of eighties, just being a party of protest”.

“I feel that some of those people that resort to personal abuse, name-calling and all that are probably a bit nervous about the power of democracy”, he said.

“The truth is that Jeremy is offering old solutions to old
problems, not new answers to
the problems of today”.

When registrations ended on Wednesday there were almost 611,000 people signed up to vote in the contest.

Mr Blair directed his remarks at long-standing members and called on them to “save the party” and heed his warnings, regardless of whether they used to “support me or hate me”.

Blair accused supporters of Corbyn of being in the “hard left” and said his party was at risk of annihilation.

Writing for Breitbart, Mr Farage said: “Whilst I have absolutely no faith in the wisdom of his economics, his victory is seriously good news for the No campaign in the forthcoming EU referendum”.