Jeremy Corbyn as labour leader ‘would be car crash’, says Alastair Campbell

Labour’s former communications director, Alastair Campbell, said the party “could be finished” if Mr Corbyn wins.

“Conviction politics” is playing a role.

For Johnson’s information, this was when he was a New Labour minister.

His words were seized on by Cooper who said that Labour did not need a return to “the days of British Leyland” – the nationalised vehicle manufacturer which became a byword for shoddy products and industrial strife.

Corbyn, the MP for Islington North, added that he realised there are “sensitivities” on the issue and people hold differing views.

However, he is not alone.

The former Pontypridd MP, who served under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, said it would “cost a fortune” and would not improve services.

Imran Hussain, MP for Bradford East, told an open-air rally of around 500 people in the city that it was time the party had a leader who was “not frightened to stand up against ideological cuts” imposed by the Government.

“Nobody is voting for Tumbleweed CLP”, he sneered.

It will drag the Labour Party away from the centre. “They’re only complaining because they’re anxious they’ll lose”.

Could Owen Smith be the next Shadow Chancellor?

Liz Kendall is trailing on 8%, the poll suggests.

That’s why I support Jeremy Corbyn.

“We recognise the deep concerns which exist about positions taken, and statements made, by Jeremy Corbyn in the past and recognise the serious questions which arise from these”.

12 August marks the last date that potential voters can join the Labour party and get a chance to vote in the leadership election.

I asked Corbyn’s office if their candidate still intended to take part in this conference, or if he thought it was appropriate for a future Labour leader to sit with someone who picked Holocaust denial as a cartoon subject. It clocked up millions of hits on YouTube, many from young people. “Labour will lift it off them”.

The support from inside big trade unions for Corbyn’s candidacy has been extraordinary.

Corbyn told a crowd of over 500 supporters that the Labour party needs to stop accepting austerity.

Ms Kendall, who said that Labour must be “unashamedly pro-EU”, is anxious that the party’s left-wing is wobbling about its commitment to the 28-nation bloc. “The environment isn’t something remote from us”, she wrote.

If Labour had maintained its electoral support at 1997 levels rather than watching its votes in all contests slide inexorably, there might be justification for such arrogance, but it didn’t so there isn’t. One of his most recent cartoons, reproduced last month by MEMO, shows a Zionist octopus, wearing an Israeli headband decorated with a swastika, with its tentacles around a Gaza-bound flotilla ship. Voters don’t want to give the benefit of the doubt, because they are no longer in doubt.

Many Labour MPs, and some Tories, are nervous about dragging the UK into a fresh quagmire in Syria, even though there are unlikely to be any “boots on the ground”.

Ward can not be faulted for describing this catalogue of disaster as a political virus.

“All other politicians from both major parties are obsessed with people in the margins that are swaying but Corbyn is aiming his campaign at people that don’t already vote and aren’t interested in politics”, Mr Webb said.