Jeremy Corbyn calls for end to ‘silly remarks’ by critics

“At the moment the Labour Party is being posed with this false choice”. Now it is losing its way, careening into a crisis that could rip apart a party that governed for long stretches of the 20th century.

Ken Livingstone has defended Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral appeal, saying the left-winger could be prime minister.

Blair said support for the radical left was “reactionary”, and that Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party wanted Corbyn, 66, to win because he would be easier to defeat.

Mr Blair derided the veteran backbencher as the “Tory preference” and said the party could not regain power if it was simply a “platform for protest” against cuts.

Play video “Corbyn Bites Back At Blair”. We lost in 2015 with an election out of the playback from the 1980s, from the period of Star Trek, when we stepped even further away from it and lost even worse.

But this time round, Labour appears to be in the midst of a full-blown identity crisis; exacerbated by the drubbing it received in Scotland.

Lord Mandelson told The Times: “Those of us who stayed and fought to save the Labour party in the 1980s will be experiencing a growing sense of deja vu”.

Blair’s approach gave Labour 13 years in power between 1997 and 2010. Votes must be cast before Sept 10 by Labour Party members only.

DERBY South MP Margaret Beckett says she wishes she had not nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership, after an opinion poll suggested he could pull off a shock victory.

Corbyn accuses rival candidates of offering “austerity light” policies that provide no alternative to the Conservatives. He argues for more public investment in infrastructure and higher taxes for corporations and the rich.

He told the BBC: “I think politics should be conducted on a comradely and friendly basis, and if people disagree with each other then say what they disagree on, and let’s keep these silly remarks to themselves”.

Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn came under fire for describing Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” during a heated Labour leadership hustings with the Jewish Community on Monday evening. If that fails, Bale said, “then the party would split”.

Farage asked the Labour leadership candidates if they would consider voting no in a EU referendum.

The findings electrified what had been widely dismissed as a boring and lacklustre contest, and, with alarm spreading through the Labour establishment, senior figures started feuding publicly about the implications of the Corbyn surge. One “special advisor, Darren Murphy, told the press that “Labour has become a suicide club” after Corbyn got 43% in the YouGov poll of Labour Party members, 17-30 points ahead of the other three candidates”.

Aside from Corbyn’s uncompromising socialist stances on internal British issues, his support of pro-Palestinian causes is the subject of some controversy, most recently after the resurfacing of a 2009 video showing him speaking of his “pleasure and honor” at hosting members of Hezbollah in parliament and his regret that “friends from Hamas” were prevented by Israel from arriving. Lord Prescott blamed Mr Blair’s Iraq invasion for damaging Labour support and accused Mr Burnham and Ms Cooper of not setting out strong enough policy positions. There is more competition on the left of the political spectrum, which is also more geographically fragmented.