Jeremy Corbyn repeats call for a united Ireland

Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, said his main focus was on safeguarding the jobs of members in the defence industry, as Labour prepares to confront an issue that is splitting the shadow cabinet.

Mr Corbyn said: “This is an open and democratic party and the members at conference have decided to discuss the issues that they want to debate this week. In the absence of any credible alternative to protect jobs and high skills we will vote against any anti-Trident resolution”.

Two weeks after becoming leader, Corbyn has been criticised for failing to present his policies clearly, and for changing tack on issues such as Britain’s membership of the European Union, on which a referendum is due by the end of 2017.

Mr Corbyn told the Observer he would need to lose a full leadership contest before leaving his post.

“We will be voting with them on this, or they will be voting with us, whichever way you want to put it”, Corbyn said. They are all signed up to multilateral disarmament, by the way.

Mr Corbyn said: “Yes,

I did make myself very unpopular with some people by a preparedness to reach out to the Republican tradition in Ireland, to say ultimately this war is unwinnable by either side,

there is never going to be a military (answer) – therefore there has to be a political dialogue”.

“So I’m a bit more optimistic, if you like, I think people get it a bit more than they did”.

“Labour have an opportunity to join a progressive alliance against the immoral, obscene and completely redundant weapons of mass destruction that Westminster continues to dump on the Clyde”.

Mr Corbyn said he “accepts” that some of his frontbenchers “take a different view”.

“It’s not plausible for us as an opposition not to have a position on the defence of the realm”, he told a fringe meeting. “We are going to come to an accommodation of some sort”.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the SNP of wearing an “anti-austerity badge” while pursuing policies which continue it, or could make it worse in future. To ensure that we have the power in Scotland to create the welfare system we want, with no threat of interference from (Work and Pensions Secretary) Iain Duncan Smith.

“I am, as everybody knows, on the record as opposing Trident and its replacement”.

The Labour party conference which begins on Sunday could be one of the liveliest for many years.

Mr Smith was also quizzed on whether Labour now supported scrapping the benefits cap.

Labour ditched its no-nukes policy under Neil Kinnock in 1989.

Britain’s Labour Party has made a decision to leave the country’s nuclear weapons alone.

MSP Linda Fabiani said: “Kezia Dugdale’s speech today was yet more of the same exhausted, old negative lines that Labour has been using for the last eight years in Scotland – and is indicative of a party that is all out of ideas”.

Corbyn was heavily criticised in the days before winning the Labour leadership after suggesting that the death of Osama was a “tragedy”.