Tony Blair’s former deputy John Prescott slams ex-prime minister over Labour

A YouGov poll of 1,054 Labour supporters who are eligible to vote in the leadership race found Mr Corbyn as the first preference with 43% – ahead of bookies’ favourite Mr Burnham on 26%.

Liverpool was the scene of one of the fiercest battles in Labour party history in the 1980s when then-leader Neil Kinnock confronted “militant” members.

According to The Times, Blair said, “After the 1979 election the Labour party persuaded itself of something absolutely extraordinary”.

The shadow care minister is reported to be under pressure to quit the contest to allow the moderate vote to rally behind one of her two centrist rivals – Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper.

Blair is clearly desperate to prevent the emergence of a leader of the Party who publicly called for a debt conference to write off Greek debt, like the 1953 London Debt Conference, which wrote off Germany’s, and who supports establishing Glass-Steagall in Britain, as heavily debated in the House of Lords particularly in 2013.

Asked about the criticism, Mr Corbyn 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”. This led Nicola Sturgeon to comment that indeed David Cameron is not lord of all he surveys and will not if the SNP have anything to do with it always get his way.

Mr Blair ripped into Mr Corbyn, a leading opponent of the Iraq war who was a thorn in the side of New Labour during his premiership during a question and answer session at the New Labour think-tank Progress.

For Labour to win back the public by 2020, it must first curb the constant stream of negative, impotent rhetoric on inequality that dominates its output and turn its attention to communicating positive, concrete ideas that will deliver real equality to every corner of Britain.

In the same speech, Corbyn outlined his own economic agenda, arguing for a more progressive tax system and an end to austerity.

“I would be surprised if Jeremy wanted to win”.

The study also predicts Mr Corbyn would defeat Mr Burnham 53% to 47% in the final round.

“I would definitely not serve in a Corbyn shadow cabinet”, she told the newspaper.

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.

Jeremy Corbyn says his leadership campaign is going “extremely well” but that talk of him winning the contest is “a bit premature”.

He also hit out at former Blair adviser John McTernan for dubbing MPs “morons” for helping Mr Corbyn into the election.

“To suggest that somebody should have a transplant if they are making decisions by the heart is totally unacceptable”.

“They see a lot of what the Tories are doing and they know the need for Labour to be a credible alternative”.

A return to the politics of the 1980s will be bad for Liverpool and do nothing to get Labour back into power, leadership contender Liz Kendall has warned.