United Kingdom government declaring war on organised labour, Corbyn tells unions

“Jeremy said quite clearly he wants to remain in Europe but we want to see what Cameron’s package is”, McDonnell told BBC television.

He was also asked about Mr Corbyn’s first meeting with the Parliamentary Labour Party after winning the leadership election, where he was not greeted by the traditional banging of desks.

Like a radio host he then read out a question about housing from “Marie” who wanted to know: “what does the Government intend to do about the chronic lack of affordable housing and the extortionate rents charged by some private sector landlords in this country?”

“Jeremy has had tens of thousands of people already contacting him with questions they’d like him to raise on their behalf with David Cameron”.

Bristol MP Charlotte Leslie spent today’s Prime Minister’s Questions in an unusual way.

Unlike recent party leaders, he staunchly rejects the government’s austerity plan, characterizing it as unfair and counterproductive.

He has already ruffled feathers by declining to sing the national anthem, “God Save the Queen”, at a memorial event honoring the pilots who repelled Hitler’s Luftwaffe during World War II.

There are also complaints that none of the most senior jobs in his top team have gone to women.

British newspapers and public figures, on the other hand, have made much of Corbyn’s alleged Kremlin sympathies.

Newly installed Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s abrasive relationship with the press is well documented with no love lost between the veteran left winger and Fleet Street’s finest, prompting Corbynites to adopt a social media first strategy.

Mr Corbyn said the TUC conference was a “shared celebration of our values as a Labour and trade union movement”.

The 20-minute quick-fire address to delegates in Brighton, delivered tieless, was originally intended to include a passage invoking Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s phrase to warn that the Conservatives still regard unions as “the enemy within”.

The decision by Corbyn, who was elected on Saturday with strong backing from his party’s members but has less support among Labour lawmakers, was criticised both by members of the armed forces and by some within his party.

On defence, Mr Cameron said it was “deeply regrettable” that Labour were turning away from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation membership and the Trident nuclear deterrent.