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Richard Leonard, the favourite to win the Scottish Labour leadership contest, has outed himself as a vigorous opponent of the entryist group Militant in the 1980s and insisted he would fight against party factionalism if he wins the internal election.

With ballot papers being issued this Friday both Leonard, the Corbynite candidate, and his rival Anas Sarwar, a former deputy leader of Scottish Labour, are making final campaign speeches and policy statements this week.

In a bid to reassure members after a particularly bruising phase of the contest, which has seen bitter exchanges over Brexit, allegations of dubious recruitment tactics of new members and the candidates’ loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn, Leonard said he had a long track-record of bipartisanship within the party.

Speaking in Edinburgh, Leonard said he had campaigned for Scottish Labour in every election since 1983, for left-wing, centrist and right-wing candidates. He insisted he prized loyalty to Labour above loyalty to factions. He said:

When a Labour candidate is selected, we all get behind them 100%. That’s always been my philosophy and that’s why I believe I am the candidate who can reach out and unify the Scottish Labour party. I have never joined a faction inside the Labour party; indeed some of my formative experiences were forged on the anvil of tackling a faction, the Militant Tendency. I have never been beholden to any group or faction or any one individual, and I have no intention of starting now.

The Militant Tendency was an hard left entryist group in Labour during the 1980s and 1990s, causing a crisis for Labour which led to a series of expulsions of Militant organisers, including the then deputy leader of Liverpool council, Derek Hatton.

Asked after his speech why he felt so strongly about Militant, Leonard said it was aiming to build a “party within the Labour party. I see no one trying to build a party inside the Labour party today.”

Unlike some of his most influential supporters, Leonard has not been a member of the Campaign for Socialism, a Scottish Labour grouping set up in 1994 to combat Tony Blair’s decision to scrap the Clause Four commitment to nationalisation. But Leonard’s critics insist his leadership campaign has benefitted directly from that grouping, which has the informal backing of Corbyn’s team. They allege it had been plotting against former leader Kezia Dugdale for months before her resignation in August.