Leader’s tough position underlines weakness of rebels following re-election as he believes he will have full shadow cabinet by start of parliament

A deal on shadow cabinet elections will not be settled before November and Jeremy Corbyn insists that allies who filled major posts in July will not be moved whatever compromise is struck, according to sources close to the negotiations.

The Labour leader believes he will be in a position to have a fully functioning new shadow cabinet by the start of parliament on 10 October without needing to offer the parliamentary party a deal on the election of posts.

Corbyn’s praise in his Liverpool conference speech of those who came to his aid when more than 60 frontbenchers resigned this summer irritated former shadow cabinet ministers but has set the tone for behind-the-scenes talks on the make-up of the frontbench.

Those talks will continue on Monday, but there is no intention on the leader’s part to resolve the issue of shadow cabinet elections until an awayday for the party’s governing body in November, when further “democratisation” of the party will be discussed.

The development is a blow to those who hoped to return in a new shadow cabinet that reflected the political positions of the whole parliamentary party, and is an illustration of the weakness of the rebels following Corbyn’s victory.

Shadow business secretary Jon Trickett, a Corbyn ally, and leader’s aide Amy Jackson have been negotiating with the chief whip Rosie Winterton and John Cryer, who is chair of the parliamentary party, over the terms of a compromise. Under the terms being discussed, the parliamentary party would elect a small pool of people for the Labour leader to put into the shadow cabinet.

But in his speech in Liverpool, Corbyn paid tribute to those who joined the opposition frontbench during the crisis, including shadow international development secretary Kate Osamor and shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, describing them as “the future”.

One former shadow cabinet minister said: “The main stumbling block in the talks over shadow cabinet elections is Jeremy himself. It’s not going to be acceptable if he’s just filling lesser posts, like shadow Welsh secretary and other ones he can’t [fill] with elected people.”

Despite the wrangling, deputy Labour leader Tom Watson appeared to offer an olive branch to Jon Lansman, the leading light in the Momentum campaign group and a Corbyn ally.

Last week, Lansman both ruled out deselection of so-called moderate MPs and criticised comments from the Unite union’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, which appeared to encourage a challenge to Watson. Watson told the Observer: “I am grateful for Jon Lansman’s clear and unambiguous promise that Momentum will not campaign for the deselection of hard-working labour MPs.

“Though I have been critical of Momentum in the past, its fringe conference in Liverpool was conducted for the most part in a non-partisan fashion and floated some interesting and creative policy ideas. Jon’s comments will help stabilise the ship after a difficult summer and are very much appreciated.”

More generally, the parliamentary Labour party is split about how to respond to Corbyn’s re-election as leader. Some believe that the time has come to allow the Labour leader to “succeed or fail on his own terms”. Others believe that another challenge must be made before 2020 to avoid a “cataclysmic” electoral result that could put an end to hopes of a Labour government for generations.

A senior party figure said there would be a concerted effort to recruit some of the 300,000 Labour members who do not sympathise with Corbyn’s project.

In a further sign of the continued resistance to Corbyn’s leadership despite another thumping victory, Richard Angell, director of Progress, the so-called modernising group in the party, has written to subscribers of the organisation’s magazine, claiming the Labour leader had in his speech managed to call “a lot of the public racist”.

“I bow to no one in my liberal pro-immigration views but to suggest that to have any policy other than recreating the Migration Impact Fund is the politics of ‘racism and division’ is a cul-de-sac for Labour,” he writes. “Cue the trolls having said this, but it is true. In reality, this was another way of calling a lot of the public racist.”

Meanwhile, Tony Blair’s former director of communications, Alastair Campbell, has admitted that his newly published diaries starkly show how New Labour helped sow the seeds of Brexit by failing to respond to growing concerns over immigration.

He said he feared the party became complacent on the issue because of Blair’s electoral success. The diaries, covering 2003-2005, also reveal that the then chancellor Gordon Brown had growing concerns that Labour had not done enough to shift opinions, complaining that Blair was helping the Tories under Michael Howard to turn immigration into an electoral issue.

Campbell said: “We were more and more aware of the problem politically but there was always a tension between knowing that the economy and public services needed immigration but knowing the issue was causing real concerns.”