Jeremy Corbyn’s former shadow ministers expected to ask for jobs back Around a dozen MPs who resigned as shadow ministers under Jeremy Corbyn will ask to return to his top team […]

Around a dozen MPs who resigned as shadow ministers under Jeremy Corbyn will ask to return to his top team next month if he successfully fights off a leadership challenge, his allies have predicted.

They claimed that Mr Corbyn, who is facing an attempt from Owen Smith to oust him, has already received approaches from several people who would like to return to their old jobs.

One former shadow minister, Sarah Champion, went back to her previous portfolio as a shadow Home Office minister last month.

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Corbyn loyalists claimed others would follow her lead following the leadership contest if – as is widely forecast – he comfortably survives Mr Smith’s challenge,

More than 60 Labour frontbenchers quit at the end of June in an apparently co-ordinated attempt to force Mr Corbyn to step down.

But he resisted the move, which coincided with an overwhelming vote of no confidence in his leadership by the party’s MPs, and appointed a slimmed-down shadow Cabinet.

MPs ‘putting out feelers’

A source told i : “I think some people will be asking to come back. Some have already been put out feelers, saying they were bounced into resigning because others were.”

The source predicted that “around a dozen” would ask to return – and could expect to be given frontbench posts as Mr Corbyn sought to reunite the party following a year of damaging internecine strife.

The Labour leader is reportedly preparing a “truth and reconciliation commission” if he sees off Mr Smith’s challenge and will offer an “amnesty” to his internal critics.

His lieutenants believe that some of them would fall behind Mr Corbyn in the interests of party unity – and to avoid a confrontation with activists who would have twice given him an overwhelming mandate.

“This will be the point where some people get over their differences with Jeremy and pull together. They are Labour people after all and the party will have spoken,” said a second source.

Mr Corbyn is also preparing to appeal to his restive backbenchers to close ranks in case Theresa May calls a snap election next year.

Result ‘too close to call’

However, his supporters remain resigned to not being able to count on a majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Rebel Labour MPs insist that the outcome of the contest between Mr Smith and Mr Corbyn is too close to call.

According to Saving Labour, the campaign group pressing for a challenge of leader, Mr Smith could pull off a narrow victory because most ‘registered supporters’ who paid £25 for a vote could opt for the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.