

Jon Lansman, the co-founder of Momentum, has warned against any challenge to Tom Watson as deputy leader and called for an end to personal animosity between figures from Labour and the unions.

Lansman, who helped organise Corbyn’s first leadership bid, called on Watson, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, Len McCluskey, the Unite boss, and Dave Prentis, the Unison boss, to “work together so Labour can transform Britain”.

The intervention comes after public tensions between Watson and McCluskey since the two men attempted peace talks to solve the impasse between Corbyn and rebel MPs over the summer.

Watson used his party conference speech in Liverpool to call on people to stop trashing the record of New Labour, prompting McCluskey to hint that members could vote him out unless he was more supportive.

“If Tom wants to try and refresh his mandate, it would be interesting to see what happens,” the Unite general secretary said at the time.

In practice, launching a challenge would be difficult as it would require a rival candidate to gather the signatures of 51 MPs, but there have been repeated rumours that Corbyn’s allies would like to unseat Watson and remove the party’s chair, Iain McNicol.

Lansman told the Guardian that he wanted to see all sides working more closely together to support Corbyn, who is now “untouchable” as leader after winning a second mandate.

“Between now and the general election, we don’t need any more leadership elections. Debate policy of course, but a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn – or Tom Watson for that matter – won’t build trust and unity or win elections,” he said.

“Unite’s support for Jeremy Corbyn has been consistent, but we need Unison and the GMB as well as smaller unions to be just as integrated into decision-making. And we can’t afford personal animosity between our leaders. John McDonnell, Tom Watson, Len McCluskey and Dave Prentis, we need you all to work together so Labour can transform Britain.”

Lansman’s support for Watson staying in his post comes in spite of the fact that the deputy leader appeared to dismiss Momentum as a “rabble” last year and warned about the influence of hard left “Trotskyist entryists” in the party. Lansman said there needed to be an effort on all sides to get over their “residue of mistrust”.

He said Corbyn supporters were still frustrated about the denial of voting rights in the leadership contest to the disadvantage of their candidate, while MPs fear deselection.



“Mistrust results in what may be defensive actions – such as those focused on control of the NEC – which only serve to exacerbate mistrust,” he said. “We need to now work on building trust and Momentum wants to play its full part in re-uniting the party in this way.

“We will not campaign for mandatory reselection nor to deselect any individual MP. The choice of candidates must be left to local members, just as it says in the rulebook.”

But he added: “We need to see some reciprocation in the purging of large numbers of members for trivial matters. We won’t tolerate abuse but should not be suspending people for swearing or for vigorously liking the Foo Fighters.”

He also called for more representation for Labour’s members, who now number more than 500,000, in party decision-making – a cause likely to be pushed by Corbyn at a special meeting of the NEC in November, known as “democracy day”.