A newly selected Labour candidate who described Jeremy Corbyn as an unelectable throwback whose policies would bring nothing but ruin to the party has said he now backs the leader’s “genius” manifesto.

Tony Lywood, a Labour councillor, was selected on Saturday as the party’s parliamentary candidate in the Conservative-held marginal of Copeland in Cumbria.



Lywood, who described Corbyn two years ago as a “throwback to an age of class war that has now gone”, was backed by shadow cabinet members including Angela Rayner, Jon Trickett, Richard Burgon and Laura Pidcock.

He was also endorsed by Momentum, the influential pro-Corbyn campaign group, angering some local activists due to his previously outspoken attacks on the leader.



In Facebook posts seen by the Guardian, Lywood described Corbyn as the “political equivalent of Orangemen, locked in a struggle that no longer exists”, and said: “I have not and will not support him or his bonkers, unworkable, radically leftwing policies and that will bring nothing but ruin to the party.”

In one Facebook post from 2016, Lywood said: “We live in a time of unprecedented wealth for nearly all compared with the days of my youth. Corbyn is like one of those Japanese WWII jungle fighters who fought on and will only come out of the undergrowth when their general arrives.

“Perhaps we should dig up Marx and get him to tell Corbyn that the old war is over and there are different fights to be had.”

Lywood also railed against Labour policies, including the nationalisation of rail firms, claiming that “rich-bashing and the reintroduction of nationalised industries is not the way forward and Corbyn may actually split the party”.



However, Lywood told the Guardian he had since been won over by Corbyn’s ideas and backed the nationalisation of rail, bus and water companies.

“I hold my hands up. I said everything. I was extremely critical of Jeremy and extremely critical of his policies and I’m not going to back down and said I didn’t say it because I did,” he said.

“But the manifesto [in 2017] was a piece of genius. It changed my opinion of both the leader and the policies he espouses. I’m not hiding behind anything – that is what I said but I was wrong. If you think about it, many, many, many people in the Labour party were in exactly the same situation – they were not happy with Jeremy’s leadership.”

Lywood said he believed Corbyn “represents the best bet we have to remove a Tory government”. He added: “What’s more important, more than Jeremy Corbyn, is the ideas underlying his leadership. I support Jeremy completely because he is the best bet for us to remove Theresa May.”

Lywood’s selection is the latest example of discord between local Momentum groups and its national body that decides which candidates to endorse. Gavin Johnston, a Carlisle-born Momentum activist who is bidding to be on the organisation’s national coordinating group, accused Lywood of being a “charlatan” who was only now supporting Corbyn because “the tide has turned”.

Lywood said those on the “very extreme left” had to decide whether to support him as Copeland’s Labour candidate: “Like in any religion, if you get a convert from one viewpoint to another, do you castigate them for the views they used to have, or do you welcome them in?”.

A Momentum spokesman said Lywood came to the group’s attention because local members recommended him and that he was chosen by a panel of national coordinating group members, including some from Cumbria.

The spokesman added that the panel did not know about Lywood’s specific Facebook posts, “but did know he had been critical of Corbyn in the past”.

Lywood said his anti-Corbyn Facebook posts had been deleted. “I’m not going to be standing as a Labour candidate with posts saying that Corbyn’s bonkers. That would be ridiculous,” he said.