ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

A moderate Labour pressure group dubbed “the Resistance” is being formed by two top shadow cabinet members as Jeremy Corbyn pulls ahead in the leadership race, the Evening Standard can reveal.

Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt have written privately to Labour MPs calling on them to meet four days before the leadership result is announced. It is being seen by MPs as a rival to Mr Corbyn’s Left-wing platform and the start of guerrilla warfare for Labour’s soul.

Mr Corbyn today issued plans to give more say over policy to party members, who are typically more Left-leaning than its MPs.

The two frontbenchers stressed the need to “look beyond recent Labour policy prescriptions”, saying Labour had lost its political and intellectual edge. “The leadership contest has been tortuous, but has exposed the fact that we have failed to do sufficient political and intellectual mobilisation in this regard,” wrote Mr Umunna, who is the shadow business secretary, and Mr Hunt, the shadow education secretary.

“There is now an urgent need for moderates in our party to do so, if we are to inspire hope in the party and the country again.”

The group, Labour for the Common Good, will meet on September 8 and include some peers, council leaders and trade unionists.

The disclosure comes as 600,000 ballot papers were posted out to party members, affiliated trade unionists and an army of registered supporters who have paid £3 to vote.

Contender Liz Kendall said a Corbyn win would be Labour’s “resignation letter to the British people as a serious party of government”. She urged supporters not to make him their second, third or fourth preference.

But Mr Corbyn made clear during a campaign visit to Scotland that he would restore the influence of members and the party conference. “Labour has drifted into a presidential model of politics,” he said.

Asked about the new group, a Labour figure said: “Ah, you mean The Resistance?” in a reference to French underground fighters during the Second World War.

But Mr Hunt told the Standard: “This last election defeat felt like a cultural collapse — more so than in 2010. We need a thorough and searching inquiry which responds to this intellectual crisis and this project will play a part in that. Because the truth is it will take a long time — far longer than this leadership contest — to develop a politics which can renew the party and regain people’s trust.”

Mr Corbyn’s 10-point plan unveiled in Edinburgh listed Left-of-centre policies, including an end to austerity, public ownership of railways and energy, rent controls and house building, scrapping Trident, and ending student fees. He said he offered “a new kind of politics”.

But Labour MP Ivan Lewis accused Mr Corbyn of “failing to speak out against people who have engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric.”