Frontrunner in party’s leadership contest gives clearest indication yet that role of MPs and shadow cabinet would be diminished

Policy will be made by Labour members and not the leader, shadow cabinet, or parliamentary party, Jeremy Corbyn has said in a debate with his three leadership rivals organised by the Guardian. The frontrunner has previously made clear that his policy proposals are only suggestions that would have to be agreed by colleagues, but this is his clearest indication yet that the role of MPs and the shadow cabinet would be diminished.

“I don’t think we can go on having policy made by the leader, shadow cabinet, or parliamentary Labour party. It’s got to go much wider. Party members need to be more enfranchised. Whoever is elected will have a mandate from a large membership.”

Getting the Labour party members to agree policy is one way in which Corbyn could get around the difficult problem of his lack of support in the parliamentary party, in which he has the support of just 20 MPs.

Labour leadership hustings: Guardian panellists' verdict Read more

Corbyn, who has rebelled against his party more than 500 times in his career, said MPs would not be “corralled” by whips into voting the same way as the leadership under a more consensual style of management. However, in recent days, the MP for Islington North appears to have been hardening his stance against any MPs who might be tempted to launch a coup against him or resist policies they do not like, such as scepticism about Nato and opposition to Trident.

He previously told the Independent: “I will absolutely use our supporters to push our agenda up to the parliamentary party and get them to follow that. We have to encourage the parliamentary Labour party to be part of that process and not to stand in the way of democratising the party and empowering the party members. It is going to be an interesting discussion.”

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After speculation that he would return to shadow cabinet elections, Corbyn has now confirmed that he would pick his own team, which would ensure that loyalists are close to him. He has, however, dismissed suggestions that he would want to remove centrist MPs though deselections.

Corbyn made the comments at a hustings hosted by the Guardian at which the candidates also clashed on the economic record of the Blair and Brown era, and Labour’s approach to Europe.

Yvette Cooper positioned herself as the only leadership contender prepared to stand up for the last Labour government’s financial management. In a tense exchange, Cooper attacked the narrative that the party had been responsible for the financial crisis while in government.

“The facts are that we had a small deficit just before the financial crisis and ideally that would have been a surplus,” she told the audience at the Emmanuel Centre in London. “Here’s the difference between us on this. I don’t think we were too weak to deal with the financial crisis … We were strong enough to cut VAT, strong enough to support the car industry with a car scrappage scheme. Strong enough to stop banks going bust.”

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Hitting back, Andy Burnham said: “I would say Yvette is half right. The spending did not cause the crash, but the point is – were we in a strong enough position to deal with it when it came? That is the point, isn’t it? And I think unless you’re honest about the past, the public won’t give you credit for the vast majority you got right.”

The question of how far the candidates should renounce the policies of New Labour has become one of the central themes of the contest. Corbyn has said he would apologise for the Iraq war and address private finance initiative debts of hospitals. At the hustings, he attacked the economic policy of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for failing to “ensure protection of growth”.

“During the period of the last Labour government, we did some great things,” he said. “But … we allowed inequality to continue and in some ways get worse. We did very little about ensuring protection of growth … We have a grossly imbalanced economy with 80% in the service sector. We have to make strong decisions. The money we’ve poured into the banks – what’s happened to it?”

The candidates also differed on the EU, with Corbyn the only one not to rule out campaigning for Britain to leave. He said he could not see Labour campaigning for a Brexit “at the present time” but warned that the party should realise that Europe had changed and had acted in a “brutal” way towards Greece.

“We seem to be in danger of saying it doesn’t matter what Cameron negotiates, we’re going to give him a blank cheque come the time,” he said. “Why aren’t we in there now making those demands about workers’ conditions and workers’ rights across Europe, which he’s … ready to negotiate away?”

Liz Kendall made a passionate plea for Labour to make a positive pro-European argument. “If we allow this issue of our role in Europe to be defined by the issue of whether Polish workers get tax credits, we will have utterly failed,” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Liz Kendall: there is no simple soundbite policy on immigration.

Corbyn’s cautious views on Europe, as well as his anti-austerity policies, have alarmed senior figures in the party.

It was the second clash of the day for the candidates, who were first grilled by a panel of the public at a hustings for the Daily Mirror dominated by questions on immigration, foreign policy, welfare and constitutional reform.

During the debate, Cooper gave her strongest signal yet that, after the publication of the Chilcot report, there will probably be “an apology from both the government and the opposition”. Burnham also suggested there could be an apology after the inquiry’s findings are made public.

The strongest language on welfare came from Corbyn, who called on Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, to resign following the publication of figures from his department showing thousands of benefit claimants died within weeks of being declared fit to work.

“The benefit cap is appalling, actually. I represent an inner-city, inner-London constituency. Frankly we’re being socially cleansed,” he said.

“The rent goes up, the benefit cap doesn’t meet the rent. That means they’re either forced to go hungry or move away from their families and the lives they’ve built.” Burnham, Cooper and Kendall also condemned the figures and called for action.

All agreed it was time to replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber, but Corbyn also revealed he would like to go further than that by weakening some of the Queen’s powers. “The royal prerogative should be subject to parliamentary vote and veto if necessary,” he said. “The Queen hands her powers to the prime minister and he can then exercise them. It’s a very convenient way of bypassing parliament. Also, orders in council are a very convenient way of bypassing parliament.”

One of the royal prerogative powers derived from the crown, rather than parliament, is the prime minister’s ability to commit troops in armed conflict.

There was also a marked difference between the candidates on immigration. Corbyn said the rise in the number of migrants to Britain to a record high was something to be “celebrated”.

However, Burnham said that Labour needed to do better at listening to its own supporters, whose communities and constituencies are some of the worst affected by the pressures and changes caused by immigration. “Those communities don’t get any help from Westminster or Brussels to deal with those problems,” he said.

On foreign policy, Corbyn appeared to retreat from his previous suggestions that the UK could leave Nato, saying that he would want changes but that there was not an “appetite” to leave.

Corbyn remains favourite to win the leadership race according to bookmakers and polling, while Burnham and Cooper are vying to be seen as the candidate in second place who has a chance of beating him. A new survey from YouGov gave an insight for the first time into some of the views of people supporting each camp, finding that the Labour selectorate was much more interested in politics, considerably more likely to describe themselves as leftwing, and more male than the country at large.

Earlier, Peter Mandelson warned about a Corbyn leadership and called for a fightback among modernisers. It is the closest that any senior anti-Corbyn figure has come to hinting at a coup should he become leader.



Writing in the FT, he said it could be a “sad and possibly final chapter in the British Labour party’s history” if Corbyn wins. He also conceded that New Labour had made mistakes in allowing “critics within the party to create a caricature of modernisation as a sectarian creed alien to the party’s values and history”.