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Jeremy Corbyn has slapped down a suggestion by a former key Blair ally that he should intervene if Labour MPs face deselection.

Baroness Hilary Armstrong made the plea as she claimed Tony Blair refused to support moves to deselect Mr Corbyn back when he was Prime Minister - despite the left-winger's serial rebellions.

She said when she was chief whip, Mr Blair made it clear he wanted to keep Labour “a broad church” and could “tolerate that level of difference”.

Baroness Armstrong suggested Mr Corbyn should now do the same, saying: "I hope he will be absolutely determined to make sure it doesn’t happen under his watch.”

But Mr Corbyn told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "I've no idea this conversation actually took place.

"And also, I don't quite see why people should go to the party leader and say 'we want to influence what's going on in a constituency.'

"The whole point of democracy is that the people decide."

(Image: PA)

He added: "What Hilary Armstrong seems to forget is the selection process is done by party members.

"Yes, I was challenged once or twice during that period for reselection as the Labour candidate for Islington North.

"And obviously I was reselected on all those occasions by the members of the party. There was a trigger ballot, there was a vote, I was reselected."

Currently sitting Labour MPs face a "trigger ballot" where each local branch, union branch and affiliated society branch in a constituency gets a single block vote on whether to keep them before a general election.

Only if they lose this block vote do they face a full-scale selection by local members, pitted against rival candidates.

(Image: Birmingham Post and Mail)

But members could be given more rights if a motion is passed at Labour's conference in September.

MPs who have criticised Jeremy Corbyn 's leadership in the past fear Labour's newly-boosted membership could try and oust them.

Party chair Ian Lavery said "everything is going to be reviewed" and Labour might be "too broad a church". Mr Lavery later insisted he doesn't "see deselection as the way forward".

But another shadow minister, Chris Williamson, said it was "unreasonable" for sitting MPs not to face a contest "to keep Labour fresh and updated".

(Image: Daily Mirror)

The talk prompted a passionate call against deselections by another Corbyn ally Angela Rayner, who asked members to think: "Who are the real enemy?".

She added: "Anyone who talks of deselecting any of my colleagues, quite frankly, they need to think about actually, who are the real enemy here?

"Who are making the problems for our communities at the moment? Who have made those disastrous policies that are hurting the people that need us the most? It doesn’t help them if we’re fighting each other."

Speaking today, Shadow Cabinet minister Sarah Champion said: "To be quite honest I don’t know where this has come from. It keeps coming up and I think, to be quite honest, it’s so we get headlines that we’re a disunited party. I’m not seeing that on the ground.”

Ms Champion told the BBC's John Pienaar that reports of MP Luciana Berger facing threats to her position within her local party had only been prompted by one person.

She added: “Yes, we are going to get rogue people that keep on bringing this up that think they have the right to threaten MPs.

"It’s disgusting and deplorable and it should be zero tolerance to it."