Keir Starmer on Saturday refused to guarantee his two remaining rivals for the Labour leadership places in his shadow cabinet if he succeeds Jeremy Corbyn. Meanwhile, anxiety grew among MPs from different wings of the party over its future direction.

At a leadership hustings in Glasgow, held the day after shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry was eliminated from the contest, Starmer said he “saluted” Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy.

But the bookies’ clear favourite declined to invite either of them into his top team. “I don’t think any of us are going to get into jostling for positions on this,” Starmer said.

In response, Long-Bailey said: “I feel a bit sad that Keir doesn’t want us in his shadow cabinet. I know we don’t agree all the time, and our visions are probably very different, but we meet on areas of common ground, and that’s what would make us a strong shadow cabinet and I would have Keir and Lisa in my shadow cabinet.”

Nandy indicated that she would also welcome both rivals to serve under her, saying she would be “proud to serve alongside these two”.

Thornberry was knocked out of the contest after failing to reach the necessary threshold of support from local parties or Labour affiliates.

At a deadline of midnight on Friday, she had 31 nominations from local constituency parties, two short of the 33 needed, and had failed to receive any nominations from affiliates. Starmer, Long-Bailey and Nandy had already met the requirement to get on to the ballot papers, which will go out to party members in the next few days.

Starmer’s remarks came, as behind the scenes, MPs from the right and left of the party advanced their own demands for a new shadow cabinet.

Critics of the Corbyn project said that if the next leader did not signal a clear departure from the recent past by placing figures such as Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn and Rachel Reeves in key posts, then Labour would have “learnt nothing” from its disastrous election defeat in December.

The members will not put up with a move back to New Labour and centrism. We will have a party that is completely divided again Leftwing Labour MP

This wing would like to see Cooper as shadow home secretary, Reeves as shadow chancellor, and Benn as shadow foreign secretary. “If we do not make these kinds of appointments under Starmer or whoever it is, then we are saying we do not want to win elections, full stop,” said one former minister.

But leftwing MPs sympathetic to Corbyn were also flexing their muscles, saying that if Corbynites like Long-Bailey are excluded members will rise up in protest. “They will not put up with a move back to New Labour and centrism,” said one MP. “We will have a party that is completely divided again between the majority of the parliamentary party and the majority of the membership.”

Throughout the contest, Starmer has pitched his campaign to the left in order not to alienate members, who have the final say. But another MP said: “The question is, if Starmer wins, what will he do then? Who he appoints to the shadow cabinet will be the first big signal.”

At yesterday’s hustings, Long-Bailey was the only remaining candidate who would grant the Scottish parliament legal powers to hold a second independence referendum, saying that to refuse this “would drive more of our voters into the arms of the Scottish National party”.

Starmer did not rule out the possibility, saying: “It is an interesting question, but we shouldn’t get sucked into that. The SNP are constantly using the constitutional issue to mask other issues.”But Nandy reinforced her opposition to another independence referendum saying: “We have to stand up for Scotland remaining in the UK, and for solidarity across the nations and regions of the UK.”