As a new Labour leader is set to be announced, the favourite says he is keen to end the Commons mudslinging and bring seriousness back into debate

Jeremy Corbyn, odds on to be elected Labour party leader on Saturday in one of the most stunning electoral upsets of postwar politics, is to attempt to offer a new era of civility in Westminster politics, promising to end “throwing clubhouse theatrical abuse across the floor of parliament”.

The largely untested Corbyn believes a new style of serious politics could end the alienation from the political process. His ideas, at odds with the image of a firebrand extremist, are expected to be tested at prime minister’s questions, in a bid to show he wants to run a collective, thoughtful leadership.

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The winner of one of the most momentous leadership races in recent times will be announced in London at around 1130. Corbyn told supporters at his final rally he was determined to win back those who do not vote at general elections.

“Fundamentally many people are turned off by a political process when the major parties are not saying anything different enough about how we run the economy, and totally turned off by a style of politics which seems to rely on the levels of clubhouse theatrical abuse that you can throw across at each other in parliament and across the airwaves.”

The hints at a new style come amid increasingly solid evidence that he will heavily defeat his three rival for the leadership when the result is announced at the QEII conference centre in Westminster on Saturday morning.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, is clinging on to the hope that she has made a late surge with party members, but Corbyn is already making plans for constructing a shadow cabinet of all talents, and Tom Watson, expected to be elected deputy leader, is among those urging centrists not boycott the Corbyn frontbench team.



But some frontbenchers, aghast at the series of events that could lead to a Corbyn victory, are set to say they cannot serve in a Corbyn shadow cabinet, since the policy differences are so fundamental that it would destabilise Labour politics. The number who quit the frontbench may depend on how well he does in the ballot, including if he wins heavily in the full members section.

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Likely beneficiaries are Angela Eagle, the chair of the Labour policy forum, Gloria De Piero, the shadow women’s minister, and Lisa Nandy. But Corbyn is keen to keep many of the current shadow cabinet as possible in office.

However, he faces a dilemma over the appointment of Andy Burnham, one of his leadership rivals who was revealed in a tape secretly recorded by the Sun as saying a Corbyn leadership would be a disaster. Burnham had been tipped for the Home Office.

Two of Corbyn’s most important appointments would be the foreign and defence portfolios – where big decisions have to be made over Europe, Nato, a bombing campaign in Syria and a successor to Trident. Corbyn may ask the current shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, to remain in post.

Corbyn has repeatedly claimed he will not respond to personal attacks, a stance his staff may find impossible as the media pursue him over his past record supporting leftwing groups.

He is also planning to change the way the party makes policy, using the internet and social media to hold bottom-up policy consultations. The era is over, he said, “when you elect some all-knowing all-seeing celebrity who sends it down the food chain”.

In a sign of the sharp leftward turn in the party membership, Tessa Jowell was heavily defeated on Friday by Sadiq Khan, the union-backed former shadow justice secretary, for the nomination as London mayoral candidate.



The result, the first concrete evidence of the mood of the party apart from polls, was seen by some of the defeated mayoral candidates as a clear sign that Corbyn will win heavily on Saturday.

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Jowell had tried to fend off the Corbyn surge by presenting herself as a consensual leader who was capable of defeating the Conservatives in the mayoral contest, but she lost heavily in the final ballot by 58.9% to 41.1%, or 48,152 votes to 33,573. Khan won in all three sections of the contest – full party members, affiliated union members and registered supporters who paid a £3 fee to vote.

The results confirmed that the new registered supporters are on the left and heavily motivated to vote, something that will benefit Corbyn in the national contest.

Khan crushed Jowell by 17,179 to 6,351 in the final round of voting among the £3 supporters. In the first round of balloting, Jowell won only 4,400 votes from the £3 registered supporters, a very low score considering her national standing and support among Labour supporters in the capital as revealed in opinion polls. By contrast Diane Abbott, the leftwing candidate closest to Corbyn’s politics, won 6,216 first-round votes among the registered supporters.

Khan, the son of an immigrant bus driver, was backed by the Unite union and although he does not fully share Corbyn’s politics, the mayoral contest will be seen as the first big electoral test of Corbyn’s leadership.

Turnout among full members was 81%, registered supporters 92% and affiliated supporters only 45%.