Labour leadership hopeful Rebecca Long-Bailey has insisted she was not seeking to criticise senior members of Jeremy Corbyn's team after suggesting that nepotism and "mismanagement" had contributed to the party's election defeat.

Sky News understands the leading left-wing candidate has made private phone calls to both Seb Corbyn, son of the Labour leader, and Laura Murray, daughter of senior Labour adviser Andrew Murray, to assure them she was not referring to them when she told The Guardian that under her leadership "promotions will be based on what you know, not who you know".

Seb Corbyn previously worked as an adviser to shadow chancellor John McDonnell, while Laura Murray is the Labour Party's head of complaints.

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The shadow business secretary addressed concerns raised by her comments in a tweet.

She posted: "This has sparked a lot of interest, but I'm clear that Labour has some of the hardest working staff at all levels of any political party in the world, and I'm pledging that their level of dedication will be matched by an organisational structure that makes the most of their talents."


Image: A source said Rebecca Long-Bailey's comments caused 'a massive internal row'

The original comments, which also included criticism of the management of resources and strategy during the election, were widely seen as a veiled attack on senior figures in Mr Corbyn's team.

"While Jeremy's social media pages built on their 2017 success, despite staff's hard work the official Labour party operation fell back in some areas and didn't match up to the Tory strategy of pumping out tailored, persuasive content", she told The Guardian.

"Targeting the wrong seats based on partial data meant activists wasted efforts campaigning in places we couldn't win," she continued.

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A source close to the current leadership has told Sky News that Mrs Long-Bailey's comments had caused "a massive internal row", putting a strain on ties between her backers in the grassroots activist movement Momentum and the Unite union, which have endorsed her as the next leader.

The source also claimed Mrs Long-Bailey's comments to the paper had been referred to the Procedures Committee of Labour's governing body, although this has not been confirmed by the party.