Supporters of Corbyn hint that deselection of sitting MPs on the cards to better represent the party’s new members

Jeremy Corbyn’s allies have said they believe rebellious Labour MPs could face deselection from their seats, as he prepares to assert his authority over the party if he wins the leadership race.

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With the results of the contest due to be announced on Saturday, Len McCluskey, one of Corbyn’s most powerful backers, has told a BBC Panorama programme to be broadcast on Monday night, that disloyal MPs should be “held to account”.

“Some of the MPs have behaved despicably and disgracefully and they have shown no respect whatsoever to the leader and they should be held to account,” he told the BBC’s John Pienaar. Asked if disloyal MPs would be “asking for it”, McCluskey replied: “I think they would.”

Clive Lewis, the shadow defence secretary and a close ally of Corbyn, said the question of deselection was a “democratic choice for our members … The whole process of deselection, you call it deselection, well the other word for it is actually a democratic election for your representative in parliament,” he said. He said MPs who had plotted against Corbyn, had “brought it on themselves, in a way”.

However, he added that members must “think carefully” before seeking to oust sitting MPs, saying: “There’s no point going back to the bloodletting of the 1970s and the 1980s when you are basically a party in meltdown.”

Corbyn’s team believes the centre of gravity of British politics has shifted since many serving MPs were selected and a new crop of representatives might better reflect the mood of the party’s greatly enlarged membership, which has swollen to more than 500,000.

Corbyn has insisted that he will “reach out” to MPs in the event that he wins the leadership contest but he has also suggested he would not “interfere” if local parties want to ditch MPs they believe no longer reflect the views of the party.

Margaret Beckett, Labour’s former deputy leader and a member of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), said there was a disconnect between Corbyn’s language and the behaviour of some of his allies. “There’s something strange going on where on the one hand Jeremy says, with all sincerity, that he wants to see greater unity in the party but the people around him seem to be going out of their way to say and do things that will cause greater disunity. And Jeremy doesn’t seem to be very good at disassociating himself from it,” she said.

One proposal thought to be under consideration is making trigger ballots – the rarely-used mechanism for ejecting sitting MPs – more straightforward, an idea that could be brought to Tuesday’s NEC by allies of Corbyn.

Corbyn himself denied yesterday that MPs faced the “veiled threat” of deselection, telling ITV that “it’s not a veiled threat. It’s not a direct threat. It’s not any kind of threat”.

But some of his backers regard deselection by local members as part of the process of “democratising” the Labour party, which could also include more involvement for members in selecting the shadow cabinet and deciding the direction of party policy.

Increasing members’ involvement in policymaking has been a longstanding passion for Corbyn, who was a founder member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in the 1970s. Tony Benn was a strong advocate of its demands.

Corbyn’s team are considering a series of proposals, including allowing members to elect up to a third of shadow cabinet posts, which are likely to be discussed by the NEC on Tuesday.

His rival for the leadership, Owen Smith, rejected that idea on Sunday, telling Sky News: “It isn’t a conciliatory gesture, it’s not simply an attempt to extend democracy in the Labour party. It’s an attempt to further cement his position and use the membership as a means of driving a wedge between the MPs and his leadership.”

But several NEC members told the Guardian they believed that the proposal was unlikely to pass. Separately Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, is also expected to table an alternative plan, which would see a return to MPs electing most shadow cabinet posts – a system abolished by Ed Miliband.

Several high profile MPs, including the shadow education secretary, Lucy Powell, and Labour’s sole MP in Scotland, Ian Murray, have said they would consider standing in shadow cabinet elections.

Meanwhile Corbyn’s team is facing questions over the blurring of the relationship between the leader’s campaign and Momentum, the grassroots group that Smith has described as “a party within a party”.

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In an undercover investigation, Channel 4’s Dispatches filmed a Momentum national organiser, Emma Rees, warning Momentum campaigners to only refer to themselves as Jeremy for Labour campaigners. “Jeremy for Labour phone banks, or Jeremy for Labour street stalls, or Jeremy for Labour whatever. Now they might in reality , in many instances, be organised by Momentum Camden and Momentum Tyne and Wear … but I don’t think it’s helpful for Jeremy for those to be labelled on his website as Momentum,” she is filmed telling the undercover reporter.

The documentary, which will air on Monday night, will also show Rees warning Momentum activists not to reveal that they are working for the campaign group while using meeting space in the headquarters of Unite, which has donated to Jeremy for Leader.

At a Momentum staff meeting, Adam Klug, the national organiser, said: “Unite, the union, [has] given space to the campaign specifically, they haven’t actually donated space to Momentum … I’m sure no one would have an issue with it informally but, obviously, officially that’s not the case. So if we can just be discreet when anyone comes in.”

A Momentum spokesman responded to Dispatches’s allegations, accusing the broadcaster of exploiting “enthusiastic and young activists and their open, welcoming approach”. The spokesman added that some of the allegations aired in the documentary are “slurs or matters of opinion, which will raise more concerns about the impartiality of the broadcaster than anything else”.



