Chris Williamson said that Mr Corbyn had won “overwhelming landslide victories in the leadership elections and the general election”

The “shop steward” for Labour MPs has dismissed as “daft” a proposal from one of Jeremy Corbyn’s staunchest allies to give party members total power over leadership elections.

John Cryer, chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), spoke out after Chris Williamson called for the party’s MPs to have no say at all in the leadership.

Mr Williamson, the MP for Derby North, said he supported plans to lower the threshold of support in the parliamentary party required for leadership candidates to be put before members, and that he would go further and abolish MPs’ and MEPs’ nominating role.

Mr Cryer dismissed the comments as ludicrous. He said: “Every member of the PLP has been selected and then elected, some of them in some very