Many prominent MPs say if incumbent wins leadership vote they will not accept top jobs unless cabinet elections are held

Prominent Labour MPs are set to reject a return to the frontbench if Jeremy Corbyn wins Saturday’s leadership battle and fails to accept elections to the shadow cabinet.

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Corbyn’s team have conducted a series of meetings over the past four weeks in a bid to persuade rebel MPs to join his team and end the doubling-up of jobs that has been necessary since the rash of resignations that followed the Brexit vote.

But many say they have either have not been approached or would refuse to serve without a mandate from their colleagues in the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) – and are readying themselves for what one called “coexistence” with Corbyn from the backbenches.

“I would be surprised if he gets more than a dozen,” said one senior party source, adding that there were more than 60 unfilled posts.

High-profile resignations such as Heidi Alexander and Lilian Greenwood; centrists including Stella Creasy, Rachel Reeves and Gloria De Piero; Lisa Nandy and Kerry McCarthy from the soft left; and Labour’s only MP in Scotland, Ian Murray, have all either not been approached or are expected to be unwilling to take a job without a mandate from the PLP. Louise Haigh, who holds a junior shadow post but is regarded as a rising star, is not thought to be willing to step into a more senior role.

Others, including Hilary Benn, Chuka Umunna and Yvette Cooper, are seeking election to chair powerful select committees in a signal that they believe they can oppose the government most effectively from the backbenches.

One senior MP said: “People want to coexist, but they want to be able to do so without eschewing their principles or being forced to repudiate the reasons for their resignation or their no confidence vote.” Another added: “Shadow cabinet elections would give people their own legitimacy.”

Corbyn’s team, who are upbeat about his prospects for victory over his rival for the leadership, Owen Smith, believe he can win over enough MPs to bolster his depleted shadow cabinet without having to concede on elections, although they said the issue was “up for discussion”.

“The party will have to be consulted before any decisions over shadow cabinet elections are made,” a source said. Corbyn himself has repeatedly promised to hold out an olive branch to his MPs – and has even joked that he is growing an olive tree on his balcony for that purpose.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hilary Benn was sacked by Jeremy Corbyn from the shadow cabinet in June. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA

But he has also warned that it would be “destructive self-indulgence” for Labour MPs to continue to criticise him in public if, as expected, he wins a second mandate from the wider party this weekend.

Corbyn has overseen a dramatic increase in the size of Labour’s membership and addressed mass rallies up and down Britain as part of the hard-fought summer leadership campaign. But he overwhelmingly lost a vote of no confidence among his MPs in June.

Some of Corbyn’s allies believe he should strike a conciliatory note in his acceptance speech on Saturday, but other backers have called for disloyal MPs to face the threat of deselection as Labour candidates, with Unite general secretary Len McCluskey warning earlier this week that they were “asking for it”.

A small group of senior backbenchers have told the Guardian they are preparing to help the party hold the government to account over its Brexit plans, and Corbyn is also expected to offer a frontline role to new Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti.

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But they appear to be more than outnumbered by those who would struggle to explain to their members and constituents why they had changed their minds since resigning over the summer or refusing to serve in Corbyn’s team in the first place.

Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, put forward proposals for shadow cabinet elections to “get the band back together” at Tuesday’s marathon national executive committee meeting.

But Corbyn’s allies saw that as an attempt to clip the leader’s wings and they would only be willing to accept the idea alongside wider measures for democratising the party, including a greater role for members.

Another NEC meeting will be held on Saturday after the leadership result is announced, and Corbyn has agreed in principle to talks to come up with alternative proposals.

However, no formal meeting had taken place by Thursday night. Sources close to the chief whip, Rosie Winterton, who was expected to be involved in brokering a deal, said: “We haven’t had them yet, but there’s still time. Jeremy publicly said there would be discussions; the election only stopped yesterday and we’re all trying to get prepared. I still think it’s perfectly possible to get something agreed in time”.

Dan Jarvis, who was mooted as a potential leadership challenger earlier this year, is among those thought to be considering a role on the frontbench.

Keir Starmer, the MP for Holborn and St Pancras who some in the party view as a potential future leader, is expected to join the shadow cabinet, according to associates. Tulip Siddiq, MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, said she would now consider joining, if asked. “I will definitely consider joining the shadow cabinet whoever the leader is because we have to unite behind whoever wins. We’ve let the Tories take advantage of our divided party for too long. It’s time to be an effective opposition and hold the government to account.”

Centrist Labour group Progress, which is chaired by Wirral South MP Alison McGovern, published a strongly worded editorial in its magazine on Thursday, urging MPs sceptical about Corbyn’s approach to remain in the party and fight for “clause one socialism”.

Smith has repeatedly said a Corbyn win could split the party, while the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, has made it clear that he would welcome disillusioned Labour MPs into his party.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson put forward a series of proposals at the NEC meeting to reunite the party. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

But Progress urged supporters to stay and fight. It accused John McDonnell, Corbyn’s campaign chairwho has previously called Progress hard-right, of seeking “control of the party machine” rather than strengthening Labour’s hand in parliament.

It said: “At its founding, the party’s intention was clearly spelled out for the world to see in the very first paragraph of the constitution: to ‘maintain in parliament … a political Labour party’. If we stay, if we fight, and if our ideas and organisation improve, ‘clause one socialists’ will win the day.

“It will not be easy – if it were, it would have been done already – but the alternative is to concede more than 110 years of history, and the potential to do good once again, to a cabal more at home on a march with the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty than on doorsteps across the land. This is our party and we are going nowhere.”

The AWL is one of the hard-left groups highlighted by Watson when he spoke of “Trotskyist entryism” into the party.

Separately, the former foreign secretary David Miliband, who lost the 2010 Labour leadership election to his brother Ed, has said Corbyn and his supporters have driven Labour into an electoral “dead end”.

In an article in the New Statesman, Miliband warns against “the critique that everyone who disagrees with Jeremy Corbyn is in fact a closet Tory – or ‘Tory lite’,” accusing Corbyn’s supporters of failing to accept that government entails compromise and instead embracing “the sectarianism that leads to the dead end of permanent opposition”.

His language echoed that of the prominent backbencher Umunna, who used an article in the i newspaper to urge his colleagues not to wave the “white flag” in the battle for Labour.

“We cannot allow bullies to take over our movement and force out any part of the Labour tradition, all strands of which have the right to a voice whoever is the leader,” he wrote. “The Labour family is bigger, better and stronger than that.”