A key ally of Jeremy Corbyn last night stepped up attacks on Labour moderates – warning them it is ‘not their party’.
Barry Gardiner backed proposals to strengthen the hard-left’s grip on Labour by demanding activists get a bigger say over the party leadership elections.
The shadow international trade secretary tore into Labour moderates, who he said too often think ‘this party is our party’.
He warned Labour ‘belongs to its members’ who ‘should have a bigger say’ over policy.
The attack comes just a week before the Labour Party conference kicks off, where the hard left is expected to try to re-write party rules on how to elect a leader.
Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, said he backs giving members more say over the Labour party leadership as he rounded on moderates telling them it is not their party
Under existing rules, a leadership hopeful needs to get the support of 15 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party to make the ballot.
But leftwingers want to reduce this threshold to just five per cent to try to make it easier for them to get a candidate on the shortlist in future election
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last night, Mr Gardiner said: ‘Quite honestly – 15, 10, five, two – I don’t care.
‘It’s the members ultimately that need to decide this.’
He added: ‘It’s not an issue of need. This is about the membership realising that they are the ones who decide the future of the party.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, pictured giving a speech at the May Day march in London’s Trafalgar Square. The hard-left leadership want a change to the Labour Party rule book – dubbed the McDonnell ammendment – to decrease the proportion of MP and MEPs a leadership hopeful would have to get in order to be on the leadership ballot
‘All too often members of Parliament seem to think that actually “this party is our party, we are the important people in it”.
‘No. It is the members and it is them on behalf of the public and that is why they should have a bigger say.’
Mr Gardiner said Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘is now absolutely ensconced as our leader’ after having done far better than predicted in the election and denied Theresa May an overall majority.
The Labour hard-left are determined to try to change the membership rules to make it easier to elect a successor to Jeremy Corbyn form their own ranks.
A rule change – dubbed the ‘McDonnell amendment’ and named after the hard-left shadow chancellor John McDonnell, is expected to be debated at conference next week.
If it is passed, it will radically reduce the amount of power Labour MP and MEPs have over who becomes party leader.
Instead, a far greater say will be handed to party members, who are far more left-wing than the party’s MPs and are overwhelmingly Corbyn supporters.
The move would make it far harder for moderates to wrest back control of the party from the far-left.