Watson urges calm over potential leadership challenges

Tom Watson has encouraged Labour Party factions to “calm down” about potential leadership challenges as well as urging Corbyn supporters to leave the party rulebook as it is.

The Labour deputy leader said there was no appetite for another leadership contest after the decisive wins for him and Corbyn in the summer in an interview for Sky yesterday:

“The fundamentals are that both Jeremy and I were elected last September on a very large mandate from our membership.

“They decide who the leader and deputy leader of the party are. They do not want after nine months another leadership challenge. I hope those MPs on both sides of the argument pay heed to that.”

He said factional attempts to change the rules designed to protect Corbyn from leadership challenges must stop.

“There are people in the party who are trying to change the rules in order to try and protect Jeremy’s position and they might just be precipitating a challenge to his leadership because of that

“Of course that’s not common sense and I just hope that those people that are holding those different views can calm down a bit

“Those rules have stood the test of time. If you’ve got one political faction trying to change the rules it does create uncertainty and insecurity amongst a lot of people. I think it’s unhelpful they’re pushing them at this time.”

This follows revelations that some party activists want to reduce the threshold of nominations from MPs leadership contenders must win in order to appear on the ballot.

The party’s rules are unclear about whether Jeremy Corbyn would be required to win 38 nominations from MPs and MEPs were there to be a leadership challenge – a threshold he struggled to reach last year.

The Labour leader won a mandate of 59 per cent of the vote in the leadership election after only just reaching the nominations threshold to be a candidate.

Any major rules changes, if there were to be any, would be put to a vote by delegates during the annual party conference in September.