Labour leadership race erupts after Lisa Nandy accuses Corbyn team of 'factional war'
2 min read
The Labour leadership race has erupted into open warfare after Lisa Nandy accused supporters of Jeremy Corbyn of wanting to "crush" his critics.
Ms Nandy told the BBC that the threat came when Labour MPs tried to oust the party leader in the wake of the 2016 EU referendum.
But her remarks were dismissed as "utter bullshit" by Matt Zarb-Cousin, a spokesman for Rebecca Long-Bailey who once did the same job for Mr Corbyn.
And Labour Party chair Ian Lavery, who is backing Ms Long-Bailey's leadership bid, accused Ms Nandy of "gutter like garbage".
The Wigan MP said she and other "soft left" colleagues had gone to Mr Corbyn in a bid to broker a peace deal at the height of the coup attempt against his leadership.
She said: "Some senior politicians in his own team, they made it very, very clear that they were going to continue to wage that factional war until the other side had been crushed.
"It wasn't Jeremy but there was no point at all at which he contradicted that."
Ms Nandy - who went on to co-chair Owen Smith's leadership campaign when he challenged Mr Corbyn - added: "We've had four years, not just of infighting within the Labour Party and a factional war, waged from the frontbenches and the backbenches that showed the public we were more interested in ourselves, than we were in them, but we'd also had Brexit which was really, really devastating."
Responding to the comments on Twitter, Mr Zarb-Cousin said: "Utter bullshit."
Replying to a Nandy supporter, he added: "Your candidate has literally given an interview to a national broadcaster where she’s misrepresented events from four years ago to undermine the left. If attempting to re write history isn’t looking inward I don’t know what is."
Meanwhile, Mr Lavery tweeted: "This is sad. Lisa and I are friends but this truly is gutter like garbage."
The row is significant because the leadership race has been notable for the unity between the rival candidates on most issues.
Elsewhere in her interview, Mr Nandy said: "I feel like my only friends in the world at the moment are Becky and Keir. We just go round and round conference centres shouting slogans at each other.
"Occasionally, when I'm not doing this I do get out and go for a pint and have a chat to my actual mates, Tory or otherwise."
Mr Corbyn's successor will be announced at a special conference on 4 April.
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