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Bethan McKernan
Sep 25, 2015
Labour party members unhappy with Jeremy Corbyn's election as leader should wait until public mood has turned against him before trying to force him out, Peter Mandelson has reportedly suggested.
The former minister and adviser to Tony Blair is reported to have urged party members to wait until the time is right in a paper circulated to political associates last week and seen by the Guardian.
Mandelson allegedly said the party is "in for the long haul" and cannot depose the democratically elected Corbyn until the public are ready.
The former business secretary wrote:
In choosing Corbyn instead of Ed Miliband, the general public now feel we are just putting two fingers up to them, exchanging one loser for an even worse one. We cannot be elected with Corbyn as leader.
While Lord Mandelson acknowledged that Corbyn was a clear winner in the leadership election with 59.5 per cent of first-preference votes, he claimed that research shows only a third of people who voted for him were Labour members before May's general election.
The last five years’ intellectual sterility has left Labour floundering before an electorate that wanted to vote against the Tories but did not feel they were being offered a workable alternative.
This does not take away [Corbyn's] success but it puts it into perspective and colours its legitimacy.
Lord Mandelson was vocal about his concerns if Corbyn won the Labour leadership before his victory. He said that Corbyn will demonstrate his "unelectability" to the public, and the public will ultimately decide the party's future.
Nobody will replace [Corbyn], though, until he demonstrates to the party his unelectability at the polls. In this sense, the public will decide Labour’s future and it would be wrong to try and force this issue from within before the public have moved to a clear verdict.
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