Jeremy Corbyn has offered rebel MPs the chance to rejoin his frontbench — but only if they agree with his anti-austerity policies.
Corbyn acknowledged flaws in his communication style but insisted any MPs wishing to return to the fold would need to support “the general direction of the economy and policy”.
He is expected to see off a leadership challenge from Owen Smith in a special conference next Saturday before the regular Labour Party conference starts the following day.
Speculation has been mounting that several MPs, many of whom resigned from the shadow cabinet after the European Union (EU) referendum and who backed a vote of no confidence in the leader by 172-40, may be ready to return to 
Corbyn’s team.
The Labour leader told the Guardian: “I will put it to them that I’ve got a mandate, if I’m elected.
“I’ll put it to them that the mandate is about the policies I’m trying to put forward.
Not every dot and comma and crossed t, or whatever. But it is the general direction of the economy and policy. And I’ll invite them to work with us.”
“I’ll rely on the best natures that can come out.
“A lot of people say lots of things in the heat of the moment. But of course I’ve made mistakes, and of course we need to do better. We certainly can’t carry on as we did.”
He added: “Whether they’re going to love me at the end of it? I think the love may be further away.”
His comments will fuel speculation the leadership will accept a vote by MPs and peers to restore elections to select the shadow cabinet rather than it being directly appointed by Corbyn.
The parliamentary Labour Party’s ballot on reintroducing the measure Ed Miliband axed in 2011 will need to be approved by the national executive committee and the conference.
Allies like shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry and shadow chancellor John McDonnell have signalled they could support shadow cabinet elections, despite it being seen as a move against the leadership, and potentially welcome Smith back to the top team.
The Labour leader’s comments came after he enjoyed what many observers described as his best performance yet at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, when he pushed prime minister Theresa May over her plans for a new wave of grammar schools.
The Labour leader revealed he has been working on his presentation, which MPs have been highly critical of over the past year.
“I’m trying to remould it because communication is everything,” Corbyn said.
“If you can’t communicate your views, you’re not getting anywhere. Could we do things differently? Probably. It’s something I want to develop.”
It comes after Smith said Labour was “sleepwalking towards an electoral disaster” which could tear it apart if Corbyn remains leader.
Alan Johnson has branded Corbyn supporters “tyrannical” middle-class “smart-a***s” as he called for MPs to continue to undermine their leader.
Johnson railed against the “self-righteous” leader and characterised his supporters as akin to Marxists and folk music fans who protested when Bob Dylan “went electric”.
The ex-postman, seen by many Labour MPs as the great leader the party never had, called on Corbyn-sceptics to continue to destabilise the leader’s position even if he is returned to the top job next week, as expected.
Johnson told the Times: “They’ve captured the castle. 
“Just as the (left-wing) Campaign group carried on year after year undermining whoever was the Labour leader to the best of their abilities, so we’ve got to do the same. We’ve got to recapture this party again, otherwise it’s dead and finished and gone.”
The former home secretary said Corbyn’s performance during the EU referendum was “useless” and suggested the leader may have secretly voted to Leave because he kept altering speeches to remove references to him personally supporting Remain.
“I think he might have done,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t be surprised but he was probably more neutral.
“The hard core of Seumas Milne (Corbyn’s director of communications) and the people around him, they voted to leave, and John McDonnell I’m absolutely certain.
In 1975 they thought the EU was a rich man’s club and that’s still what they think.”
Johnson said the adulation Corbyn receives from his followers has “gone to his head” but that deep down he knows he is incapable of leading a political party.
And he tore into Corbyn’s supporters, likening them to religious “true believers” in Marx, Engels and Trotsky who are not interested in power because it is a “bourgeois concept” and thought Nelson Mandela was a “sell-out”.
“It’s conducted mainly by middle-class people who are not going to feel any difference with changes of government,” he said.
“The most vociferous Corbyn supporters are in swathes of East Yorkshire and Sussex and Surrey.
They live very nice lives, they are harking back to their student days when they were occupying the chancellor’s office.
“It makes me really depressed and sometimes angry when I see some smart****** 26-year-old saying, ‘We’ve always felt the Labour Party is a place of nasty Blairites but now Jeremy is there we’ve decided to give them the honour of our membership’.”