Owen Smith has said Jeremy Corbyn’s plan for Labour members to elect at least a third of the shadow cabinet would deepen divisions in the party.
Smith, who is widely expected to lose to Corbyn in the leadership contest, said his opponent’s proposal was not a peace offering to Labour MPs but an attempt to consolidate support among members.
“It isn’t a conciliatory gesture, it’s not simply an attempt to extend democracy in the Labour party,” he told Sky News. “It’s an attempt to further cement his position and use the membership as a means of driving a wedge between the MPs and his leadership.
“I don’t think Jeremy and his team can get away with saying that this is all about an olive branch when really and truly it’s about deepening the divisions that he’s created in the party.”
Corbyn told ITV’s Peston on Sunday he was in favour of some shadow cabinet positions being chosen by the membership, but said some had to be selected by the leader.
“I understand the feelings, a proportion is fine, but I do think that there has to be also a recognition that we have a system where the leader is elected by the membership and supporters as a whole, and clearly the leader has a mandate coming from that election and has put forward various views,” he said.
The party’s national executive committee (NEC) will hear arguments tomorrow from different factions over how the new shadow cabinet should be chosen. It will be the last opportunity to get the issue on the agenda for the party conference in Liverpool next week.
Sources told the Guardian they understood Corbyn and his backers did not have majority support on the NEC for shadow cabinet positions to be chosen entirely by the membership, but expected a compromise deal to be struck.
The Observer reported that Corbyn would propose members be allowed to elect a certain number of shadow cabinet positions and have a direct say in policymaking through “digital consultations”. One proposal is that a third of shadow cabinet posts are elected by members, a third by MPs and a third chosen by the leader.
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, an early proponent of shadow cabinet elections decided by MPs, questioned the practicalities of opening the poll up to the entire membership. MPs had previously been allowed to elect their own frontbench in opposition, but that was scrapped under Ed Miliband.
Watson, who will bring the shadow cabinet elections motion to the NEC tomorrow, told the House magazine: “I’m all for widening the way members participate in decision-making. I guess for a leader they would have to balance up whether they wanted people with an alternative base of authority rather than coming from fellow colleagues in Westminster or from a leader.
“And then there would be a cost implication about it – how do you elect people and stuff? So it might be that the practicalities are just too much.”
Senior party figures, several from the soft left of the party, are believed to be considering a return to the shadow cabinet if they can be elected by their colleagues with a mandate of their own.
Other prominent Labour MPs still believe their political future lies away from the shadow frontbench, with the shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, set to depart soon to run for mayor of Greater Manchester, and the former shadow cabinet members Chuka Umunna, Yvette Cooper and Caroline Flint competing to chair the home affairs select committee. The former shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie and former shadow housing minister Emma Reynolds are running or understood to be seriously considering a bid to be the Labour chair of the new Brexit select committee that will mirror David Davis’s department.
Liz Kendall, who stood against Corbyn for the leadership last summer, said mass membership election of the shadow cabinet would not work. “I do not believe in a parliamentary democracy by plebiscite and I think the idea that you are delegated to do solely what party members want – I don’t think that’s the right way forward,” she told Sky News.
The NEC is expected to discuss proposed boundary reviews that would leave many Labour MPs facing a fight to be reselected in new constituencies. Asked whether that would be a prelude to deselections of agitating MPs, Corbyn said: “There will be selections.”