Momentum founder Jon Lansman advising Rebecca Long Bailey on Labour leadership bid, reports suggest

Shadow business secretary boosted by influential left-wing ally, but move risks further alienating moderates

Labour leadership frontrunner Rebecca Long Bailey is being advised by the founder of the left-wing Momentum group, Jon Lansman, reports suggested.

The activist, who helped get Jeremy Corbyn elected, is tipped for a key role in the shadow business secretary’s campaign and is said to already be informally advising her.

The news, reported by the Sunday Times, increases the prospects of Ms Long Bailey securing the backing of most of the left wing of the Labour Party, given that she is also expected to receive significant support from the trade unions.

However, it risks costing her support among more moderate party members. Mr Lansman is a controversial figure and was accused by some critics of Mr Corbyn of creating a “party within a party” when he established Momentum.

On election night, former Labour home secretary Alan Johnson launched a scathing attack on the Momentum founder, saying: “I want Momentum gone. Go back to your student politics and your little left wing.”

It came as a Labour grandee urged MPs to refuse to accept Ms Long Bailey as leader if she is chosen by party members.

The shadow business secretary, who along with Sir Keir Starmer is seen as the most likely successor to Mr Corbyn, is also facing questions over claims about her childhood after she said she had grown up watching her father worry about his job on the Salford docks.

In a campaign leaflet, she said: “They say your experiences shape who you are and mine certainly have. My dad, Jimmy, worked on the Salford docks and I grew up watching him worrying when round after round of redundancies were inflicted on the docks.”

However, Ms Long Bailey would have been just two when the Salford docks closed in 1982.

The shadow business secretary has also faced criticism over the involvement of far-left Momentum and Unite organiser Alex Halligan in her campaign. Mr Halligan was pictured in 2017 wearing a badge saying “Goodnight Trotskyite” and depicting a man being murdered with an ice pick – a reference to the Stalin-ordered murder of Leon Trotsky.

Writing in The Observer, Labour grandee Roy Hattersley said MPs should refuse to accept Ms Long Bailey as leader.

He said: “Despite the obvious truth that Jeremy Corbyn must take the blame for the worst result in almost 100 years, Rebecca Long Bailey, his anointed successor, is the favourite to succeed him as party leader. Her election, which is close to being certain, would be the public statement that Corbyn has gone but Corbynism lives on.”

He said the survival of the Labour Party depended on “the genuine democratic socialists in the parliamentary party seizing control of the political agenda” and suggested that Ms Long Bailey being elected as leader would “provide an early opportunity to demonstrate that they mean business”.

The peer, who served in the cabinet of former Labour prime minister James Callaghan, said: “The cause would be best served by an outright refusal to accept the imposition of a leader who does not command their confidence. A formal protest with a recorded vote would be almost as effective. Emboldened, they must then insist that the shadow cabinet is, once again, elected – giving its members an independent authority that they would not possess as the leader’s nominees.

“With their status restored, they would be free to challenge the strategy and tactics of both the leader and the advisers who, with Corbyn, must take some of the blame for the bloodbath of ‘black Thursday’ and are, even now, arranging to remain surrogate leaders in the new regime.”

It came as a leaked list of Labour’s target seats in the general election revealed that the party had focused resources on Conservative-held seats that were subsequently won by the Tories with an even bigger majority, while Labour lost 59 of its seats.

The document, reportedly leaked by a trade union, shows that Mr Corbyn’s team spent valuable resources on seats that they were never likely to win. Labour MPs in marginal constituencies, such as Ruth Smeeth in Stoke-on-Trent North, were not prioritised. Ms Smeeth, who was the parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement and a vocal critic of Mr Corbyn’s handling of antisemitism in the party, subsequently lost her seat to the Tories.

The revelation is likely to add to pressure on the Labour leader’s director of strategy, Seumas Milne, and his campaigns chief, Karie Murphy, to resign. The pair, who are Mr Corbyn’s closest aides, have come under heavy fire from Labour MPs following the crushing election defeat but have stayed in their roles despite calls to quit.