David Miliband: Labour 'unelectable' under Jeremy Corbyn

Former foreign secretary David Miliband has claimed the Labour Party is "unelectable" and has not been further from power since the 1930s as part of a stinging attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

The one-time favourite for the Labour leadership branded Mr Corbyn's "half-hearted" campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union "a betrayal of millions of working people".

However, should Mr Corbyn beat challenger Owen Smith in the leadership contest, he has insisted that his leadership style is unlikely to change.

Voting in the leadership battle closed on Wednesday and Mr Corbyn is the favourite to win.

Writing in The New Statesman, Mr Miliband sets out a damning assessment of the incumbent: "The main charge against Jeremy Corbyn is not just that his strategy is undesirable because it makes the party unelectable. That is only half the story.

"The real issue is that his strategy makes the party unelectable because it is in many aspects undesirable."

The president of the International Rescue Committee is particularly critical of the Labour leader's "egregious" stance on foreign policy.

"But the electorate can see through the domestic policy, too," he said.

"Nationalisation cannot be the answer to everything; anti-austerity speeches cannot explain everything; corporate taxation cannot pay for everything.

"It doesn't add up. It wouldn't work. People are not stupid."

Mr Miliband also attacked the "disastrous" way in which people are branded "closet Tories" or "Tory Lite" if they agree with the Islington North MP.

Mr Miliband claimed Labour had slipped from a party fit for government to a "secondary influence on national decision making", adding: "We have not been further from power since the 1930s."