Jeremy Corbyn has promised to hand more power to grassroots Labour activists but insisted that most sitting MPs need have no fear of deselection.
The re-elected Leader said that, after months of in-fighting and rebellion, everyone needs to come together to help build a “more equal and decent society”.
Corbyn said he wanted a less top-down approach to policy making, with more input from grass roots activists and the party conference at the “centre of concluding policy debates”.
“There is a lot of thirst for change out there,” he said. “People want to see things done differently.”
MPs have warned of a purge linked to proposed changes to constituency boundaries in 2020 and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has warned that, if this happened, it could lead to a split in the party similar to the one in the early 1980s.
Corbyn said that Labour’s growing party membership – which has swelled to more than half a million since the general election – now held greater sway and Labour MPs would be expected to fall into line with its support for a tough message on anti-austerity and public ownership.
He said said the relationship between an MP and their constituency was “complex” but added: “Let’s have a democratic discussion and, I think, the vast majority of MPs will have no problem whatsoever.”
But Unite the Union chief Len McCluskey said he believed “only a rump of right wingers” would continue to oppose Corbyn and he should be allowed to lead without having “to pluck knives out of his back.”
Former shadow health and education secretaries Heidi Alexander and Tristram Hunt have already ruled out a return to the front bench and defeated leadership challenger Owen Smith has also said he won’t serve under his rival.
It is thought a number of MPs are only prepared to return if elections to the shadow cabinet – which were scrapped in 2011 – are reinstated. Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee discussed the issue but no conclusions were reached.