Barack Obama says Democrats will not 'disintegrate' like Jeremy Corbyn's Labour

Jeremy Corbyn has been forced to defend his record after Barack Obama said he is further to the left than Bernie Sanders and as distant from centre ground politics as Donald Trump’s Republicans.

Mr Obama indicated that Mr Corbyn had become Labour’s leader after it “disintegrated” following election defeat and that the British party is still in a “very frail state”.

After Mr Obama made his comments in an interview, Mr Corbyn’s team hit back by appearing to suggest the outgoing US leader is part of an “establishment” that Labour is now challenging.

Mr Corbyn has met Mr Obama, but the relationship between the two is frosty given the Labour leader’s criticism of US foreign policy and of the proposed US/EU trade deal.

In a frank interview with former advisor David Axelrod, who also worked for ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband, Mr Obama said he was not worried about the potential “Corbynisation” of the Democrats in the wake of their defeat at the hands of Donald Trump.

The Democrats’ candidate Hilary Clinton was beaten by Mr Trump after being pigeon-holed as part of an arrogant establishment that refused to work for ordinary people, a mode of attack Mr Corbyn is increasingly using against UK politicians.

In response to Obama’s criticism, Mr Corbyn’s spokesman said: “Both Labour and US Democrats will have to challenge power if they are going to speak for working people and change a broken system that isn’t delivering for the majority.

“What Jeremy Corbyn stands for is what most people want; to take on the tax cheats, create a fairer economy, fund a fully public NHS, build more homes, and stop backing illegal wars.”

He added: “For the establishment, those ideas are dangerous. For most people in Britain, they’re common sense and grounded in reality.”

In his interview 55-year-old Mr Obama compared the way the Labour party and the US Republicans had chosen to swing away from the middle ground and claimed even left-wing senator Mr Sanders was a centrist compared to Mr Corbyn.

Mr Axelrod asked him: “Are you worried about the Corbynisation of the Democratic Party? Saw the Labour Party just sort of disintegrated in the face of their defeat and move so far left that it’s, you know, in a very, in a very frail state.

“And there is an impulse to respond to the power of Trump by, you know, being as edgy… on the left?”

Mr Obama responded: “I don’t worry about that, partly because I think that the Democratic Party has stayed pretty grounded in fact and reality.

“Trump emerged out of a decade, maybe two, in which the Republican Party… for tactical reasons, moved further and further and further away from what we would consider to be a basic consensus around things like climate change or how the economy works.

“And it started filling up with all kinds of conspiracy theorising that became kind of common wisdom or conventional wisdom within the Republican Party base. That hasn’t happened in the Democratic Party. I think people like the passion that Bernie brought, but Bernie Sanders is a pretty centrist politician relative to… Corbyn or relative to some of the Republicans.”