Jess Phillips: Watch Labour MP say she would knife Jeremy Corbyn 'in the front'

An outspoken Labour MP has admitted she would stab Jeremy Corbyn "in the front" if the left-wing leader started to cause serious electoral harm to the party. Jess Phillips, who is quickly earning a no-nonsense reputation in Westminster, also warned that the public were "starting to not trust" Labour on security.

The Birmingham Yardley MP said Corbyn's remarks, when the veteran parliamentarian said he was "not happy" with a 'shoot-to-kill' policy in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, were "pernicious" and urged him to work on his communication skills.

The 34-year-old, who backed Yvette Cooper in Labour's leadership contest, also told The Guardian that she was "frustrated" with Corbyn at the top of the party. "The day that you are hurting us more than you are helping us, I won't knife you in the back, I'll knife you in the front," she said.

The comments come after Phillips' rumoured run-in with Corbyn ally and shadow international development secretary Diane Abbott during a meeting of Labour's parliamentary party.

The Birmingham MP said she told Abbott to "f**k off" after the 62-year-old intervened in a private conversation she was having with Corbyn over female representation in the front-bench of the Labour Party.

Meanwhile, further splits in the party opened up over the weekend when Corbyn defied his critics to attend a Stop the War Coalition Christmas fundraiser. Tristram Hunt had urged the Labour leader to decline an invitation to the 11 December get-together.

But Corbyn, a former chair of the organisation, praised Stop the War and claimed the group had been "shown to be right in opposing more than a decade of disastrous wars – in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – while many of its most vociferous critics supported them".