Liz Kendall warns of Tory 'wipeout' bid after Labour vote

The Conservatives will launch a drive to "wipe out" Labour as soon as the party chooses its new leader, one of the candidates has warned.

Liz Kendall said the Tories would "throw everything at us" after the leader is named on 12 September.

She made her comments during a TV debate with the other candidates - Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Jeremy Corbyn - on Sky News.

A Sky survey suggested Mr Corbyn had been the most popular with viewers.

A majority of the 8,000 viewers surveyed felt Mr Corbyn had won the debate, with 80.6% supporting him, compared with 9.1% for Ms Kendall, 5.7% for Yvette Cooper and 4.6% for Andy Burnham.

In a nod to left-winger Mr Corbyn's popularity, Ms Kendall urged her party to "get real" about the threat to its future.

"They [the Conservatives] are going to bring it on, and we need a strong Labour leader who understands what they are going to do, and is going to fight back for Labour so we can win in 2020," she said.

Ms Cooper argued Mr Corbyn was "offering people false hope" with his plans for more quantitative easing to fund investment.

"Once the economy is growing, if you simply keep printing money, that pushes up inflation and that money still has to be paid back," she said.

But Mr Corbyn won applause as he called for Labour to reject the Conservatives' austerity programme and ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable were not made to pay for the mistakes of the bankers.

Meanwhile, Mr Burnham said Labour had "drifted away" from people in England and Scotland, who saw it as too "London-centric" and had switched to UKIP or the SNP.

He said Labour had failed to offer a clear alternative to austerity at May's general election, because it was unwilling to propose tax rises, and had "lost sight of its principles" in opting to abstain in a vote on cuts earlier this year.

The candidates were also split over their views of the legacy of former Labour leader Tony Blair, with Mr Burnham branding it "ridiculous " for Labour supporters to direct their anger at a man who had delivered three general election victories.

But Mr Corbyn said that he "fundamentally" disagreed with the former prime minister over Iraq.

The Islington North MP was also taken to task over his views on military intervention after he said he would rule out support for any extension of British military action against so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

He warned of the danger of "mission creep" leading to the deployment of ground forces, and he insisted the answer to the civil war lay in a political agreement in the region.

Ms Kendall asked him: "Are there any circumstances in which you would deploy Britain's military forces?"

"Any? I'm sure there are some, but I can't think of them at the moment," Mr Corbyn replied.

Mr Corbyn's views on the armed forces, defence spending and nuclear policy were later described as "completely irresponsible" by former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Hutton.

He told BBC's Radio 4's Today they were evidence of "the old far left reasserting itself".

"You have to look at foreign policy, not from the standpoint of a fixed ideology," he said. "You have to respond to security threats facing the UK.

"And if you are not prepared to deploy armed forces to protect the UK and the space of our friends and allies around the world, I don't think you should be the leader of a principled political party in the UK."