PRIME Minister David Cameron and the Tories will be making a grave mistake if they think Jeremy Corbyn, Labour's new leader, is a pushover or that they can pick over ad nauseam his past views and activities as MP for Islington North.

The warning has come from Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town, a former chair of the Labour Party and a long-standing member of its national executive, who has spent 40 years as an activist better known as Diane Hayter.

“It's brilliant that Jeremy won on the first ballot with half a million people voting,” she declared. “He has two tasks now, one is to take all that energy and enthusiasm and turn those who supported him into real party members who will take action in their areas. The other is to take on the Tories.

“And David Cameron will be totally wrong if he thinks Corbyn is a pushover. The danger is that there is so much the Tories can unpick about Corbyn, so much baggage about his past, they can hit him with the day after day after day.

“That will go on for about a month. Then the British people will get tired and won't put up with it any longer.”

As for Labour's role in the House of Lords, Baroness Hayter, who lives in Leverton Street and is the sole life peer with a Kentish Town title, pointed out that this was was the chamber where Labour could damage the Tories, her opposition to the new Trade Union bill being one particular target.

“The Tories really are trying to undermine the funding of one particular political party and the way it operations,” she said. “That demeans them. Why go for the trade unions, why go for the only voice or ordinary working people. This is so nasty.”

She showed some hesitancy in celebrating the massive mandate handed to Jeremy Corbyn, whom she has known throughout her political life, sitting with him on the London Labour Party Executive and admiring his work as a popular MP who worked hard for his constituents.

Her disappointment, having just celebrated her 66th birthday, is that despite her years campaigning on behalf of women, the leadership election rejected the two female candidates – she voted by Yvette Cooper.

And Highgate's Dame Tessa Jowell, the former Camden councillor who reached Cabinet rank and played a significant role in organisisng the London Olympics, has failed to became Labour's candidate in next year's election for a new Mayor for London.

Baroness Hayter does not accept that Labour's May election campaign was the disaster it has been painted, with such a low 61 per cent turnout it was a manifestation of the voters disenchantment with today's politics and the fact that so many young people were unaware of Labour's past history and its achievements.

She called for the party to re-introduce its old programmes of political education to teach Labour's new young supporters its fundamental principles and beliefs that were customary events in the past.

“We have forgotten to teach people Labour's standing principles, to tell them why we established trade unions, what they did and that the loss of trade unions is a serious blow to representing people who feel they do not have a voice,” she declared.

“We all think these are things we could have done better when we were in government, and that will always be. But what we have failed to do is to ensure ongoing political education all the time. There was the National Council of Labour Colleges, which were doing distance learning, trade union learning, teach people about economics, the costing of services, whether it wad the NHS or school meals.

“They were training our cadre, our new Labour members. But we suddenly stopped doing that. The challenge is to harness the current enthusiasm and making the case again, whether its the Labour Party itself or the Fabians or another group.”

Meanwhile, she believes the Tory government is building up huge animosity with its austerity cuts. “If it goes on behaving that way then it is not going to be very popular next time round,” she predicted. But I don't want us to win on the basis of an unpopular government and just campaigning in the last six weeks of an election.

“We must be clear in our minds what sort of society we want to build for the future. What offends me is all the people who are going to be hurt in the meantime and how bad their lives are going to be. They are the people paying the penalty for the Tories winning the election. And that gets my goat.”