HOVE MP Peter Kyle has accused the chairman-elect of the city's Labour Party of being out of touch with reality following the disclosure that he is planning to unseat him.

Mr Kyle said last night that Mark Sandell was “out of step with long-standing members of the Labour Party” following the disclosure of remarks set to be broadcast in Channel 4's Dispatches tonight.

Mr Sandell, a key Jeremy Corbyn support, was filmed speaking at a meeting of the left-wing campaign group Momentum.

He told the meeting of Mr Kyle, “This guy is not going to be hard to unseat.”

Tonight both BBC’s Panorama and Channel 4’s Dispatches will broadcast investigations into the battle for the future direction of the Labour Party between left-wing supporters of Corbyn and centre-left groups including the vast majority of Labour MPs.

Mr Sandell, 50, was elected chairman of the Brighton Hove and District Labour Party (BHDLP) in July but the party was suspended by the National Executive Committee (NEC) amid accusations of bullying and improper procedures.

In a meeting in Lewisham on August 16 he listed a string of policies including rail nationalised and repealing anti-union laws which he claimed Mr Kyle did not support.

He said: “The way we’ll unseat him is not by saying, ‘you’re the enemy’. We’ll say ‘no, sorry mate, you’re not fit to lead this battle’.”

Mr Kyle said: “I wasn’t surprised when I saw the footage. What he said feels so out of step with most people who have been long-standing members of the Labour Party.

“It didn’t feel connected to any reality I recognise.”

Asked if Mr Sandell had lost touch with reality, he replied: “I don’t think he’s ever been in touch with reality.”

Mr Kyle insisted he wanted to improve the rail service but renationalisation was not possible unless the party won the next election. He spoke and voted against the Trades Union Bill in the House of Commons.

He said: “He wants to get me deselected but he’s putting up a straw man.”

Speaking to The Argus last night, Mr Sandell said that in the likely event of boundary changes there was a process in place for reselection of candidates and he would want to be represented by someone who shared Corbyn’s platform.

He said of Peter Kyle: “He’s stuck in the old policies of the recent past which don't oppose austerity, don't call for real changes to our politics and don't aim for a shift to a socialist position.”

Tonight's documentaries comes after comments from former home secretary Alan Johnson who said called for critics of Corbyn to continue to fight to destabilise his leadership - even if he is re-elected to the top job next week.

He alluded to his support around Brighton when he said: “The most vociferous Corbyn supporters are in swathes of East Yorkshire and Sussex and Surrey.

“They live very nice lives, they are harking back to their student days when they were occupying the Chancellor’s office.”

He added: “We’ve got to recapture this party again, otherwise it’s dead and finished and gone.”

‘YOU WON’T EVEN GO ON A PICKET LINE SO GET OUT OF WAY’

ON AUGUST 16, a Channel 4 Dispatches reporter secretly filmed a meeting of the Momentum campaign group in Lewisham, addressed by Brighton and Hove district Labour Party chairman-elect Mark Sandell.

The film, to be broadcast tonight, records Mr Sandell saying: “There has to be a reckoning... We should have redundancy notices ready for some.

“Peter Kyle is soft-Left, yeah? ... So this guy’s not going to be hard to unseat but the way we’ll unseat him is not by saying, ‘you’re the enemy’.

“We’ll say, ‘no, sorry, mate, you’re not fit to lead this battle, you weren’t in favour of nationalising the railways or scrapping tuition fees, you’re not in favour of taxing the rich or repealing anti-union laws and won’t even go on a picket line so get out of the way’.

“That’s the way to do it.”

Mr Sandell yesterday issued a response to Channel 4, asking why no effort had been made to interview him at the time of the filming.

He said: “If senior representatives of the Labour Party continue to use their positions to attack the membership and the democratically elected leadership of the party –  thus undermining Labour Party chances of winning elections – members are entitled to vote to select alternative candidates and representatives.

“Given that Peter Kyle will not even join a junior doctors’ picket line, I very much doubt I will be supporting him.”

WHO IS MARK SANDELL?

MARK Sandell, 50, first joined the Labour Party in 1986.

Refuting accusations of entryism – the joining of a political party by members of another group to influence policy – Mr Sandell said he had been an active member for many years and a member of the party’s executive committee in Canterbury when he lived there.

The former teacher, who lives in Hove, told The Argus he let his membership lapse following Tony Blair’s election. This is the first time he has publicly acknowledged his membership had not run continuously since the 1980s.

In recent years he has been an affiliated party supporter via his membership of Unison. He said he rejoined the party the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader last September.