article: At the core of this week's difficulties for Labour is a clash of mandates. Until that tension is resolved - one way or another - the symptoms are likely to present themselves as splits. Jeremy Corbyn has the largest mandate of any Labour leader from party members and supporters. He also has the shallowest support from Parliamentary colleagues of any of his predecessors. The 90% plus of Labour MPs who didn't vote for him would argue that they draw their mandate from a far wider section of the population: the people who elected them in May. And some would argue that the MPs draw their legitimacy from a manifesto which committed Labour to balancing the books and a continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent - policies to which the current leader doesn't subscribe. There is a feeling at Westminster that the phase of phoney war between the leadership and most MPs is beginning to turn in to an actual conflict. It's not all out war, by any means but the skirmishes have begun. The pre-emptive strike came from the Corbyn camp when Ken Livingstone, who supports unilateral nuclear disarmament, was imposed on multilateralist Maria Eagle, the shadow defence secretary, to co-chair her review of where the party stands on renewing Trident. Shadow defence minister Kevan Jones - who was close to Gordon Brown - retaliated, questioning Livingstone's suitability for the role, and for his trouble was told by the former London mayor to seek psychiatric help. Jones is known to have suffered from depression in the past. Livingstone was later required to apologise and claimed he had no knowledge of Jones's medical history. The reason, though, that relations are reaching a nadir is that there appears to be little appetite for compromise on both sides. The appointment of Ken Livingstone wasn't done as a result of widespread consultation. Quite the reverse. It was a deep red rag to an increasingly bullish Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). MPs had just elected - or in some cases, simply selected - largely a coterie of Corbyn critics to chair their parliamentary party's departmental committees, which monitor the work of shadow ministers. And the chair of the defence committee John Woodcock - who also represents the constituency in which the nuclear submarines are built - used his new position to write to Maria Eagle asking about the process behind Livingstone's appointment and whether she herself had been told. The letter found its way in to the public domain. What in turn is fuelling the lack of compromise is - for want of a better phrase - a degree of fear and loathing on both sides. Those around Jeremy Corbyn would argue that when Labour MPs recognise his mandate the Conservatives can be put on the back foot. The talk over the summer, under interim leader Harriet Harman, of perhaps accepting some Conservative changes to tax credits has been ditched, and it is George Osborne who is on the back foot and having to find a compromise imposed upon him by the Lords - largely as the result of Labour's
summary: The Labour Party has had a torrid week with leader Jeremy Corbyn at odds with his MPs over defence policy and a row over Ken Livingstone's comments about a shadow minister.