Momentum founder Jon Lansman will run for Labour General Secretary

The head of influential left-wing grassroots group Momentum has said he will aim to become the Labour Party’s new general secretary.

Jon Lansman confirmed he would run for the position vacated by centrist Iain McNicol, who said he was stepping down last week.

The appointment of Lansman, who is Jewish, would complete the party’s turnaround from a centre-left to a socialist party, following the shock leadership win of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. His campaign received vital support from Lansman and Momentum.

Announcing his candidacy on Twitter on Thursday, Lansman said Corbyn’s victory had “swept away the old machine politics” and said he wanted to help usher in “far-reaching and sustained changes to our party” in a forthcoming Democracy Review.

“History shows that we will only be able to transform Britain if our own party has the structures, culture and practices it wants to see in the rest of society,” he said.

“If chosen as Labour’s next general secretary, I will stay tuned to the desires of our members and trade union affiliates.”

Lansman, who spoke at Limmud, was threatened with legal action by one-time Labour MP George Galloway earlier this year, after the Momentum head sided with comedian David Baddiel in a Twitter-spat over Israel.

At Limmud in December, he told the largely-Jewish audience that there was as much anti-Semitism in the Conservative Party as there was in Labour, and that every political party needed to tackle the problem.