Jeremy Corbyn's two main rivals for the Labour leadership are engaged in a bitter fight over who is best-placed to halt the left-winger's charge.
While the surprise frontrunner was addressing another packed public meeting, Yvette Cooper's campaign team called on Andy Burnham to "step back" in her favour.
They claimed polling showed she was now best placed to defeat Mr Corbyn - ahead of Mr Burnham in most parts of the country and attracting a significant majority of potentially-vital second preferences.
"If he isn't prepared to offer an alternative to Jeremy, he needs to step back and leave it to Yvette," a spokeswoman said.
"And he should do the right thing by the party and tell people who do still support him to put second preferences for Yvette - something he is still refusing to do."
But Mr Burnham's campaign chief hit back with a suggestion the shadow home secretary was refusing to give way "out of pride" despite facing a "hopeless" situation.
"The stakes are desperately high with the future electability of the Labour Party now in mortal danger," shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher told the Guardian.
"History will not be kind to those who appear to cling on out of pride when the situation really is quite hopeless. It's time now to rally behind the only person in this contest who can beat Jeremy Corbyn and that is very clearly Andy Burnham."
The dominance of Mr Corbyn - who left a hall in Ealing, West London, to address crowds of supporters unable to get in to hear him - has left his mainstream rivals scrabbling for position.
As the 600,000-strong electorate started to cast their votes, Mr Burnham sought to reach out to Corbyn supporters by offering to "involve" him in his team and saying there was a "good deal of common ground" between them.
It drew a similar commitment from the Corbyn campaign.
In contrast Ms Cooper has declared herself unwilling to work alongside the Islington North MP if he wins and has launched a series of attacks on his policy platform.
It came as the fourth candidate, Blairite Liz Kendall, was endorsed by former foreign secretary David Miliband.
The former MP - the latest in a string of party big beasts to speak out against Mr Corbyn - said the party needed "passionate reform not angry defiance".
Ms Kendall insisted neither of her rivals had asked her to drop out of the race to boost their chances of winning.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel