LABOUR should abolish “the ridiculous circus” of Prime Ministers’ Questions, turn the Palace of Westminster into a museum and embrace proportional representation, Chuka Umunna said this weekend.

The former shadow business secretary, who was the Blairite hopeful for last year’s Labour leadership race before withdrawing for personal reasons, struck a radical note in his address to the Fabian Society conference.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had suggested to the conference that dividends be withheld at firms that fail to pay a real living wage.

But, slamming the inadequacy of George Osborne’s so-called living wage, Mr Umunna contended that “employers should be made to pay a salary that actually enables [their staff] to live.”

And he warned: “We cannot continue with these 19th-century ways of doing politics in a 21st-century world.

“For example, let us get rid in the 2020s of the ridiculous circus that is PMQs and actually put in place something that is useful.

“Let us get out of the Palace of Westminster, which in my view is too old: change it into a museum and let Parliament function in a modern building in a modern way.

“And above all, let’s get rid of the awful first past the post system.”

Delegates at the conference said Mr Umunna, who has positioned himself on the Labour right, was now embracing rhetoric similar to that which he had adopted prior to his election as an MP when he was aligned to soft-left faction Compass.