In recent days, reports have circled about the Norwich South MP - long regarded as one of Labour's most prominent left-wingers - considering crossing the floor to join the party that ironically is his biggest electoral threat.

And before that, murmurings had been whispered that he was prepared to hand over his own constituency to Andy Burnham to help clear a path to Number 10.

But as he places his DIY mug down on the West Earlham pavement, basking in the recent sunshine, he is quick to put the record straight.

"No, no, no," he says, when asked about his potential defection to the Greens.

Although it is, he concedes, an easy mistake to make.

In his eleven-year spell as an MP, colleagues have often demanded he attack the Greens, but he has refused. 

He now says some of those same colleagues have defected to the party themselves.

Mr Lewis said Andy Burnham finding a seat in his constituency would be like finding one on Mars (Image: Henry Durand)

"Over the years, because I've worked very closely with Caroline - the former leader of the Greens - I've always refused to kind of join Green attack politics. I've never done that. And sometimes that's angered people in my own party, who have asked ‘whose side are........

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