Comment: Time for Jeremy Corbyn to start building bridges

Now that

, we can expect to hear it uttered a few more times in the embryonic stages of Labour's latest new dawn.

Hilary Benn, whose sacking started the whole thing off, wasted no time in tweeting the simple message 'time for unity' once the result was known.

And Corbyn's victory speech – overly long and filled with the same rhetoric we have become accustomed to hearing from him – featured at its heart the message that it was time to 'wipe the slate clean'.

He referenced the 'Labour family' that he and leadership rival Owen Smith are both apparently part of.

But it is a family that is broken, with too many of its key components feeling ostracised and disillusioned.

And disinterested, if the attendance at the aforementioned speech is anything to go by.

There may well have been a few hundred Corbyn supporters cheering on their hero, but vast sections of the huge convention centre remained vacant.

The empty seats serve as a stark example of the cavernous divisions that have opened up over the last 12 months.

Too many decent, hard working and talented MPs have been pushed to the margins as the far left of the party dominates.

It is why Corbyn now needs to look beyond the members that support him, those who will continue to hang on his every word come what may.

He needs to consider the wider electorate and the MPs that form the heart of the Labour Party.

It is long overdue that he speaks publicly about the importance of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He must do everything he can to persuade his most talented MPs to return to top positions on the front bench.

A divided Labour Party serves no one. The onus is now very much on its leader to build the bridges required to make the party relevant again.

Until then Corbyn's pleas for togetherness will seem little more than platitudes.

In the meantime, we are a country without a functioning opposition.