Mr Smith is taking on Jeremy Corbyn in a contest for the Labour leadership and took the opportunity yesterday to speak to party members at The Manor gym.
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Mr McDonnell said there was a “small group” within the party responsible for the current turmoil which has seen it beset by allegations of bullying, intimidation and abuse.
Karie Murphy, the Labour leader’s office manager, allegedly twice entered the parliamentary office of Seema Malhotra – who quit the shadow cabinet last month in protest at Mr Corbyn’s leadership – when she was not there.
Seema Malhotra formally complained to Commons Speaker John Bercow, saying the “privacy, security and confidentiality” of her MP’s office had been violated.
“He’s a principled man and someone who has got deep Labour values, but our question is ‘can he take the Labour party to where we need to be?'”
In a desperate bid to fix the leadership election against Jeremy Corbyn the NEC made a decision to retroactively exclude over 130,000 legitimate Labour Party members from voting, but leave open a back door so that well-to-do people (or poorer people willing to make serious sacrifices to their living standards) could buy a vote for £25 a shot. He said they had wanted to wait a year before considering forming a new party but he insisted that… Don’t pick on staff who can’t defend themselves.
“The implications of this are extremely serious”, she said.
Malhotra, the former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, had claimed on Saturday that a member of McDonnell’s staff gained entry to her office without her permission, and had lodged a formal complaint with the speaker of the House of Commons.
“I have now got a member of staff – she’s a widow with daughters, this is her sole income – she’s now anxious she’s going to lose her job and face prosecution because it’s described as a break-in”. That’s just so distressing, it’s unacceptable.
Mr Corbyn is facing a challenge from the former shadow work and pensions secretary, after Labour MPs overwhelmingly backed a motion of no-confidence in their leader.
She voluntarily withdrew from the contest and Labour’s national executive committee found her innocent of any wrongdoing and reinstated her party membership.
At a leadership rally in Salford, Mr Corbyn acknowledged that people were “angry” at the actions of MPs who had sought to oust him from the leadership, but said that they should settle their differences by “democratic” means.
“That would be inevitable, wouldn’t it?”
Mr Corbyn is favourite to win the postal ballot of Labour’s members – whose ranks he said have swelled to more than 500,000 – as well as the 183,000 people who signed up this week as registered supporters and the affiliated supporters in the unions.
Appearing on Sky News’ Murnaghan programme, Mr Smith said it was his “grave worry” the party might split.
“Without winning elections and Labour being a serious party and government again, all the principles are just hot air if we can’t put them into practice winning power to exercise it on behalf of people call what’s the point of being in this game”. ‘Today, we are more than 45 years on from the equal pay act.and still women are paid 20% less than men.’ Women are over-represented in the lowest-paid sectors like caring and cleaning, he added, ‘vital sectors to our economy doing valuable work but not work that is fairly rewarded or equally respected’.
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“It’s time for Labour to really get up off its knees and start fighting back against the Tories”.
