Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith will take part in the first live debate of the leadership contest on Thursday.
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Mr Corbyn won nearly 60 per cent of votes in last summer’s leadership contest despite facing three other candidates.
Jeremy Corbyn has warned rebel MPs who are reportedly considering to split the party and launch a legal bid for the Labour Party name to “think on and think again”. Smith was put forward as the “clean skin” by the Blairite coup plotters since their previous choice, Angela Eagle, was too tarnished by her support for Blair’s greatest crime, the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy has written a letter of support for Owen Smith less than a week after members of her local Labour Party branch voted overwhelmingly to back Jeremy Corbyn.
“Our parliamentary democracy needs a leader who can unite the Labour movement in and outside parliament and I believe [Pontypridd MP] Owen Smith is best placed to do that job”.
The Pontypridd MP’s faux pas came when his campaign sent out text messages to Labour supporters in the middle of the night.
“If the party were to split, and I really, really hope it does not split, I think the Labour party would disappear in the way the Liberals disappeared”.
On top of the registered supporters, 388,000 “full” party members who joined before January 2016 can vote.
The party was consulting on this, he said, adding: “But one thing I’m sure – anyone who is on what is now a zero-hours contract will have some idea what the number is going to be, some idea whether they’re likely to be called into work, so there’s less flexibility for the employer”.
While at least four husband and wife teams have backed Owen Smith and one couple and a father and daughter have supported Corbyn, lead councillors Cllr Tony Jones and his wife Cllr Liz Terry find themselves in opposite camps. “That isn’t left or right, that’s just good common sense”.
It has already been proved through academic research that Corbyn and the Labour Party is receiving a disproportionate amount of negative coverage since the last leadership election with very few positive reports. Hull saw 3,000 attending.
“Nearly three thousand people elected me last May for a fourth term on the council”. In contrast, Smith addressed a few dozen on a patch of land in front of an ice cream van in Liverpool.
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This, along with the targets on health spending and homebuilding, the strengthening of employees’ rights (points 6 and 7) and the £200bn “British New Deal” investment fund are all either new or go significantly beyond similar aspirations mentioned by Mr Corbyn.
