Mr Smith is adamant Mr Corbyn is not going to be Prime Minister so that a vote for his colleague in the Labour leadership contest “is a vote for Labour losing the next election; that’s right”.
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It puts Mr Wright at odds with the grass roots Constituency Labour Party which has given its backing to Jeremy Corbyn.
But in fiery exchanges, Mr Corbyn hit back, blaming Mr Smith and others for undermining party unity when they quit the shadow cabinet in protest at his leadership.
“We are not behaving like comrades to each other in this party”, he said.
The meeting was organised by local Labour Party members with support from Momentum Teesside and chaired by Fens and Rossmere ward councillor Alan Clark.
It comes after John McDonnell, the shadow Chancellor and the Labour’s leader’s closest political ally, said “Owen Smith’s friends” were using the possibility of a damaging separation to drive votes towards their chosen candidate.
“It was the case in the 1940s, the 1960s and it’s the same today”.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will announce ten policies that will “rebuild and transform” the country in a speech in east London on Thursday morning. “Jeremy has done a good job of energising, motivating some people who weren’t involved in mainstream politics, and some people who weren’t involved in the Labour Party”.
But he accused Mr Corbyn of “sloganising” rather than developing effective policies and said that Labour would only have a chance of winning if it changed leader.
The row came as a YouGov poll suggested Labour support would be reduced to around 20 per cent if the party split – with the breakaway group performing even worse.
He said: “You can not want that because you want a Labour government, you want to put into practice our principles, you don’t just want to protest about I hope, you want to actually deliver something for this country”.
“We are fighting like ferrets in a sack, and it’s the Tories who will benefit if we aren’t united”.
This is the biggest Tory lead since November 2009, late in Gordon Brown’s Government, The Times reports.
Smith promised to unite the party and said: “I see very clearly that we’ve not been what we need to be in recent months – which is a powerful, credible opposition to the Tory party”.
The Labour leader is expected to say that Britons “could all be living richer lives in a sustainable, more prosperous and more caring society”, the BBC reports.
Corbyn: “If we spend all this money on the Trident system, what’s the message we’re sending to the rest of the world”. The problem for Smith is that, while he is more of a conventional politician than Corbyn, many in the membership do not see him as a cast-iron election victor, and faced with two possible leaders who might both lose the 2020 election, some are inclined to just pick the one they feel closer to; Corbyn.
“I wish it had been by more but we were ahead of them at the end of it and the party is growing massively in membership – that must show something”.
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Mr Corbyn has unveiled his 10 pledges to rebuild Britain, including promises to create one million new jobs and guarantee “a decent job for all”. “The party that has been here for 116 years as the greatest source of social and economic justice could be bust apart and disappear”.
