Kirkcaldy has backed Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour party’s leadership contest.
Advertisement
A row erupted between the pair on Tuesday with allies of Corbyn accusing Watson of peddling “baseless conspiracy theories”. I won’t do what Jeremy Corbyn did and won’t vote against this party, my party, 500 times.
Salman Shaheen of the pro-Corbyn group, Momentum, which has been highly vocal in its support for the current leader, said he was very proud that the Constituency Labour Party stood behind Mr. Corbyn.
Neale Coleman, who worked for Mr Corbyn until January, said failure to support leadership challenger Owen Smith would result in Labour’s greatest electoral defeat since 1931 – where Labour won 52 seats, 225 fewer than in 1929.
Corbyn, who was elected a year ago, retains strong support among party members.
“We both receive the regular reports to the NEC (National Executive Committee) which list the people from other political parties that have been excluded from our party”.
The party now commands 28 percent of the vote – 14 points behind the Conservative – down from 33 percent at the end of April when Labour was three points ahead of the ruling party.
The two men are debating at 7pm at the Hilton Newscastle Gateshead.
“I don’t think Jeremy has provided numerous answers we need”.
Mr Corbyn responded saying he was “saddened” by the vote and he did not want the United Kingdom to be a “bargain basement’ island with low taxes and low workers rights”.
“Owen Smith offers the opportunity to reach out to people who have voted Labour in the past but who no longer do”.
He suggested a return to Labour’s old “electoral college”, which gave unions a third of the vote in leadership elections.
And he claimed that as shadow work and pensions secretary he had just one meeting with Mr Corbyn in nine months, despite the fight on issues like tax credits and eventual Tory U-turns.
Mr Corbyn then questioned his rival’s decision to resign from Labour’s shadow cabinet as the party bids to win the next election.
Mr Smith said the European Union was the “biggest disagreement between Jeremy and myself” and stressed he did not blame the leader for the vote to leave.
We’ve had mass rallies, we’ve had a big party and we’ve lost successive elections.
“I think people should wear the t-shirs they want to”, responded Corbyn, calmly.
As the emergency lights kicked in, Mr Smith was bent over with laughter.
“I thought we could have made a much bigger argument”, he said.
The Chilcott report makes pretty sobering reading. how we ended up in a war we knew was questionably legal. “He said it”, Mr Smith said.
“You don’t need to be a mind reader”, Mr Smith told him.
Advertisement
He says he would aim to eventually lower defence spending, below the 2% of GDP that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation asks its members to spend.
