“It seems that women MPs, ethnic minority MPs and gay MPs get targeted the most”, he said.
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Mr Smith told a Labour leadership debate in Glasgow that he thought Ms Dugdale was doing a “brilliant job”, and Mr Corbyn urged party members to “respect” her after jeering from some sections of the audience.
“Many members recognised that there needed to be a change and that Owen Smith was best placed to unite the party going forward”.
Smith, 46, is a Welsh MP who has said he will fight to keep Britain in the European Union through a second referendum.
According to the party, more than 640,000 members and supporters are eligible to vote in the contest between Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith. The question of whether or not the Labour party as it now stands will be able to survive the gulf between its membership and the party itself looks set to dominate the discourse in the winter of 2016.
“I think Jeremy has been very slow to take a clear line on this”, he said.
Mr Smith said: “All of those promises were contingent on Labour being in power and Labour isn’t in power”. Greater investment in the NHS, or rent controls would make a significant difference to quality of life for the vast majority of people, but socialism can not be won through policy change, no matter how good the policies are; instead an entire transformation needs to take place.
He added: “We were lied to, there’s no doubt about that. All of that is completely untrue”.
Owen Smith’s main selling point has always been the idea of his competency versus Corbyn’s, but the poll places him with an even lower 30%, with a further 45% finding him “untrustworthy” and only an incredibly low 12% of those polled thinking that he could win a general election.
Mr Balls was criticised by Labour MPs for offering an “austerity-lite” alternative to George Osborne’s policies during his time as shadow chancellor.
Mrs Thornberry wrote: “Here we are now, less than a year after Jeremy’s overwhelming victory, and the party hierarchy – through decisions of the National Executive Committee – is attempting to overturn that result, quash Jeremy’s mandate, and put the party’s members back in their box”.
Scottish Labour has committed itself to opposing a second referendum.
“Labour is in a mess and its lack of leadership on this most vital of issues is letting down thousands of people across Scotland who back our place in the United Kingdom and want political parties to stand up for that”. With with only two candidates is a simple race for votes.
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“Liberal Democrats oppose independence and another referendum on independence. Instead of playing games with the Union let us protect it”.
