Responding to an audience member who suggested that the failure of the two candidates to unite the party meant Labour was “unelectable”, Mr Corbyn said it would “come together” again after the contest if he were to win.
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“You should stand aside and let someone else, maybe Harriet Harman, somebody, just anybody lead the party to victory”.
GMB’s comments echo those from Corbyn’s rival for the Labour leadership, Owen Smith, who used the lack of protest from Corbyn in the aftermath to the abolishment of DECC among a list of reasons as to why the Labour leader couldn’t “speak with credibility on environmental policy”.
Smith said a win for the current leader would not inevitably lead to a split but he would not serve in a Corbyn shadow cabinet because he did not feel he could do so with integrity.
Mr Smith told the audience he was “incredibly confident” that he would be victorious on September 24.
“Jeremy Corbyn is right to commit to ban fracking and Owen Smith should make the same clear commitment”, Hutchins said.
He said Labour was “more or less level pegging” with the Conservatives before the contest began, but Smith claimed that was not true and the Tories were ahead in the vast majority of polls.
But other European Union member states may be unwilling to allow Britain to cherrypick the parts of single market membership they like, while rejecting some of its key rules.
“We want Britain to be the world’s leading producer of renewables technology”, Corbyn said.
Cases of anti-Semitism in the party are expected to feature highly alongside other issues of communal interest, such as faith schools and the delegitimisation of Israel, and topics of general concern, including Brexit and the economy.
Mr Corbyn ordered a review, carried out by Shami Chakrabarti, into racism earlier this year.
The two also clashed over the party’s record on tackling anti-Semitism and abuse within Labour, with Smith questioning whether Corbyn was “entirely committed” to it.
He claimed that many hard-left activists who had been “alongside” Mr Corbyn had anti-Zionist views that he had not been “strong enough” in speaking out against and distancing himself from.
But Mr Corbyn hit back, criticising Mr Smith’s attacks as “unfair”.
First, his team emailed BI a press release titled “Owen Smith warns the re-election of Corbyn could leave a generation without their own home” – an indictment of Corbyn’s leadership so severe it is borderline apocalyptic.
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“I think some of the people around Jeremy are absolutely encouraging it, of that there is no doubt”, he said.
