Mr Corbyn denied his leadership could trigger a split, saying: ” Sorry, this is nonsense, whoever is saying my leadership is leading to a break-up of the party?
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Shadow chancellor John McDonnell urged Mr Smith to condemn ” the minority of MPs supporting his campaign who are threatening to subvert the outcome of this election and cause enormous damage to the Labour Party”.
However, the judge backed the NEC decision, stating that the Labour Party rulebook would give members the “natural impression” that there would be no need for MPs to nominate the incumbent, in this case Mr Corbyn.
“I do worry about there being a split – I say that very seriously”.
Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw, a vocal critic of Mr Corbyn, also said it was right that the NEC “should be able to make its own decisions without having them overturned”.
A North East MP has written a damning assessment of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership after lifting the lid on her time working the crisis-hit Labour boss.
“I’m not sure that somebody who prosecutes the same agenda [as Jeremy Corbyn] has any better chance of winning an election and particularly [an agenda] that seems to be committed to promising a second European Union referendum”.
“Instead of support and an offer to resolve the problem, we were simply acknowledged with the sentence, “I appreciate the point”, and then told to expect an apology and clarification later, which never arrived”, she said.
Smith himself is an admirer of Corbyn and has praised him for “helping Labour discover its radical roots”.
And he urged supporters to “put forward our ideas and policies and our hope, but don’t resort to trolling and Internet abuse of anybody”.
Mr Corbyn urged MPs to “work with the elected leadership of the party to bring about the defeat of the Tories”. But ordinary party members are furious with the Labour right’s manoeuvres.
He spoke of the “co-ordinated resignation” of more than 60 MPs over the course of a week in an attempt to persuade him to resign but insisted he had been given a mandate by party members.
“It’s one of the reasons I was elected Labour leader in a landslide 10 months ago – and why there can be no going back to a broken economic model or the politics of the past”. “We have defeated them on a lot of things, and we can continue to do that”, he noted.
If you take a look at the Saving Labour pamphlets being handed out up and down the country, they say “Labour needs a fresh start and new leadership” – language which implies a new direction for the party.
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She also sought assurances he would engage in such events before the result of the contest is announced on September 24.
