Corbyn said that his aim is to “win over people by the policies we put forward…(including) some people who have been tempted to vote Tory” before.
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Khan has laid out his support for Smith in an article for The Observer today, in which he says that “if Jeremy remains as leader, Labour is extremely unlikely to win the next general election”.
“The hopes of the members who have joined our party would be dashed again”.
Khan, elected Mayor of London in May after winning the job from the Conservative Party, says Labour faces all-but-certain defeat at the next general election without a change of leadership.
Dugdale last month described Corbyn as “not competent” to lead Labour because 80 per cent of his MPs had no confidence in him, putting her support behind his challenger.
Katie Green, a chair of the campaign of Corbyn’s rival for party leadership, Owen Smith, said: “These kind of violent and deeply offensive remarks make a mockery of Jeremy’s ‘kinder, gentler politics.’ Jeremy should be condemning his comments”.
The Mayor of London has become arguably Smith’s biggest backer, with the announcement coming just months after the election that gave him the biggest personal mandate in United Kingdom political history.
“I know from my own election – up against a nasty and divisive Tory campaign – that if we are strong and clear enough in our convictions, the message will get through to the public”, he said.
He said both he and Mr Corbyn agreed on many issues but disagreed on whether the party was on a “trajectory to win power” under Mr Corbyn’s leadership.
Khan, a Labour member, did not mention the anti-Semitism in an op-ed published Saturday in The Guardian newspaper.
At the hustings in Birmingham, Mr Smith said: “I feel right now we are not about to win in Kingswood and Milton Keynes and Cardiff North and all of the 116 seats we have got to win from the Tories”.
Woundingly for the Labour leader, Mr Khan was highly critical of his performance in the European Union referendum campaign echoing widespread accusations that he was only lukewarm in his support for Remain.
Ballots for the leadership contest are slated to be sent out this week to some 500,000 party members, with results expected to be announced in late September.
“Owen led and – more importantly – won our fight against the Tories’ unfair cuts to tax credits and disability allowances, which would have hurt the most disadvantaged people in our society”.
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The deadline for the ballot papers to be returned is September 21 and the victor of the battle will be declared on September 24 at special conference in Liverpool.
