Pressed on what he would do if such a situation arose, the Labour leader replied: “I’m sure no Labour MP would even dream of walking away from the family of the Labour party that helped to put them into Parliament”.
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“If Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected… there is really nothing much it can do if it isn’t going to split except for the Labour MPs just to buckle down and wait for the situation to change, maybe wait for Corbyn’s support among the Labour Party to start slipping”, he said.
Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith will go head-to-head in the first hustings of the leadership campaign in Cardiff on Thursday evening.
Some grassroots members had moved to deselect Wallasey MP and former Labour leadership contender Angela Eagle MP, whose office had also suffered a smashed window purportedly in response to her opposition to Mr Corbyn.
Before the clash, Corbyn, who is the firm favourite to win the contest, will unveil his 10-point vision for the country, including key pledges to bring about full employment with the creation of 1m jobs powered by infrastructure investment across the United Kingdom, security at work through stronger employment rights and an NHS free of any private sector influence.
“But I think the principles I’ve set out today are things [that] will actually appeal to a very wide range of people within our society”.
“Owen Smith is not a figure of weight, influence and significance and I wouldn’t believe that he would be able to give very effective leadership of a kind we had then”.
Mr Corbyn praised the council for its work on housing in the city, but said only a Labour government could solve the problem.
Earlier, Mr Smith warned that victory for Mr Corbyn could spell the end for Labour, telling the Guardian: “We are teetering on the edge of a precipice here”. The party could be split.
“There are some on the hard left of the party like McDonnell, and some on the right of the party, who have become fatalistic about that”.
The Labour leader also rejected the suggestion the party would split if he was re-elected, given an overwhelming number of his own MPs passed a vote of no confidence in him. “I don’t recall that”.
Contrasting himself with them, he said: “I am not a splitter, it is the Labour Party or nothing for me, and I will never be anything other than in the Labour Party, fighting for my values through the Labour Party”. “There is no way I am ever going to allow this party to split and it won’t”.
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More than a quarter of people who have signed up as registered #Labour supporters in the run-up to the party’s leadership election could be barred from taking part, something some supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are anxious could skew the vote. People don’t want to be blackmailed in that way.
