OWEN SMITH has formally requested that the Labour Party leadership contest is pushed back by two weeks to help new members make up their mind.
Advertisement
Labour’s leadership battle has intensified as Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson entered a war of words over the deputy leader’s claims that “Trotsky entryists” were manipulating young party members.
At the party conference past year, the union refused to back Mr Corbyn’s stance on the issue, telling him hundreds of thousands of defence jobs were reliant on retaining the nuclear deterrent and to “get real”.
The meeting, which was held to decide who to support in the forthcoming leadership contest, voted by 124 to 64 to support Jeremy Corbyn, handing a victory to the pro-Corbyn group, Momentum, against the wishes of the local MP.
“Whether people support Jeremy or Owen, they are all saying the same thing – that Labour can now win in Southport and that they want to get involved in helping us fight for every vote”.
Party officials have mounted a legal challenge in order to “defend the NEC’s right” to uphold Labour’s rules and an appeal hearing will take place on Thursday.
The ex-policy chief added he was “delighted” to vote for Mr Corbyn last summer but his experience in the Labour leader’s office persuaded him he was unsuitable.
Corbyn said Labour must accept the results of the EU referendum and now focus on building new relationships with sister parties and unions all across Europe.
When asked if that meant he was “going to come back” to the shadow cabinet, Mr Smith replied: “No, I’ve lost confidence in you”.
“I think this seems like a reasonable compromise”.
“I want a Labour leader who can unite our party and make us a serious alternative government”.
“I know a lot of the people at that meeting would have been reasonable but some of them, the language they were using was derogatory and as long as I’ve been a member of this party, I’ve never known this level of abuse”.
“It’s very clear that I’m the underdog in this”.
Mr Corbyn opposed the expulsions at the time and has often shared platforms with Trotskyists and others to the left of the Labour Party.
He said: “There has to be a national strategy for releasing land and I think there are several ways in which we could unlock the potential of really mass housing and cheap, affordable housing in this country”.
We are still not entirely sure when the Labour leadership contest will end, but in these dusty days of recess, it is certainly keeping everyone nicely busy.
“We are at 26% in the polls, the lowest since 1982 when I was 12 years old”.
Advertisement
She wrote: ‘I am aware that the party is appealing against Monday’s High Court decision.
