Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith once again clashed over party unity in the second Labour leadership campaign hustings.
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The Gateshead audience was strongly pro-Corbyn, at times booing Mr Smith and cheering Mr Corbyn loudly, particularly when he said: “Owen, we’ve recruited 300,000 people to the party”. Mr Smith received 100 votes, while there were four abstentions at the meeting in St Mellitus Church Hall, Tollington Park.
Mrs Cowling acknowledged individual member votes would decide the outcome of the leadership battle rather than CLP nominations but added: “As chair, I knew our members would want a discussion on the leadership situation and it would have been wrong to deny them that”.
He said shadow chancellor John McDonnell had put together an economic strategy and analysis and said: “I say to all members of the Parliamentary Labour Party: Let’s get on board and get together and put it to the Tories”. I’m under no illusions that we’re living through risky political times – the like of which I haven’t seen during my three decades in our movement. “And then we would have a special conference like the last time the leader was announced”.
“For too long, successive governments have allowed our economy to be too reliant on financial services and the creation of insecure, low-skilled, and low-paid jobs”, Smith will say, according to extracts of his speech e-mailed by his office.
“But I have to say this: that in the aftermath of these events the Labour party has to be reconfigured because we would prefer a form of organisation less top-down, less bureaucratic, less in the Stalinist mould of Tom Watson with his dossiers and so on which are antiquated methods of the past”.
“At the heart of my campaign are commitments to strengthening our trade unions, ending exploitation and delivering greater equality”.
There were 43,635 votes cast in the ballot.
He is also being supported by Unite, the Communication Workers Union, and rail unions Aslef and the TSSA, while Mr Smith has won the backing of the GMB, the steelworkers’ union Community, and the shopworkers’ union Usdaw.
But many in the grassroots of the party are thought to back Mr Corybn.
The Labour leader claimed that his deputy was “peddling baseless conspiracy theories” after an interview in which Mr Watson alleged that young activists who back Mr Corbyn are being manipulated by experienced Marxist ideologues who are not interested in seeing a Labour government elected.
CLPs can give supporting nominations but have no direct effect on the race.
But Unison is backing Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Tarry also questioned the way in which the vote was undertaken.
Several local party branches are holding votes over the next few days, with Plymouth’s Sutton and Devonport CLP holding a meeting on Friday evening.
“It actually talked about using your heart and not your head”.
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“That’s why my choice for Labour leader is Owen Smith”.
