Jeremy Corbyn has won his bid to personally fight a legal action aimed at overturning the Labour Party’s decision to guarantee him a place on the leadership ballot.
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At the press conference in central London which Business Insider attended, Corbyn effectively confirmed that every Labour MP could face deselection once the national constituency boundaries are redrawn in 2018.
His event today comes after more than 183,000 people paid £25 to vote in the leadership contest in 48 hours, taking the overall electorate to well over 550,000.
Labour’s 380,000-plus members who joined before 12 January, as well as affiliated supporters from unions and other organisations, are also entitled to vote.
Past PMs talk about the terror that tore through them at Prime Minister’s Questions but Theresa May did not look beset with nerves when she faced Jeremy Corbyn.
Among his nominators were former rival Angela Eagle, who withdrew from the race on Tuesday, and ex-leader Ed Miliband.
Labour is still haunted by rows over All-Woman Shortlists and the prospect of a female leader receded on Monday when Angela Eagle pulled out of the leadership contest.
“If our economy is to thrive it needs to harness the talents of everyone”, Mr Corbyn will say.
Clearly a majority of MPs and the local representatives of the Labour Party, are understandably disenchanted with Corbyn’s leadership.
The shadow health secretary condemned Mr Smith’s past job as a pharmaceutical lobbyist as antithetical to the spirit of the NHS.
But allies of Mr Corbyn have been describing Mr Smith as the “Blair-lite candidate” saying “our members won’t be fooled by a TV-savvy turncoat who lobbied for big pharma and Tony Blair”.
The data – which also reveals Labour are now polling behind the Tories in every region of Britain except London – will once again ask the question whether Corbyn could ever be elected prime minister despite appearing to have overwhelming support among Labour members.
As Mr Corbyn – who is facing a leadership challenge from Owen Smith – complained that there were “many people in this country struggling with insecure jobs”, he was met with raucous laughter from Tory MPs. Not only will internal decision making be hard, but also Labour’s appeal against a newly unified Conservative Party under Theresa May.
He added: “I don’t believe socialists should give into threats, I don’t believe we should give into parliamentary bullies”.
In the interview Mr Smith said he did not know if he would have voted against the Iraq war if he had been an MP at the time of the decision. “The difference is that [Smith] might be able to take those ideas to the people that we need, in a way that I just don’t think Jeremy can”, The Guardian reported.
One of the most startling sights in Prime Minister’s Questions was not so much the arrival of Mrs May at the despatch box but the transformation of the Tory frontbench.
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Questioned by presenter Piers Morgan about an incident in his past when he called a police hotline for a comment on a story while working at the BBC, Mr Smith admitted he was embarrassed and had made a mistake.
