He said: “History tells us that when the Labour Party is divided, when the Labour Party is split, we lose elections, not once, twice, three times. but four times in a row”.
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He went on: “I didn’t resign from the shadow cabinet on that Sunday, I went to see you Jeremy, I went to see you Jeremy and you know that I came to see you to say not ‘can I resign?’, but to say ‘how do we get out of that problem?'”
Ms Siddiq, who nominated Mr Corbyn previous year to help get him on the ballot paper despite actually supporting Andy Burnham, has not so far declared who she will be supporting in the showdown between Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith.
A further 28 Labour MPs and one Conservative MP defected to the party.
There have been some critics who have said that the Labour leader has massive core support, but few polices, well this afternoon he plans to change that. Last autumn, Community’s representative Lauren Crowley, was ousted from Labour’s National Executive Committee, a move that helped give Jeremy Corbyn a majority on that body.
“We are not behaving like comrades to each other in this party”, he said. Jeremy, I’m afraid, has not been able to hold us together.
More than any of that, we understand that there are too many people in Essex who simply can not afford to live in a Britain that is ruled for the next decade by the Conservative Party.
And despite his calls for a “kinder” politics the leadership battle turned nasty last night as his closest ally Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell rounded on leadership hopeful Owen Smith.
“There were times when I didn’t agree with everything the party was saying but I didn’t say, let’s form a new party”.
“I wish it had been by more but we were ahead of them at the end of it and the party is growing massively in membership – that must show something”.
During the debate, Mr Smith also questioned both Mr Corbyn’s appetite to become prime minister and whether Labour was capable of achieving success with him at the helm. Mr Smith claimed that “there’s people on the ground taking pictures and sticking their thumbs up at us”.
Hampstead and Kilburn has around 2,600 Labour members, with sign-up surges seen after the party’s dismal general election showing nationally, last May, and more recently amid the chaotic weeks for the party which have followed the European Union referendum result.
He said: “I am the underdog in this fight, there’s no doubt about that”.
Most importantly people trust him because they know he consistently – and clearly – stands up for the interests of the overwhelming majority of people who don’t benefit from the Tories’ ideologically-driven austerity measures.
“The whole point behind our economic plan is one of investment – investment in order to improve the infrastructure”.
She admitted to having little enthusiasm for Mr Smith, a former lobbyist and radio producer who is barely known outside Westminster and his constituency in Wales.
“So why did you resign?”
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He said he would serve from the backbenches as he has lost confidence in Mr Corbyn.
