Labour members are 'looking at one another as enemies', Owen Smith tells hustings

Owen Smith MP - Image credit: Lauren Hurley/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Labour members are viewing each other “as though we are each other’s enemies,” Owen Smith said last night, as he called on Jeremy Corbyn to stop his supporters booing MPs.

Smith was faced with shouts from an angry crowd at a Labour leadership hustings in Birmingham when he referred to the “170 socialist MPs” who do not back the incumbent.

“I would call on Jeremy to show leadership here tonight and ask the people to stop booing Labour MPs and genuinely work with us and not encourage this or allow this to happen,” he said.

“If these were my supporters I would be stopping them, Jeremy.”

Smith added of the jeering: “This has happened at all of our hustings so far. It not been a kindly and gentler politics and a more comradely debate, unfortunately, for all Jeremy’s protestation.

“And in reality this is what is going on with the Labour Party. We are beginning to look at one another as though we are each other’s enemies.

“We are beginning to treat each other in a deeply uncomradely fashion.”

One member of the audience shouted "you started it!" as Smith made his case. 

But Smith went on: "The suggestion he [Corbyn] is the only socialist in our party is an insult to many of us who are socialists.

"We are not ‘Red Tories’ or anything else that we are branded on Twitter. We are people who want to create a more equal Britain."

Corbyn said: “Let’s have it in a comradely manner and listen to each other - that is obviously the case.”

Elsewhere in the debate, Mr Smith berated Mr Corbyn for his “ineffectual leadership” in the Shadow Cabinet and for failing to address Brexit at the first Prime Minister’s Questions after the EU referendum.

The Labour leader argued he had been doing his best to put members’ questions to the Prime Minister and had been trying to change the tone of PMQs.

The result of the Labour leadership contest will be announced on 24 September.