Summary
- Owen Smith has accused Jeremy Corbyn of releasing a “deselection list”. Speaking in the Sky debate, Smith, who is challenging Corbyn for the leadership, criticised Corbyn’s team for releasing a list singling out 13 Labour MPs it claims have abused the leader and his allies. Smith said this suggested that Corbyn was planning to get his opponents deselected if he won. He told Corbyn:
You talk about trying to unite the party. I find that quite hard to reconcile with something your campaign did just this evening, which was publish a list, a deselection list if you like, of the 13 MPs, including the deputy leader of our party, Tom Watson, who your campaign think have transgressed against you in criticising you. That isn’t unifying. That is deeply divisive, and frankly, it’s where you began the contest by talking about deselection in your opening speech. If that’s what you are intending to do when if win this election, to deselect all our MPs, then we will be in even greater trouble than we are in right now ... It does feel like setting Momentum onto them to try and get them deselected.
Corbyn said that was not what the list was about. But Smith said that was how it would be seen by MPs. Corbyn also defended the list, saying:
There was information put out there which is statements that colleagues made on the record and it’s all stuff that is out there on the public record.
His comment contrasted with briefing from his team earlier in the evening saying the list of names should not have been released.
- Smith has accused Corbyn of not knowing how many seats Labour needs to gain to form a government. Corbyn replied “at least 90”, but Smith said that the number was 106 and that Corbyn should know this. Corbyn said the actual figure depended on boundary changes. Labour has 230 seats in the House of Commons and the Conservatives 329, a working majority of 16. Smith was quoting a figure from this Fabian Society research.
Fabian analysis shows we need to win 106 seats to gain a majority in 2020 @andrew_harrop #fabtea - See the report http://t.co/5m5lJQw90r
— The Fabian Society (@thefabians) July 14, 2015
- Smith accused Corbyn of not being straight about what he said about triggering article 50 on the morning after the EU referendum. Asked why he had said it had to be triggered now, Corbyn said that article 50 did have to be invoked. He was not necessarily saying at that moment, he implied. But Smith told him:
Jeremy says he wants straight talking, honest politics. Jeremy, I watched that interview. You did say ‘Let’s trigger article 50 now’ and I think the country saw you say it. And it’s unfortunate you should now seek to row back on that.
That’s all from me for tonight.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Here is a Guardian video with highlights from the hustings.
Here is some Twitter comment on the debate.
From the New Statesman’s editor Jason Cowley
I've now watched 10 minutes of this dire "debate" and it confirms only one thing: Labour is dying.#BattleForLabour
— Jason Cowley (@JasonCowleyNS) September 14, 2016
From the Independent’s Amol Rajan
This is a strong performance from @OwenSmith_MP. I know that's an invitation to abuse. But he's smashing it. Corbyn not bad so far
— amol rajan (@amolrajan) September 14, 2016
From the Sun’s Steve Hawkes
Quite incredible that Jeremy Corbyn doesn't know how many seats he needs to get into No10 - bet he knows NEC rules backwards
— steve hawkes (@steve_hawkes) September 14, 2016
From the Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff
While 'senior Corbyn allies' are disowning the dossier of MPs We Officially Hate, Corbyn is live on Sky leadership debate not disowning it
— Gaby Hinsliff (@gabyhinsliff) September 14, 2016
From the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges
Owen Smith finally going for Corbyn. Should have used this strategy from the beginning.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) September 14, 2016
Owen Smith's strongest debate of the campaign. Too late, but he hammered Corbyn.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) September 14, 2016
Here is Ben Glaze’s verdict on the debate for the Mirror. He says it was a minor victory for Owen Smith.
Owen Smith’s team have tweeted this from the debate.
Let's get Labour back in power - able to introduce the things we all believe in. pic.twitter.com/bVBs2ZrCg1
— Owen Smith 2016 (@owensmith2016) September 14, 2016
And Jeremy Corbyn has tweeted this.
We won't be ashamed of saying: we want an inclusive society with equality of opportunity for all. #LabourHustings pic.twitter.com/MWFuqAfNSr
— Jeremy Corbyn MP (@jeremycorbyn) September 14, 2016
Corbyn v Smith - Verdict
Corbyn v Smith - Verdict: In any election it is normally quite easy to work out who is behind; it is the person or party most obviously going negative. And, on that basis, tonight’s hustings will confirm the impression that Jeremy Corbyn is the clear favourite. Owen Smith attacked him repeatedly. By contrast, Corbyn mostly responded with serene indifference. At Westminster he is widely expected to win quite comfortably and, judging by his demeanour, and the reaction of the studio audience (supposedly 50/50, but in the event much more vocal in support of Corbyn), that forecast seems reasonable.
On a clapometer test Corbyn would have won quite easily, and some of his answers denouncing the government were effective. But when he and Smith argued with each other on specific points, rather rather than just respond to audience questions, Smith tended to get the better of the exchanges. His “how many seats does Labour need to gain to win the election” challenge was a bit too contrived, and Corbyn had a reasonable response, but it did make Corbyn look uncomfortable. Smith was more successful when he accused Corbyn (rightly) of being disingenuous about what he said about article 50 on 24 June, when he criticised Corbyn for trying to laugh off the claim that he condoned booing (as Corbyn had been doing) and when he challenged Corbyn over his response to the treatment of Ruth Smeeth at the Chakrabarti report launch. Smith also “won” the exchange over the naming of 13 anti-Corbyn MPs by the Corbyn team tonight, and what he said about how this fuelled fears that MPs will be deselected may be the best news line of the night.
If this were a boxing match, with points awards for successful blows on target, Smith would have won. But the audience did not seem to view it like that, and Smith’s performance is unlikely to change the minds of many in an electorate that has probably mostly voted already anyway.
One other point should concern team Corbyn just a little. There was an interesting moment when Faisal Islam asked a woman in the audience to explain why she was booing. She launched into an epic rant about Tony Blair, only for Islam to point out that the Blair government passed the anti grammar school expansion law everyone had just been supporting. Undeterred, she reverted back to diatribe mode. Corbyn believes he can appeal to the mainstream, but his critics claim he appeals mostly to far-left obsessives and, rightly or wrongly, this vignette will make them think they’re right.
Updated
Corbyn and Smith are making closing statements now.
Smith says the Tories have been in power for six years. They are pursuing rightwing policies. He says this is not about the individuals. This is about putting Labour back in power. That is what he can do.
Corbyn says the government has ideological obsessions. He is totally opposed to that ideology. He was elected Labour leader to take the party in a slightly different direction. When the PLP and the leadership have worked together, they have achieved victories. They have forced the government to make over 20 U-turns. They have won elections.
After the contest Labour must come together, he says. It must be a part for investment, and for ensuring that no community is every left behind.
Corbyn gets big round of applause.
And that’s it.
I will post a verdict, summary and reaction soon.
Relations with the US
Q: Would you maintain the special relationship with the US?
Yes, says Smith. But he says he is opposed to Donald Trump.
Corbyn launches a tirade against Trump, describing him as objectionable.
Q: But you could have a conversation with him on things like TTIP?
Corbyn says he could have a conversation with anyone.
Smith accuses Corbyn of not doing enough to tackle antisemitism.
Corbyn rejects this. He says some of the complaints about antisemitism in the party predated his leadership. He set up the Shami Chakrabarti inquiry, he says. What more could he have done?
Smith says that at the launch of the Chakrabarti report, the Labour MP Ruth Smeeth received antisemitic abuse. But Corbyn was then seen talking to the person who abused her afterwards.
Antisemitism
Q: [To Corbyn] Can you condemn antisemitism, without using the phrase “other forms of racism”.
Corbyn says antisemitism is not just about using offensive language. It has been rife for a long time. Read what George Orwell said about it, he says.
Perhaps Corbyn has been reading Michael White’s Twitter feed. This is from earlier this evening.
Just now read Orwell essay (1945) on English anti semitism. Thanks. Good stuff, as ever https://t.co/C4fPXhNIK2 … https://t.co/Pq42WO5EEv
— MichaelWhite (@michaelwhite) September 14, 2016
Updated
Q: [To Smith] You have a metropolitan view of Europe. Don’t you accept that outside London people think differently about the EU?
Smith says there were places like Manchester, outside London, that voted for staying in the EU.
Q: At a Labour First meeting there were some very offensive tweets coming out. How can you get unity when people behave like that?
Smith says he does not know anything about that meeting.
But he says this event tonight has shown how some of Corbyn’s supporters can get angry. He says people need to calm down a bit.
Someone in the audience shouts at Smith, saying he should get behind his leader.
Corbyn never did, Smith says.
Corbyn says he was in parliament under Blair. He says he voted for all the good things the Blair government did that Smith cited. But he opposed Blair on human rights issues and on wars.
Q: Why don’t you oppose the booing [to Corbyn]?
Corbyn says he urges people to be polite. But sometimes it takes a while for the message to get through.
Smith accuses Corbyn of trying to laugh this off.
Updated
Grammar schools
Q: What are the benefits of grammar schools?
Corbyn says he attended a grammar school. A grammar school education provides a great deal of support for pupils. They are under pressure to achieve. His objection is that it involves testing children at 11. It becomes a life-affecting decision. Those who fail are told they are not so special. He wants all children to be educated together. Children should not be divided at all.
He says he has got “more than half a feeling” that the Tories will drop their grammar school plans as “completely unworkable”.
- Corbyn says he expect the Tories to abandon their grammar school expansion plans as “completely unworkable”.
Smith says he went to a comprehensive. He is a big supporter of comprehensives. His wife is a teacher. He says his dad went to a grammar school. But many of his dad’s friends failed from that system. It would be “completely regressive” to go back to that.
He says that he is concerned that Corbyn is too happy being in opposition. Labour needs to be in power to change the law.
Some members of the audience boo. Faisal Islam challenges one of the woman booing. She says she is so angry with the Labour party. They want to go back to Tony Blair, she says. Everyone hates Blair, she says.
Islam points out that the Blair government passed the rule saying no more grammar schools could be opened.
He may had done that, she says. But other things he did was bad.
Smith says the Blair government did lots of good things, like the minimum wage. He is to the left of Blair, he says. But Labour is a movement.
Updated
Corbyn says the government is handing public services over the private sector. That should stop, he says.
Smith says he is a centre-left politician. That is where Labour fights elections and wins, he says.
He says he is worried that people around Corbyn are associated with the hard left. That means Labour will be associated with the hard left. And there is a danger the Tories could move into Labour’s territory. He says May’s speech at the start of the summer suggested they might do this.
Smith says it is hard to reconcile what Corbyn says about unity with the decision to release the list attacking 13 Labour MPs, including Tom Watson. (See 8.54pm.)
Corbyn says the list was just a statement of things that have been said in public.
He says this will be seen as a move towards deselecting MPs.
- Smith says release of list of critical MPs by Corbyn’s team suggest Corbyn’s critics are facing deselection.
Q: So why are your poll ratings so bad?
Corbyn says he is putting his message out as best he can. He predicts that Labour will defeat the Tories on grammar schools. He says the message will get through.
Smith says he does not think Corbyn is serious. Does he know how many seats Labour needs to win to win the election.
At least 90, says Corbyn.
It is 106, says Smith.
That depends on the boundaries, says Corbyn.
Smith says this figure should be tattooed on Corbyn’s head.
He says we are all in favour of motherhood and apple pie. But politics is a tough business, he says.
Corbyn says it is regrettable if Smith reduces this to an issue about personalities. He says Labour was created by brave people. Labour can do great things if it sticks together.
- Corbyn says Labour leadership should not be turned into an argument about personality.
Updated
Labour's image
Q: What can you say to non-Labour voters to get them to vote Labour?
Smith says he would say he would invest in public services. And Labour has to seize back words like “ambition” and “aspiration” from the Tories. How did Labour cede those words to the Tories.
And Labour has to “get away from the notion that we are somehow anti-business”, he says.
- Smith says Labour must quash idea it is anti-business.
Q: Why do you think you are more electable?
Smith says the polls suggest this.
And he says his record of campaigning shows he can take on the Tories.
And he came into the Commons aged 40. He had done three big jobs before becoming an MP, in the public and private sector. And that includes working for a big pharmaceutical firm, he says.
Corbyn says the country needs more investment. So it needs to reach out to people, promising investment and more council houses. People might think they are okay. But are they happy seeing people sleeping on the streets, and the NHS being privatised.
He says we will be “even more divided” if there is another Tory government. We cannot afford more of this “grotesque inequality”.
Leave voters
Q: How would you win support from leave voters?
Corbyn says most Labour members voted to remain. But some did not. There was a split, he says. Former mining areas, in particular, voted leave. Areas with low wages voted out. Labour has to reach out to every community, by for example stressing the need for a living wage, investment in infrastructure, investment in housing. There is no future if we just blame minorities and migrants for our problems, he says. The government must invest.
This gets a large round of applause.
Smith says the referendum was finely balanced. Many areas voted out because they have felt a sense of loss and decline. The antidote is a Labour government.
But Labour is not coming back in Scotland, he says. It has gone from second to third under Corbyn.
To give hope to those communities, Labour must look like a competent, credible government.
There is some applause for this, but the odd boo too.
Q: What would you say to Japan, that has issued a list of Brexit demands?
Corbyn says retaining access to the single market is vital for businesses like that. And travel arrangements are important too, he says. He does not want a hard border. This would harm the 2m Britons working abroad.
Smith says he is going to Scotland and Wales tomorrow highlighting the number of jobs at risk. He says Labour should be taking the Tories to task on this. But Corbyn has not mentioned it in the Commons for three weeks.
Updated
Q: How many times do you think an election should be rerun if you don’t like the result?
Every single time if it is an election that puts the Tories in power, Smith says.
Corbyn says a referendum took place. Parliament must work with that decision to get the best deal we can.
Q: What is your Brexit plan? Should we be in the single market?
Corbyn says the UK should either be in the single market, or the European economic area. He would prefer the UK to stay in the single market.
Smith says he still thinks the 48% who voted against leaving had he right idea.
But by the time he or Corbyn become prime minister, it might be too late.
Smith says there is a contrast between the two. He has always been an internationalist, he says. He says Corbyn has always been anti-European.
Brexit
Q: Would you trigger article 50 immediately?
No, says Smith. He says he is worried about about Brexit might mean. And there might be a case for testing support for Brexit again, in a second referendum or at an election.
(Smith sounded less specific about this than he has done in the past. He did not seem to be making an unequivocal demand for a second referendum, as he has done in the past.
Corbyn says he wants to move forward negotiating with partners.
Q: Why did you say the morning after the referendum article 50 should be invoked immediately?
Corbyn says he was making the point that article 50 would be invoked.
Smith says he watched the interview. He says Corbyn is not being straight. People heard Corbyn say article 50 should be invoked straight away.
- Smith accuses Corbyn of not being open about what he said about article 50 after the EU referendum.
Updated
Smith makes an appeal to union affiliates, urging them to vote for him
Owen Smith says this is the most important moment in the party’s history since it was created by the unions. He wants to address the union members directly. They want a proper Labour party, that is united. They want proper wages, and investment in public services. Labour has to defend our economy and our society, and our country. Last time not enough union affiliates voted. He urges them to vote this time.
- Smith makes an appeal to union affiliates, urging them to vote for him. He says not enough union affiliates voted in the contest last year.
Jeremy Corbyn makes an opening statement. The party has grown under his leadership. He has set out themes including investment, securing jobs, an education system for all and a foreign policy based on peace and justice and human rights.
He says he wants the party to unite. And he wants to ensure that no community is left behind.
Faisal Islam is introducing the debate. He says the audience is made up of Labour members and supporters, with equal numbers of Corbyn supporters, Smith supporters and undecided.
Updated
A spokesman for Tom Watson has said that Watson has received an apology from James Mills, a press officer for the Jeremy Corbyn camp, on behalf of the junior press officer who released the list of 13 “abusive” MPs (including Watson) “by mistake”. (See 8.54pm.)
The Sky documentary is over, and the debate is about to begin.
The New Statesman’s George Eaton has a story this evening that may crop up in the debate. He says someone on Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign team issued a list of 13 Labour MPs and denounced them for their “abuse” of Corbyn and his allies. Here’s an extract.
The briefing cited Jess Phillips telling Diane Abbott to “fuck off”, Tristram Hunt describing Labour as “in the shit”, Tom Watson referring to Momentum as “a rabble” and John Woodcock calling a Corbyn PMQs performance a “fucking disaster”,
Ian Austin, Neil Coyle, Ben Bradshaw, Frank Field, Anna Turley, Jamie Reed, Karl Turner, Stephen Kinnock and Tom Blenkinsop were also named in the list. Ahead of tonight’s Sky News debate between Corbyn and Owen Smith, a spokesman demanded that the challenger “condemn the abuse instigated by his high-profile supporters”. He said: “Owen Smith’s campaign has become increasingly negative, focusing on attacking Jeremy Corbyn rather than presenting a positive vision for the party and country.”
But Eaton says others in the Corbyn team are dismayed by this tactic, and that “a junior member of the team” is being blamed for issuing the list.
Jeremy Corbyn has tweeted a plug for the debate.
Join myself and @OwenSmith_MP for the last hustings of the #LabourLeadership contest. Live on Sky News at 9pm #LabourHustings
— Jeremy Corbyn MP (@jeremycorbyn) September 14, 2016
The Labour leadership contest is finally coming to an end and tonight we’ve got the last TV hustings, hosted by Sky News. Jeremy Corbyn is the clear favourite and he sailed through last week’s BBC Question Time hustings (which I covered here) quite easily. Owen Smith’s main argument has been that Corbyn does not have the leadership abilities to win an election but he will find that case a little harder to make than usual this evening in the light of the fact Corbyn’s performance at PMQs today was a rare triumph.
Corbyn and Smith are debating at Sky HQ before an audience of around 200 Labour supporters. According to Sky, they are split one third Corbyn supporters, one third Smith supporters and one third undecided. The presenter is Sky’s political editor Faisal Islam, whose interviews with David Cameron and Michael Gove were two of the TV highlights of the EU referendum campaign.
Sky News has been showing an hour-long documentary about the contest before the hustings starts. I have not watched it in full, but here are two quotes from the trailer.
Here is the Labour MP Peter Kyle explaining why he is opposed to Corbyn.
Here I am talking because I want people to know, as they come to vote, that if they inflict Jeremy back on us again, even if we all pledge loyalty to him, if we go and serve, he will not deliver electoral victory because he does not know how to.
And here is John McDonnell, Corbyn’s ally and shadow chancellor, saying that if Corbyn is re-elected, he will listen to the concerns of his critics.
Look, we all make mistakes. Jeremy and I have never been on frontbench positions. He’s been in parliament 30 years, I’ve been in parliament nearly 20 years, we’re all learning rapidly. I want to learn from our critics. In that way we can just come back together and form an effective opposition.
The Sky debate starts at 9pm.
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