Owen Smith makes official bid to push leader result to October

OWEN SMITH has formally requested that the Labour Party leadership contest is pushed back by two weeks to help new members make up their mind.

By The Newsroom Wednesday, 10th August 2016, 6:46 pm Updated Thursday, 25th August 2016, 7:29 pm

Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith.

The Welsh MP who is challenging Jeremy Corbyn to take over the party has written to Labour General Secretary Iain McNichol, asking him to move the date to early October.

There has already been concern about the initial date of the leadership announcement falling on September 24; the same day as the annual Labour Women’s Conference.

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However after Labour members over-turned the National Executive Committee’s order that stopped new members from voting, Mr Smith is asking for more time to speak to supporters.

Speaking to the Yorkshire Post exclusively, Mr Smith: “I’ve said we should extend the contest by a couple of weeks in light of the High Court ruling in order to make sure that’s clear. I have written formally to Iain McNichol asking him to extend the contest by a fortnight.

“I think this seems like a reasonable compromise.”

He said the Autumn conference held this year in Liverpool would continue as normal even if the leadership contest is not resolved.

He said: “Jeremy would be the leader. I would be the challenger. We would both get to speak at conference. And then we would have a special conference like the last time the leader was announced.”

A decision by the High Court to allow people who joined Labour after January 12 to vote in the leadership election means that 130,000 more people can take part. An appeal is being made by the NEC on the decision with the results due on today (Thursday 11 August).

The Pontypridd MP believes extending the deadline is a fair way of reaching voters who previously thought they would not have a stake in the contest.

He has also won the backing of the country’s second largest union, the GMB, with 60 per cent of its members voting for him. Mr Corbyn has the backing of Unite.

He said: “I’m delighted and incredibly proud to get the nomination from one of our great, historic trade unions. One of the big three trade unions in the country.

“As I understand 26,000 of their members voted for me and I think it’s a real shot in the arm for my campaign and it shows a lot of working people in this country wants us to be credible.”

He denied he had seen evidence of Trotskyist infiltration during his six years as an MP, despite the comments deputy leader Tom Watson made to the Guardian newspaper which enraged Corbyn’s camp.

He said: “I’ve not seen it. What I’ve seen is lots of enthusiastic people, not all of them young, joining the Labour Party.”

As he prepares for his second Labour Party hustings event in Gateshead, Mr Smith has turned his attention on housing, higher wages and public ownership of key assets, such as broadband.

The self-professed socialist pledges to construct 300,000 homes a year by enabling local councils to borrow money to build them. This is 100,000 more houses than Mr Corbyn has promised.

A National Housing Body would be created to oversee the building work, ensure half were social housing and releasing brownfield land.

He said: “There has to be a national strategy for releasing land and I think there are several ways in which we could unlock the potential of really mass housing and cheap, affordable housing in this country.”

Home ownership is down 10 per cent in West Yorkshire from its peak in 2003 and down 9.5 per cent for the rest of Yorkshire and the Humber from a peak in 2005.