Jeremy Corbyn has set out a 10-point programme for Britain’s future, based on a huge public investment programme and a commitment to equality.

He has also dismissed the idea Labour could split if he is re-elected leader.

At a business park in Dagenham, east London, on Thursday, Corbyn pledged about £500bn in public spending, which would be used to build new homes, boost the NHS and education and reduce income divisions.

Answering media questions after the event, Corbyn said there was no chance of the party separating if he defeats Owen Smith in the party’s leadership election. Smith, who will enter his first head-to-head debate with Corbyn at a leadership hustings in Cardiff on Thursday evening, warned this week it was likely that the party would split or even “bust apart and disappear” if Corbyn won.

The Labour leader said on Thursday: “I’m sure no Labour MP would even dream of breaking away from the family of the Labour party, the family of the Labour party that helped to put them into parliament.” Cheers from supporters watching the speech drowned out the rest of the answer.

Asked about the mass resignations from his shadow cabinet that precipitated the leadership challenge, Corbyn again said he expected rebels to fall back into line if he was re-elected.

“It’s a very great responsibility to be elected as a Labour MP to represent our party, our movement and its values,” he said. “I will work with anybody in our party in order to ensure that we come together and win a general election for the good of the majority of this country.”

While Thursday’s speech, in front of about 60 supporters and members of the media, was officially part of the leadership battle, Corbyn used the chance to launch the 10-point list of his priorities to put to the country. At the centre is a previously-announced plan for £500bn in public spending via a new national investment bank, to help create a hi-tech and green-based economy. Corbyn said this would be financed by a resultant stronger economy and by cracking down on tax evasion.

Corbyn said a Labour government under him would pledge to build 1m new homes in its first term, half of them council properties. Other pledges covered more job security at work, a better-funded and wholly public NHS, more spending on education and environmental issues and action to combat inequality and income disparities.



On foreign policy, he said a Labour government would focus on conflict resolution and human rights, saying his party’s record over the Iraq war meant it must “work for a more peaceful world”.

Corbyn concluded: “As we build towards a general election we offer an alternative, a different way of doing things, where you ignore nobody, you forget nobody, you build a sense of inclusion, of decency, and moral respect within our society.”

Answering another question, Corbyn shrugged off polls showing his party 14 points behind the Conservatives. “Yes, we are having a leadership campaign and that has probably damaged, temporarily, Labour support,” he said. “But I think the principles I’ve set out today are things [that] will actually appeal to a very wide range of people within our society. I’m very confident that not only is this leadership campaign going to end in a positive result, but our party is going to be stronger, and probably more united at the end of it.”

Labour could 'bust apart and disappear', Smith warns Corbyn Read more

Corbyn won the backing of another trade union in the race for the Labour leadership on Thursday. The executive of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association voted unanimously to support Corbyn rather than Smith.

Manuel Cortes, the union’s general secretary, said: “Jeremy has a set of policies and values which will benefit working people and we will be backing him on the basis.

“From his support for a publicly owned railway, his restoration of workers’ rights, removed by the Tories and not brought back under New Labour, and his commitment to running the economy in the interests of 99% of the people rather than the rich elite as favoured by the Tories, he is offering the country a genuinely radical alternative government.”

Earlier, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that a huge programme of investment was needed, which is backed by business groups such as the CBI.

Rejecting the idea that the markets would take fright at more borrowing, he said: “It would barely spook the markets if virtually every single independent economic adviser has provided that advice to the government and other European capitals ... When you reach some limits of monetary policy you reach for fiscal stimulus.”

On Smith’s warning of a Labour split, McDonnell accused him of attempting to blackmail Corbyn voters into supporting his campaign, and dismissed the claim as the “wrong tactic in a leadership election”. He described the message coming from some of Smith’s friends as a threat and said he did not think that was acceptable.

Asked why he did not want Smith as leader, McDonnell said: “Owen is a great guy, I like him a lot. He is one of the most ambitious career politicians I have met. I think we have moved on from that style of politics. The style of politics people want and that attracts them to Jeremy Corbyn is, ‘what you see is what you get – principled, honest, straightforward’.”

The decision to bar Labour members who joined after 12 January from voting in the election is being challenged in the high court, in a crowdfunded case brought by some of the estimated 130,000 people who have been excluded.

Corbyn’s 10 pledges