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My colleague Frances Perraudin has been chatting to supporters and audience members both before and after the debate. Here’s what she’s filed.

Clutching Momentum and socialist party banners, and placards reading ‘Geordies got ya back Corbyn’, the crowd swarmed around the Labour leader as he got out of his car. Owen Smith received no such welcome.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives ahead of a Labour leadership hustings at the Hilton Newcastle Gateshead hotel Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA



Gavin Thompson, 29, an out-of-work civil engineer and organiser for Momentum Tyne and Wear didn’t get a ticket to the debate, but has come to show support for the Labour leader. He described the leadership election as “ugly and awful”.

“We’re going to destroy the opposition,” he said. “I’m going to a put a little bet on a 75%-80% win. It’s been a pointless race and it’s only served to damage the Labour party,” he says.



The audience of 450 in the hotel’s Gateshead suite was chosen at random from applications from local party members, with 15 delegates invited from each of the two campaign teams.

Owen Smith MP debates with Jeremy Corbyn MP in front of an audience of party members at the second Labour Leadership Debate at the Hilton Hotel Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images



Speaking after the debate, Nick Gilks, a retired police officer, said the evening’s event hadn’t changed his mind and that he would be voting for Corbyn. “I didn’t know who he was when I first went to the hustings last year,” he said.

“I know him now and there was nothing I saw in there tonight that is going to change my mind and I’m not a trot.”



“I find the Corbyn hysteria quite irritating, regardless of what you think [of the candidates],” says one woman, who asked not to be named. “[The audience is] just not listening. I went in there with an open mind but the hysteria really was making me switch off.”