Want the top news headlines sent to your inbox daily? Sign up to our FREE newsletter below Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn came out in force to back the Labour leader at a rally on Tyneside.

There was standing room only at Newcastle’s Centre for Life as MP John McDonnell lead rallying cries from councillors and a union leaders who pledged to back their leader and fight challenges to his position.

Tickets for the hastily arranged meeting were snapped up within 48 hours and there was not a seat to be had in the house by the time Elswick Labour councillor Ann Schofield took the stage for the first of the night’s speeches.

The meeting was arranged to support Corbyn in the run-up to the next leadership contest. A majority of Labour MPs want him to step down. But the Islington member and lifelong socialist has massive support from individual party members and the unions.

Mr Corbyn was elected as Labour leader last September.

His right-hand man, Hayes and Harlington MP Mr McDonnell, travelled from London to speak at the event.

He described attacks against Labour’s leader as a “coup which started two minutes after Jeremy’s opening speech.”

Mr McDonnell argued that the challenge is not about Mr Corbyn, saying it instead targets his supporters, and the hundreds of thousands who joined the party since he was first announced as a leadership contender last year.

“It’s about you, you’re the problem,” he said. “How dare you elect a socialist as a leader for the Labour Party.

“They want to return to when they had Labour leaders who made noises about challenging the system but were easily incorporated into it.

“They want to return to politics as normal, which is simply returning to the elite and nothing more. This is the one per cent telling the 99 per cent to get back in your place.”

He said Mr Corbyn met his detractors within Westminster to ask them what their problems were, in a bid to iron them out.

“What they’re saying is Jeremy Corbyn is un-electable,” said Mr McDonnell.

“I said, ‘That’s a bit strange.’ Every parliamentary by-election [since Corbyn became leader], we’ve won them all, three out of four with a significantly increased majority.”

Mr McDonnell criticised the party’s ‘Blairite’ faction, telling cheering supporters that he never again wants a “macho leader that listens to nobody and takes us into war in Iraq”.

All the speakers heavily criticised the decision to only let Labour supporters who have been party members for more than six months vote in the next leadership election, and to charge them £25 to cast their ballot.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said the poll-tax disenfranchises 130,000 members and “prices out precisely the people we should appeal to”.

Coun Schofield said: “It’s absolutely beyond me why people are being punished for wanting to vote.”

Cramlington Eastfield Labour councillor, Laura Pidcock, attacked MPs who were “ready to pounce” on Mr Corbyn at the earliest opportunity.

She said: “Those who never liked the socialism that Corbyn represents were ready to pounce. I think that was the ultimate act of selfishness.”

She added: “We are not going anywhere, we’ll not be ignored and we will stand firm.”

Middlesbrough MP, Andy McDonald, said Labour recruited more members in the past seven weeks than the party had in 2004. He called the decision of shadow cabinet members who have resigned in protest at Mr Corbyn’s leadership “misjudged”.

Mr McDonald pondered why Mr Corbyn is unpopular with some of his fellow MPs.

He said: “We’ve got somebody coming forward who has started speaking the language of ‘treat people like you’d like to be treated yourself, don’t walk on the other side of the road’ and he’s demonised for this.”

Tributes were also paid throughout the night to Durham Miners’ secretary Davey Hopper, who died on Saturday. Organiser Ed Whitby described Mr Hopper as “a hero of our movement”.

A “Defend Corbyn” rally has been arranged for Saturday, July 30. It begins at 12pm on the ‘Blue Carpet’ outside Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery.