Labour leader takes post-holiday road show to Bristol and Swindon, drawing crowds as he challenges Theresa May to call election

For the first time in three summers he is not fighting for the party leadership, and he has just been through a gruelling general election. But Jeremy Corbyn was campaigning again on Friday, and is planning to continue doing so for the rest of the summer to capitalise on Theresa May’s political travails.

The Labour leader spent the second day of his post-holiday political tour in Bristol and Swindon, trips theoretically focused on NHS policy but also intended to remind voters of his desire to oust May if given another chance.

On Friday morning he addressed a 500-strong crowd at a sports centre in Filton, north of Bristol, where organisers were doing a brisk trade in Corbyn-themed mugs and T-shirts. They said the event was oversubscribed by Labour members despite it being a working day in August.

Among those attending was Jessica Harding-Smith, a teaching assistant who had quit Labour in protest over the Iraq war but rejoined last year, with her husband, Barnaby, a teacher who is leaving the profession owing to what he says is the pressure of cuts, and two of their four children.

Corbyn’s message on spreading the benefits of economic prosperity was a potent one, she said: “My husband and I, we’re both educated, we both have good jobs, and we’re struggling.

“We’ve just applied for our first credit card, today, because we can’t manage on our wages and we’re already thinking about how to afford Christmas.”

While their accompanying children, Fred, 11, and Rowan, eight, had been warned by their mother that Corbyn was “not very polished” as an orator, his wide-ranging speech – focused on austerity, stagnating wages and the NHS – won loud applause, albeit from a faithful crowd.

Corbyn, while hailing Labour’s better-than-expected performance in June, said he lamented that the party had lost and wanted another election “as soon as possible”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn talking with health charity volunteers in a garden centre cafe in Swindon. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

“If Theresa May is back from her holiday yet, perhaps she’s listening,” he said. “It would be a really good idea to have another walk, have an epiphany moment while you’re walking and come along with a proposal to dissolve parliament and have another election. We’re ready for it at any time.”

One source of dissent remains Brexit. Corbyn faced a small protest by pro-EU Labour members outside the venue, waving EU flags, and he did not mention Brexit at all until the very end of his half-hour speech.

But speaking to reporters afterwards, he denied wanting to avoid the subject: “Not at all. I got to it at the appropriate part of the speech, when I’m talking about the economy and the future relationship with the world. I talk abut it every day, all around the country.”

Later in the day Corbyn spent well over an hour talking to volunteers from health charities at a cafe at a garden centre in Swindon.

As with Corbyn’s visit to Cornwall on Thursday, both Filton and Swindon are areas where the Conservatives held local seats in June, but with reduced majorities. Similar incursions into Tory marginals are planned next week in the north-west of England, with trips to SNP-held seats the week after.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn meets the media after speaking to 500 supporters at a sports centre in Filton, near Bristol. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Corbyn told the Guardian he hoped to use the tour as much to listen to people’s ideas and concerns as to make speeches.

“Yes, I’m spending the summer campaigning around the country, but everywhere I go I make sure I have time to meet and listen to different people and different groups, and I learn a lot by that,” he said.

“It does mean that when we’re writing policy documents you think, hang on, this isn’t practical, it wouldn’t work. Let’s do something else.

“Our next election manifesto will be more detailed because we’ll have more time to prepare it, but it will be a reflection of the wishes and aspirations of a lot of people who you’ve never heard of, all around the country.”