Voting opens in Labour leadership battle

Voting

has opened to determine whether Jeremy Corbyn will remain the leader of the Labour party.

Almost 650,000 members of the party are eligible to vote in the election which has pitted current leader Corbyn against Owen Smith after Corbyn lost a no-confidence vote moved by his party’s MPs in June.

The deadline for the ballot papers to be returned is September 21 and the winner of the battle will be declared on September 24 at special conference in Liverpool.The Labour party said its voters are made up of around 350,000 members, 129,000 people who paid £25 pounds each to be registered supporters, and 168,000 from unions and other groups. Britain’s vote on June 23 to leave the EU provided the catalyst for the leadership challenge, with a series of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet team resigning in criticism of his failure to convince Labour supporters to vote against Brexit. Corbyn, however, remains the favourite as the 67-year-old retains the backing of most trade unions and many grassroots supporters who signed up last year to ensure his victory. Sadiq Khan spoke out this week urging party members to unseat Corbyn saying he “failed to win the respect of the British people.” Corbyn has released a list of four key pledges, including replacing the House of Lords with an elected upper chamber of parliament and introducing mandatory collective bargaining for companies with over 250 employees. “Labour under my leadership will listen to ideas from the bottom up - and take radical action to transform and rebuild our country so that no-one and no community is left behind,” he said in a statement.

His challenger Smith, a 46-year-old former member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, is also targeting voters to the left of the party.

“Not some misty-eyed, romantic notion of a revolution where we are going to overthrow capitalism and return to a socialist nirvana… but a cold-eyed, practical socialist revolution where we build a better Britain,” he said in a speech recently.