Jeremy Corbyn’s Southport Rally “a stunning success” – say Labour Party

Estimates claimed up to 6,000 people attended the event, despite the very poor weather which threatened it earlier in the day.

The rally had a host of Labour party notables as speakers and guests with Liverpool City Region Mayor, Steve Rotherham, acting as compere.

Former Deputy Prime minister John Prescott, who until Liz Savage’s result in June was the last Labour parliamentary candidate to come second in Southport back in 1966, was also well-received by an enthusiastic crowd.

Local party chair, Mhairi Doyle, told them details of her experiences working for the DWP and the injustices she’d witnessed.

There was no doubting the main attraction, however, was Jeremy Corbyn.

Earlier in a local media interview, he’d addressed the issue of Labour never having an MP in Southport by pointing to their recent first-ever wins in Kensington and Canterbury, telling local radio Radio:

“We are winning over people in all parts of the country and also areas are changing. We are on the way.”

During the rally, Liz Savage was also called up on stage by the Labour leader who warmly congratulated her on nearly quadrupling Labour’s vote in Southport since 2015.

Talking without the aid of cue cards or autocue, he addressed the crowd for around half an hour telling them he didn’t want to live in “foodbank Britain” and slamming what he described as “the arid economic nonsense that the Tories and the Lib Dems practised since 2010.”

He also talked of how proud he was of his party’s manifesto which he said was now in its third reprint. To the crowd’s cheers, he contrasted this with the Conservative manifesto which he said was removed from their website the day after the election.

After his speech, he spent as long talking to members of the crowd, stopping for selfies and signing t-shirts and memorabilia.

Southport Labour Party Chair, Mhairi Doyle, summed up the visit as “a stunning success” and claimed:

“This is supposed to be a Tory town but look at all these people, do you think any Conservative politician could come here and draw a crowd this big? There is huge support for Labour here and we will fight austerity and we will fight for Southport.”