Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith are both unelectable and should step aside for somebody else to lead Labour, rivals told

JEREMY Corbyn and his Labour leadership rival Owen Smith were both told they were unelectable and should step aside for another candidate.

The audience at BBC One’s Question Time hustings between the pair booed and jeered in a fractious opening, and it failed to get much better during the live head-to-head contest.

The Labour leader was told he has no support from his MPs, and his challenger was attacked for not having any support from the party’s members.

“The squabbles have made the party look unelectable and both of you look unelectable,” an audience member said.

“You should stand aside and let someone else, maybe Harriet Harman, somebody, just anybody lead the party to victory.”

Mr Corbyn said he believed Labour would “come together” after the results of the leadership battle, which he is on course to win comfortably, but Mr Smith told the audience he was “incredibly confident” that he would be victorious.

The leader said: “I think after the election is over and after the conference is over you will see the wish of MPs to reflect the wishes of party members all over the country that there is a coming together in order to oppose this Tory government.”

Labour would be out of power for a generation if he remains in post warned his challenger, who said he wants Labour to promise at the 2020 general election to take Britain back into the EU.

Asked if that means to ignore the Brexit vote, he replied: “Well, exactly.”

The TV debate came after Ed Balls lambasted Mr Corbyn, claiming he doesn’t actually want to win an election and become Prime Minister.

The Strictly star and former Labour cabinet minister said the hapless leftie is content for the party to just grow its membership in opposition.

On the BBC’s Daily Politics, he said: “The thing that worries me is I fear that Labour at the moment is becoming a party around Jeremy Corbyn which thinks strengthening its base in opposition is sufficient. I don’t think that in the end is good enough.”

He added: “We need an opposition which wants to be in government.”