Labour leadership contest: Owen Smith sets out his £200bn New Deal during speech in Tipton

That was the damning verdict on Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party delivered by leadership candidate Owen Smith while blazing the campaign trail in the Black Country.

The MP for Pontypridd in south Wales told more than 80 Labour enthusiasts that the party had become a 'laughing stock' and warned it was on the brink of destruction.

Opening his speech at the St. Paul's Community Centre in Tipton on Saturday he said: "The reason I am standing is I genuinely feel this party is now at risk of splitting and being destroyed.

"If that happens the only beneficiaries in this country will be the Tories and the radical right like UKIP."

He added: "I don't think Jeremy understands that. I don't think he understands the scale and risk we face across the country.

"We are in danger of being consigned to history. Something the future generations will look back on wistfully."

He elaborated saying Corbyn had failed to hold the party together and branded the prospect of a split as a 'historic disaster'.

The former shadow work and pensions secretary declared Labour needed to become a credible party with real policies which could be trusted to run the country.

And he said de-industrialised parts of the country like the Black Country were at the forefront of his plans which centred around borrowing £200 billion for a 'British New Deal' to reinvest in infrastructure.

Speaking to the Express & Star afterwards, Mr Smith said: "The first thing has got to be making an argument for reinvestment and reindustialisation in many parts of Britain like the Black Country and my part of Britain, south Wales, that have suffered for a long, long time with loss of jobs and lack of prospects.

The way in which we do that is a British New Deal, £200bn investment programme in order to reinvest in services but principally to reinvest in infrastructure, the schools, the industry that we need in those parts of Britain."

He added: "Britain needs to be making things again. We have missed out on so many industrial opportunities. We missed out on being part of the renewable energy sector.

"There are a myriad of ways we could be looking at a next generation of new jobs.

"But equally we were much too quick as a society to accept that manufacturing jobs couldn't be sustained in Britain they were only going to be in China and India and eastern Europe.

"Other countries, notably Germany, have been much better at retaining a manufacturing base, we have gone down from 30 per cent manufacturing as part of our GDP to under 10 per cent and it is declining even further under the Tories.

"I would try to build. Great manufacturing sectors like the midlands would be at the heart of it." Another of Mr Smith's major pledges is to combat low pay by raising the living wage to £8.25 from £7.20 for everyone, which he said would give some a £5,000 pay rise overnight. One of his key strategies for generating income would be to raise corporation tax and getting the 'super rich' who earn over £150,000 a year to pay more.

During a lively Q&A at the end of his talk Mr Smith was questioned on a number of issues including savage cuts to local council budgets, academies and the NHS which he warned would be gone if the Conservatives won the next General Election.

He said: "They hate the NHS. They have always hated the NHS. They didn't vote for it in the beginning, they hate the fact it is the embodiment of what we believe in."

The leadership hopeful was roundly applauded before, during and after his speech while the only contentious issue was Mr Smith's vow to support a second referendum on the final Brexit deal.

But despite speaking at length about Labour's downfall and the solutions he would implement as leader, Mr Smith's definitive and repeated message was clear 'To change it. We have to win the General Election'.

And he thinks that is only possible if he is the new party leader.