LABOUR leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn continued his barnstorming nationwide electoral speaking tour with capacity meetings in Sheffield and Manchester at the weekend.

He told an enthusiastic Manchester crowd on Saturday that the rally was his 83rd of the campaign, and that by the time the election deadline is reached next month he hopes to have addressed 100 meetings.

“This is a campaign about hope,” he said to cheers. “But it has also got certain principles behind it. We took a decision from the very beginning that whatever abuse was thrown at us, we’re not doing it, we’re not replying, we are giving none. We are doing politics and ideas of hope.”

He said that after struggling to get the 35 MPs needed to get on the ballot paper, his campaign took off on social media, and he now has 13,000 volunteers taking part in his campaign with hundreds involved in work such as telephone canvassing.

“We started out with absolutely nothing,” he said. “We had a phone canvass at Unite’s head office last week and 400 people turned up to make phone calls. There wasn’t enough space to put them all. There weren’t enough phones. The spirit, the enthusiasm that is there is incredible.

“We are putting forward ideas. None of them are the last word. None of them are written on tablets of stone. But we are putting forward ideas on education, housing, economics, the arts and we are asking people to respond.”

He said that his campaign has asked people in northern England for their ideas about what the region needed.

“Within four days we had 1,200 serious, well thought-out replies and responses.”