Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has warned that the party is teetering on the brink and could split if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected.

Mr Smith said that he feared that the party would not survive if his rival was to secure victory.

"We are teetering on the brink...the party is teetering right now and I am desperately worried that we may split. If we did split, democracy in Britain would be massively reduced."

But he said that he did not intend to replicate Tony Blair's policies that delivered three general elections and saw Labour win seats right across the county.

And he accepted that the party had yet to convince people that i understood concerns about immigration.

"To be truthful I don't think we have. We need to have a dialogue about the benefits of immigration."

He said he would create a special immigration fund to help areas where there had been pressures on local services.

But he ruled out setting targets to curb numbers.

Labour knows what its problem is in Kent but does it have a solution? Read our political editor's blog here