Press told Smith he’d been sacked

PONTYPRIDD MP Owen Smith has revealed he learned he was sacked from Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet when he received a text message from a journalist.

The former Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary said he was sent a text asking if he had jumped or if he had been pushed.

Mr Smith had earlier written an article urging Labour to back a Brexit referendum and made the case that staying in the customs union and the single market is the only way to “honour our obligations under the Good Friday agreement”.

The MP, who challenged Mr Corbyn for the leadership in 2016, described how he learned he was out of a job in an interview with the comedian Matt Forde for his Political Party show.

According to HuffPost, he said: “It was five to six on Friday of last week and I got a text from a political editor of a major newspaper in this country saying: ‘So did you jump or were you pushed?’

“I answered by saying, ‘As far as I’m aware I’ve done neither.’

“I then rang them up and found out what they’d been told and they’d been rung by somebody in Jeremy’s team to say that I’d been sacked and that Tony Lloyd was replacing me.

“So I put down the phone, rang the Today programme and waited for the phone call.”

Mr Smith continued: “Twenty-five minutes later I got a text from Jeremy saying that he was very upset at what I’d said in the Guardian and could I give him a ring. I gave him a ring and he told me he was very upset with what I’d said in the Guardian and wanted me to step down from the Shadow Cabinet.

“I said, ‘Are you sacking me?’ He said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t use those words, but yes.’”

Mr Smith said that after thanking the Labour leader for the chance to serve in the Northern Ireland post he told him “it was a bit of a raw deal to then tell the newspapers before he told me”, adding that he “apologised for that”.

The MP added: “I’m not sure he knew.”

Mr Smith also revealed that he had rarely discussed Northern Ireland with Mr Corbyn, despite the future of the Irish border being one of the most controversial issues in the Brexit negotiations.

He said: “Bluntly, I’ve barely discussed Northern Ireland policy with Jeremy in the past 10 months,”

He added: “I don’t think it’s true that he’s not bothered at all. He’s trusted me to deal with Northern Ireland policy in the past 10 months.”

Mr Smith has described Brexit as “the first instance I can think of in living memory when a government is pursuing a policy that they know is going to make our economy smaller and reduce people’s livelihoods and life chances,” adding that he “cannot understand why we in Labour would support that”.