LABOUR WILL ‘DISAPPEAR’ IF CORBYN WINS, SAYS SMITH
LABOUR leadership contender Owen Smith has sounded a dire warning for his party’s electoral chances if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected. The Pontypridd MP said his party will “disappear” if his rival for the party’s leadership wins the contest – spelling a disaster for working-class communities.
In a highly personal interview the former shadow cabinet minister joked that his ability to find a girlfriend – now his wife – in a school dominated by boys suggested he had leadership qualities.
Mr Smith warned that the party would never be in power under Mr Corbyn, and insisted he can win despite the popularity of his rival with the party’s grass roots.
Reflecting on his A-level studies in Barry, in the Vale of Glamorgan, Mr Smith told the Daily Mirror that his wife, Liz, was one of the few girls at the school.
He joked there were “1,200 boys, three girls, and I pulled Liz.
“So I must have something going on,” he said. “That must be leadership.”
Explaining why he was running against Mr Corbyn, the Pontypridd MP said: “I have to do it”, adding: “Labour is on the brink of disappearing as a serious party and that would be a disaster for places like this that have relied on it for 100 years.
“Just over there is the Royal Mint, which was moved here from London in 1967 by the Wilson government to put back jobs which had been lost from mining.
“But things like that only happen when Labour is in power.
“If, like me, you come from this part of the world and have friends who rely on public services, you know deep down you have to have a Labour government.
“And we are never going to have one with the current leadership.”
Mr Corbyn is the bookmakers’ favourite to be announced as the winner of the contest on September 24, but Mr Smith insisted he could still triumph.
“Yes, I can,” he said. “A lot of people support Jeremy but at the moment two million Labour voters say they are considering voting for Theresa May.
“It comes down to winning and being a party that can win. Jeremy can’t do that.”
If he wins, Mr Smith said, he would bring the party back together.
“At the moment we are fighting each other like ferrets in a sack so the biggest priority has to be uniting the party,” he said.
“Then, second, we have to be absolutely clear on where we are going to attack the Tories. Right now they are destroying the NHS in England before our eyes.”
Mr Smith spoke out about his family’s experiences as he set out his motivation for standing for the leadership in the wide-ranging interview.
“My brother, Daniel, is a shop fitter on a zero-hours contract,” he said.
“He works when he has work but has to travel all over the place to get it and works like a Trojan. My other brother, Aled, has not worked for a decade or more and lives with my parents because he has severe epilepsy.”
Mr Smith, who was forced to deny calling Mr Corbyn a “lunatic” during the contest, said his brother’s condition was the reason “the suggestion that’s been made about me being insensitive to mental health is so hurtful”.
“Aled is on the Employment and Support Allowance and had to have the Work Capability Test. It is grim and degrading,” he said.
“The whole thing is ostensibly about getting people back to work, but he got parked in a charity shop unloading clothes when he has two degrees and was a film-maker before he became ill.”