Owen Smith To Challenge Corbyn As Labour Leader

Owen Smith has emerged as the single candidate to contest Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour party, uniting the anti-Corbyn faction behind his candicacy. Angela Eagle had originally looked like the challenger but she dropped out and supported Smith after he won the support of the majority of Labour deputies. In much the same way as the majority of the Tory MPs opposed Brexit in opposition to the party faithful, Labour MPs oppose Corbyn’s leadership while he seems to have the backing of the majority of party members. Labour has been in disarray since they joined Cameron in supporting Scotland remaining in the UK. As political strategy, it was a brilliant move by Cameron in that Labour’s base of support in Scotland was immense. If Scotland left, those Labour MPs would no longer be in the UK Parliament. And if Scotland stayed, the backlash against Labour for not supporting independence would also be immense. As it happened, Scotland stayed and Labour was virtually wiped out in Scotland by the Scottish National Party in a national election that Ed Milliband and Labour had to and should have won but, thanks to Milliband’s Tory-lite campaign, they didn’t.

Corbyn was the elected leader by the party faithful in a clear repudiation of the Blair wing of the party and a distinct move by the party back to its leftist roots. The Brexit vote left Labour in a similar position as they were with Scotland where they obviously would have to support remaining but that would only allow Cameron to consolidate even more power and give him a mandate to enact even more devastating cuts to Britain’s social welfare system. So Corbyn tried to thread the needle and provided lukewarm support to stay in the EU.  When Brexit actually won, MPs and the Blair wing blamed Corbyn rather than taking their anger out on the true culprit, Cameron. Eagle, who represented the Blair wing of the party, initially looked like the challenger to beat after Corbyn lost a no-confidence vote among Labour MPs. But Smith, who only entered government after the Blair regime’s demise, outmaneuvered Eagle by running to her left and highlighting her connections to Blair and her vote for the Iraq war. Smith, a Welshman and former TV personality, is almost as left-wing as Corbyn. He supports raising the top income tax rate to 50%, supports increased infrastructure spending, and wants to change the Labour party constitution to specifically fight inequality. He has also indicated a willingness to have a second Brexit vote, but that may be moot by the time he can implement it. By his own admission, his biggest political mistake was abstaining from the vote on a controversial welfare bill in 2015.

Smith will be a much more acceptable candidate for the party faithful which is clearly to the left of many of the current Labour MPs. As an almost equally left wing candidate with youth and a fresh face, he may actually be the one to unseat Corbyn and bring some degree of unity back to the party. Lord knows, they certainly need it.