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Owen Smith believes UK could join Euro, even after Brexit

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Owen Smith yesterday admitted he thought Britain could “potentially” re-join not only the EU, but also the Euro despite Brexit, if he were to become Prime Minister.

Speaking plainly, Smith told Andrew Marr, “I want us to be part of the European Union”, then argued Labour should go into the General Election in 2020 promising to keep Britain in the EU, if it were still an option. Unfortunately for Smith, as Andrew Marr pointed out, if Theresa May triggers Article 50 next year as intended, then by 2020 Britain will have already left Europe for good.

His plan would doubtless lose Labour large amounts of support in the Midlands and North, where the party’s former industrial heartlands voted by large margins to leave the EU in June. Around 2m Labour voters are believed to have voted for Leave, and Leave won in 70% of Labour MPs’ seats. This drastic statement comes as a surprise, even by his own pro-European standards, having already called for a parliamentary vote before Theresa May triggers Article 50 and even accused Jeremy Corbyn of lying about voting to remain.

Smith’s intransigence on the European question is in remarkable opposition to his dexterity on nearly every other issue in the Labour leadership debate. Having previously supported austerity, he has now called for £200bn in public spending, in an effort to appear, in his own words, “as radical as Jeremy”. The only issues where he has declined to simply copy Corbyn’s policies are on international ones, such as Trident. While the right of the party have lectured Corbyn and the left for the past year about talking-down to voters, being ‘out of touch’ and not understanding ordinary people’s views, here Smith is saying he believes Labour should go into the 2020 election telling the 52% of Leave voters they are simply wrong.

For the past few weeks, Smith’s stance on the EU has largely been ignored as the media have focused on a series of peculiar statements and jokes Smith has made regarding a 29-inch penis, whether he uses viagra, and on Saturday, his comment that he had to fight off over a thousand boys at school to marry his wife. Added to comments that have been criticised as sexist, such as that Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood was only on Question Time because she was a woman, or that he would “smash Theresa May back on her heels”, Owen Smith’s latest statements might prompt his own supporters to ask whether or not his ‘electability’ card was the best one to play.

5 Comments

  1. Barry Hearth says:

    Owen smith on Trident, “I truly believe that we should keep Trident because if we give our nuclear weapons up, then we have to rely on others following suit”. That ignores forty years of nuclear inactivity, as a tactic multilateralism is a profound failure.
    Smith has come to realise that he’s lost the election, and even if he had won, he’s aware that he’d have been ditched ASAP by the self same PLP who tried to ditch JC.
    His various gaffes ensure his unelectability. The PLP must now be thinking, should we have stuck with Eagle?

  2. Susan O'Neill says:

    Owen Smith – electable? In which alterrnative universe?

  3. Bazza says:

    Yes and according to The Times on Saturday Smith has £83,000 in donations for his campaign and £63,000 of this came from a businessman with a company registered in a tax haven.
    Smith has slapped 17.4m Out voters in the face including the 56% in Pontypridd (what was he doing in his patch?) thinking he knows better and demonstrating that he is part of the elite and this is why so many people give up on politics and voting.
    Smith has also said he would press the nuclear button so there goes 5m peace protesters.
    He also kicked 12m low income citizens when they were down by abstaining on the Welfare Bill (good leadership) so that’s 32.4m voters he’s alienated already as he continues his negativity and talks Labour’s chances down.
    I saw an interesting graph of the polls and Labour for 12 months was level with, sometimes just ahead, and sometimes just behind the Tories before the Right Wing coup when unsurprisingly the polls have gone downhill and we have had to waste months on a leadership contest when we could have been hammering the Tories.
    From now on I will fight the Tories and fight for left wing democratic socialist policies and left wing democratic socialist candidates at all levels.

  4. David Pavett says:

    It is clear from the lack of vocal support from the Labour right (e.g. Chuka Umunna, Caroline Flint, John Woodcock …..) for Smith, that he is an “anyone but Corbyn Candidate”. Smith’s rhetoric has to try and match what members find attractive in Corbyn’s stance. That make it much to the left of what the right would find acceptable. So Smith would have to overtly rat on his various commitments made in the leadership contest to be a leader that the right want, or he would be replaced by someone more trustworthy from their point of view.

  5. Bazza says:

    If the Tory Party was democratic and their grassroots would have had a say then they would have probably voted for the deadful right wing Leadsom against the still dreadful but more oportunist right wing May.
    But the Tories are ruthless for their class and protecting wealth and power instills discipline amongst those who legally facilitate the legal nicking of the surplus labour of working people whose labour really creates the wealth and makes society work.
    This is the Achilles Heel of the Tory Party – one of their charges is about Labour being good with other peoples money but deep down they know they legally nick working peoples money and they know they are the Party of Exploitation!
    It’s May’s task to con the electorate to pretend that the Party of the Rich is the Party of the people and our task is to make the Masque of Pandora slip!
    So whilst many Tory MPs don’t support May they would never go on TV and attack their leader and be negative about their leader and say they would not win under them.
    It is only my opinion but Smith does and in my humble opinion is a political twit!

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