A wealth tax, ministries for labour and social security, massive infrastructure spending a more cash for the NHS
Owen Smith outlined 20 policies he would campaign on as Labour Party leader and seek to implement as Prime Minister, in a rich speech aimed at the Labour Left.
Smith has been denounced by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn as a ‘Blairite’ since he joined the Labour leadership race, with some even claiming he is ‘pro-austerity’ and wants to privatise the NHS. (It’s not clear why Corbyn would have appointed such a person as his shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.)
Today’s speech ought to put paid to this charge of Blairism, given the plainly egalitarian nature of his election programme.
In a blistering attack on inequality in Britain, Smith said people were ‘right to be angry’ about ‘a country where people think the system is rigged against them’ – echoing the populist pitch of Bernie Sanders in the United States.
He proposed a wealth tax on the top one per cent of society – a 15 per cent tax on their unearned wealth (i.e. from assets like property) – and pledged to reverse the Tories’ millionaire tax cut and cuts to inheritance, capital gains and corporation tax, along with bringing back the 50p rate for those earning over £150,000.
This, he said, would fund a four per cent real terms increase in spending on the NHS every year in the next parliament. (Note: he wants to increase public spending on the NHS, not privatise it.)
One of his more radical proposals was to scrap the Department for Work and Pensions and replace it with a Ministry for Labour and a Department for Social Security.
He also wants to ban all zero hours contracts and replace them with minimum hours contracts, end the Tories’ freeze on public sector wages, repeal the Trade Union Act and put workers on all companies’ remuneration committees.
As a guiding principle, he wants to focus on equality of outcome, not just equality of opportunity, and repeated his pledge for a £200 billion ‘British New Deal’, a development fund to build social and economic infrastructure.
You can read the full list of today’s 20 policies below. They form an undeniably a Left wing, democratic socialist platform – and there is likely more to come.
Put simply, this is a set of policies Corbyn supporters would have praised from the rooftops, had they been uttered by Corbyn or his team in any precise and easily digestible way, (rather than buried in a long speech of generalities and things ‘we should look at very carefully’).
Indeed, the Corbyn team did try to claim credit for some of the policies before Smith even spoke today, in particular his plan for a Ministry for Labour dedicated to quality jobs and workers’ rights.
They said shadow chancellor John McDonnell had announced this earlier in the year, but as Smith quipped in his Q&A, this was the first most people had heard of it, and this can’t be blamed solely on an anti-Labour media.
(Smith added that this policy had never been debated at any Corbyn and McDonnell-led meetings of the PLP.)
Regardless, this is a strong start for the Labour challenger, who delivered his speech well and ably handled questions from the press and public, with a number of attacks on the Tories and Jeremy Corbyn’s time in post.
He closed his speech with a direct rebuke to both Blairism and Corbynism, saying:
‘We need revolution, not evolution.
Not some misty-eyed, romantic notion of a revolution where we’re going to overthrow capitalism and return to a socialist nirvana.
(I don’t know who I’m referring to…)
But a cold-eyed, practical, socialist revolution where we build a better Britain.’
Owen Smith’s 20 policies announced today:
1. A pledge to focus on equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity
2. Scrapping the DWP and replacing it with a Ministry for Labour and a Department for Social Security
3. Introducing modern wages councils for hotel, shop and care workers to strengthen terms and conditions
4. Banning zero hour contracts
5. Ending the public sector pay freeze
6. Extending the right to information and consultation to cover all workplaces with more than 50 employees
7. Ensuring workers’ representation on remuneration committees
8. Repealing the Trade Union Act
9. Increase spending on the NHS by 4 per cent in real-terms in every year of the next parliament
10. Commit to bringing NHS funding up to the European average within the first term of a Labour Government.
11. Greater spending on schools and libraries.
12. Re-instate the 50p top rate of income tax.
13. Reverse the reductions in Corporation Tax due to take place over the next four years.
14. Reverse cuts to Inheritance Tax announced in the Summer Budget.
15. Reverse cuts to Capital Gains Tax announced in the Summer Budget.
16. Introduce a new wealth Tax on the top one per cent earners.
17. A British New Deal unveiling £200 billion of investment over five years.
18. A commitment to invest tens of billions in the North of England, and to bring forward High Speed 3.
19. A pledge to build 300,000 homes in every year of the next parliament – 1.5 million over five years.
20. Ending the scandal of fuel poverty by investing in efficient energy.
Adam Barnett is staff writer for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter @AdamBarnett13
25 Responses to “Owen Smith is no ‘Blairite’. His policies are egalitarian and Left-wing”
John Woods
Alan Johnson wants the bedroom tax repealed immediately. How did Owen miss out on that promise. Could I add an urgent policy. We need some form of proportionality in the General Elections and there is enough thought gone into this subject to put into a White Paper and pass in time for the 2025 GE.
David Lindsay
If you want to hide all manner of corruption and vileness in the plainest of sight, then position yourself on the right wing of a left-wing party. The Right’s media juggernaut is aimed squarely at the Left, while the Left’s inexhaustible energy and commitment, no matter how lacking in resources, are aimed squarely at the Right. In between the two, you can get away with anything.
Look, if you can bear to do so, at the Clintons. Or look, if you can bear to do so, at Owen Smith. Smith faked his CV. He buys up fake accounts to cheerlead for him Twitter. He professes himself “normal” because he has a wife and children, unlike Angela Eagle (although she, in her way, is another one). He prolonged people’s cancer in order to maximise corporate profits. And he wants to “smash Theresa May back on her heels”.
Today, he has been to Orgreave, in an attempt to hijack the memory of the Miners’ Strike. There, he announced no fewer than 20 of Jeremy Corbyn’s and John McDonnell’s policies as his own. Don’t believe a word of it. The MPs who have nominated would not have done so if those were his views. Nor would he be receiving the media support that he is. Nor would he enjoy the backing of the most right-wing seven per cent of Labour councillors.
Eric
[Indeed, the Corbyn team did try to claim credit for some of the policies before Smith even spoke today, in particular his plan for a Ministry for Labour dedicated to quality jobs and workers’ rights.]
Actually its the other way round. Smith declared that John McDonnell lacked ideas and that for example he had not been pushing the Ministry for Labour idea. So its Smith attacking McDonnell not the otherway round and Smith brazenly steeling the ideas while lyingly attacking McDonnell for never having them in the first place.
From the Guardian live blog
Smith:
Not once. Not once in the last nine months in which I’ve served in the shadow cabinet have I heard a single debate being led by John McDonnell about a minister for labour. Not once have I heard a single debate led by John McDonnell about rights at work … It has been devoid of ideas quite often. Now, there are lots of reasons for that. But I tell you straight; it’s about time Labour pulled its socks up.
McDonnell
Employment rights have been front and centre for John McDonnell in the past 10 months as Shadow Chancellor and throughout his campaigning life. He launched the Institute of Employment Rights “Manifesto for Labour Law” on 28 June, which included a policy to reinstate the ministry of labour. Jeremy Corbyn has also proposed reinstating the Ministry of Labour, notably during last year’s leadership campaign.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2016/jul/27/labour-leadership-corbyn-owen-smith-speech-millions-of-labour-supporters-prefer-may-to-corbyn-poll-suggests-politics-live
Wow.
Fred
21. Mass immigration from the Middle East. It’s been such a success story in Germany.
Robert Jones
This is just a waste of time and energy. If Smith isn’t a Blairite, and frankly I need more than your and his assurance that this is the case, given he’s arisen from exactly nowhere, he will have plenty of time to prove it. As yet, he hasn’t done so. He may well be a credible candidate in the future. As of now, he just isn’t. He appears to be as much a tool of the Anyone-but-Corbyn Brigade as was the hapless and hopeless Angela Eagle, and there really is nothing at this point which will even begin to suggest otherwise.
I do not want a cipher leading my party. We had that with Ed Miliband, who did as well as a nice suit and toothy smile could achieve, but it just wasn’t enough. The addition of a credible Welsh accent isn’t, to be brutally honest, quite enough either.