Don't be fooled by Owen Smith, he'll give Jeremy Corbyn a tough fight

Corbyn's allies will portray Owen Smith as representing the ‘old politics’. But Corbyn is not as new as he was in last year’s leadership election and this is a different battle

Owen Smith must strike a delicate balance as he challenges Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership contest (Getty)

When Owen Smith was in a pub in his Pontypridd constituency this month, a childhood friend told him: “I hear you want to be leader of the Labour Party – what on earth for?” For Smith, it was a measure of how low his party has fallen in public esteem.

Labour’s 375,000 members are now asking the same question after the little-known Smith emerged from the shadows to become Jeremy Corbyn’s sole challenger in a two-month leadership election.

On the face of it, the old joke about not being a household name in your own household could have been designed for Smith. However, he is taken seriously at Westminster, after escaping the cul-de-sac of the Welsh Office brief and becoming shadow work and pensions secretary last year. He is on the party’s soft left, a necessary but not sufficient condition for prising enough Labour members who voted for Corbyn last year away from him this time. It was Neil Kinnock, another soft left figure from South Wales, who broke the hard left’s grip on Labour in the late 1980s. Even Blairites now recognise they need “another Kinnock”, rather than one of their own, after their candidate Liz Kendall gained a tiny 4.5 per cent to Corbyn’s 59 per cent in last year's leadership vote.

Not all anti-Corbyn Labour MPs are sure that Smith is the right man for the daunting task. Some see him a as a cheeky chappy not serious enough for the serious times facing the country. Smith must strike a delicate balance: if he attacks Corbyn too stridently, he might persuade wavering Labour members to rally behind their embattled leader. But if he is too respectful of Corbyn and too close to him on policy – as he appeared in a round of media interviews on Wednesday – then he risks validating the current leader and encouraging Labour members to vote for The Real Thing. Smith’s idea that Corbyn could become Labour’s president or chairman after losing the leadership is too clever by half. It would be a gift to the Tories, who could argue that Corbyn was still power behind the throne. A Smith victory might be seen as a return to Milibandism – Ed, not David, of course. Even to some Labour critics of Miliband, his five years as leader looks like a golden era compared to life under Corbyn; at least the party had a chance of winning power.

I suspect the gloves will come off and Smith will echo Hilary Benn’s line that Corbyn is “a good and decent man, but he is not a leader”. This goes to the heart of the matter and invites Labour members to ask whether they would rather win a general election or feel good about an ideologically sound leader even if that is likely to mean remaining in opposition.

The contest should also shine the spotlight on Corbyn’s first 10 months as leader. Labour’s performance in the May council elections and his half-heated campaign in the EU referendum do not suggest a party in any shape to win over people who voted Tory last year at the next general election.

When he defends his record, Corbyn claims to have forced Government U-turns on cuts to tax credits and disability payments and compelling all schools to become academies. He even claimed the credit for Theresa May’s pledge to champion struggling working class families. This is delusional; the climbdowns were due to Conservative MPs and the Government’s tiny majority of 12.

Smith is right to argue that the time has come for Labour to offer “solutions” instead of “slogans”, as Corbyn has done remarkably little spadework on policy. Although he won the leadership on an anti-austerity ticket, whatever happened to Corbynomics? Two big-name economic advisers, David Blanchflower and Thomas Piketty, have already walked away and Richard Murphy, a tax justice campaigner seen as the architect of Corbynomics, now says that the “shambolic” Labour leadership has “no policy direction, no messaging, no direction, no co-ordination, no nothing”. He summed up Corbynism as “an empty shell that opposes capitalism for the sake of the oppressed but has no clue as to what to put in its place. And that’s not responsible, it’s not electable and it’s not going to work.”

The other question Labour members should ask is whether they want an effective opposition. Now that 80 per cent of Labour MPs have declared they have no confidence in Corbyn, he cannot fill his frontbench posts. Several MPs juggle more than one job.

Corbyn will set out some new policies during the leadership election – not before time. But the campaign will allow him to bask in the same adulation he enjoyed during last year’s contest; he should not mistake that for support from the wider electorate Labour needs to address.

Corbyn allies are confident but not over-confident of seeing off Smith’s challenge. Their strong attack on him as “Blair-lite”, for advocating choice in the NHS while working for the US drug company Pfizer, suggests they are worried.

They will portray Smith as representing the old politics. But Corbyn is not as new as he was in last year’s leadership election and this one is different. Last year, as the rank outsider, he had nothing to lose; this time he (and the hard left) have everything to lose.

If he wins again, the danger for Labour is that – in sharp contrast to the Tories’ swift transfer of power to May – the party’s prolonged election resolves nothing.