Owen Smith apologises for 'smash May back on her heels' remark
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Version 2 of 5. Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has been forced to apologise after saying he wanted to “smash” Theresa May “back on her heels”, during a major speech to outline his policy ideas. Smith said he wanted to “smash austerity” and pledged a raft of new measures including scrapping the Department for Work and Pensions in favour of a Department for Labour, plans to make zero-hours contracts unlawful and to end the public sector pay freeze during his speech in South Yorkshire. Those announcements, pitched to the party’s left, were overshadowed by criticism of his choice of language. Arguing that Labour should be going after the prime minister’s policies harder, he said: “It pained me that we didn’t have the strength and the power and the vitality to smash her back on her heels. These are our values, these are our people, this is our language that they are seeking to steal.” Smith initially defended the comments as robust political language, but a spokesman said later the remarks were “off-script and, on reflection, it was an inappropriate choice of phrase and he apologises for using it”. Related: Corbyn v Smith: a battle not for the ballot, but for hearts and minds A spokesman for the campaign of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said: “We need to be careful of the language we use during this contest as many members, including many female Labour MPs, have said they feel intimidated by aggressive language.” Last week, 44 MPs led by Paula Sherriff wrote to Corbyn about what they called “an extremely worrying trend of escalating abuse and hostility towards MPs” and said women were disproportionately targeted. “Jeremy, this is being done in your name,” the letter said. Sherriff said she had not yet received a response from Corbyn’s office. Throughout Smith’s speech at the site of the former Orgreave colliery, near Rotherham, the rhetoric was designed to attract voters who would naturally favour his opponent. The former shadow work and pensions secretary said the country needed “revolution not evolution … not some misty-eyed romanticism about a revolution to overthrow capitalism, but a cold-eyed and practical revolution through a radical Labour government that puts in place the laws and the levers that can genuinely even things up”. The 20 new policy pledges by Smith, whose campaign has been characterised by supporters of the Labour leader as “Blair-lite”, included economic policies that went significantly beyond the promises of the former leader Ed Miliband. Announcements on Wednesday included plans to increase spending on the NHS by 4% in real terms every year of the parliament from 2020, with a commitment to increase health service spending in line with European averages, to reinstate the 50p top rate of income tax and to reverse the cuts to corporation tax and inheritance tax. Another notable pledge was a promise to create a new wealth tax on the top 1% of earners, which Smith said would generate £3bn a year. The new tax would be a charge of 15% on unearned income and income from investment, he said, only applying to those paying the additional rate of tax for earnings of £150,000 a year or more. He said: “We had one of these before Thatcher scrapped it in the 1980s, and we need to reintroduce it. It’s time we asked the very wealthiest in our society to pay more.” Related: Owen Smith pledges to end austerity in radical pitch to Labour's left Smith was cagier when questioned on zero-hours contracts, which he had earlier said were “exploitative in their very essence and the hallmark of insecurity at work”. Asked what minimum hours would be required by law, he said: “It could be one, but I’m saying it shouldn’t be zero; we should invert that emphasis.” The Corbyn campaign said Smith’s key policy pledge of creating a minister for Labour had in fact been announced by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, a month ago, as well as several near identical pledges made by Smith on Wednesday, such as repealing the trade union bill. A spokesperson for Jeremy for Labour said: “[McDonnell] 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.” Smith said any policy on creating a new ministry of labour by Corbyn’s team had “passed me by, and I think it passed the country by ... it was a very sotto voce announcement, and truthfully, that’s the problem”. He denied the idea ever having been raised in Corbyn’s cabinet when he was shadow secretary for work and pensions. “Jeremy has been going around the country saying he wants to end austerity without setting out at all how he wants to do it,” he said. “Not once in the last nine months in which I served in the shadow cabinet have I heard a single debate being led by John McDonnell about a minister for Labour or about rights at work. It has been devoid of ideas quite honestly.” A Smith campaign source later said McDonnell had described the Institute of Employment Rights’ call for a ministry of labour only as a “contribution to the debate now under way” and an “element of our policymaking process”. “If he now full-heartedly supports it, that is wonderful news,” the source said. Meanwhile, Labour MP Louise Haigh, who introduced Smith before his speech on Wednesday, is reported to have received a “violent threat” connected to the leadership contest from a Labour member via email. The Sheffield Star said Haigh, who nominated Corbyn for the leadership in 2015, told them she had increased security at her constituency office and it was assessed by police following the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox in June. |