Owen Smith launches left-wing policy platform promising to end austerity and increase taxation

[FlashMarsh]

[url]http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/27/owen-smith-pledges-to-smash-austerity-in-pitch-to-labours-left[/url]

[QUOTE]Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has made a raft of concrete new pledges in a radical pitch to the left of the party, including scrapping the Department for Work and Pensions, which he said had become “a byword for cruelty and insecurity”.

Smith said he would replace the DWP with a Ministry of Labour and a Department for Social Security, one of 20 policy promises he made in his speech in South Yorkshire, at the business park built by the Labour government on the site of the Orgreave colliery.

“I am determined that a Labour government I hope to lead will smash austerity, will end austerity. We will make an unbreakable promise to the British people to guarantee a better future,” he said. [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]The policy pledges by Smith, whose campaign has been characterised by supporters of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as “Blair-lite”, included leftwing economic policies that went significantly beyond the promises of the former leader Ed Miliband.

Those included plans to make zero-hours contracts unlawful, to end the public-sector pay freeze and to increase spending on the NHS by 4% in real terms every year of the parliament from 2020, with a commitment to bringing health service spending up in line with European averages.

He said he would re-instate the 50p top rate of income tax, reverse the cuts to corporation tax and inheritance tax, as well as create a new wealth tax on the top 1% of earners which he said would generate £3bn per annum.

The new tax would be a charge of 15% on unearned income and income from investment, only applying to those paying the additional rate of tax for earnings of £150,000 a year or more. “We had one of these before Thatcher scrapped it in the 1980s, and we need to re-introduce it. It’s time we asked the very wealthiest in our society to pay more.”

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: “You need to give people a contract to say, ‘here’s what you will be working’. It could be one, but I’m saying it shouldn’t be zero, we should invert that emphasis.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]Smith 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. That’s the kind of government I dream about. That’s the kind of revolution I’ll deliver.”[/QUOTE]

[BlackMageMari]

I'm really starting to like this guy actually, it seems like he can be an actual challenge to Coryban and wouldn't be a half bad leader.

Too bad the Conservatives refuse to have an election that really should be happening soon. I hope they get defeated and something so the British people get to actually vote on what PM they want...

[FlashMarsh]

My view is that there is no real reason to support Corbyn anymore. He is clearly incompetent and can't win, but doesn't even have a unique platform anymore when it comes to economic policy. See the reports of even left-wing MPs of his incompetence (the fiasco around the appointment of Thangam Debbonaire, for example), lack of focus (attending Cuba solidarity events...) and awfulness at PMQs (never focusing questions and getting beaten to death by both Cameron, and even worse by May now). Did the lack of unity in the party help? No, but not everything can be blamed on that and it is disingenuous to do so. Thirty years protesting on the backbenches doesn't prepare you well for the most important jobs in government or in shadow government. When it comes to foreign policy, he still holds a unique platform, but at this point I rarely see anyone even trying to defend his ridiculous foreign policy (by far the most absurd thing about Corbyn in my view) because it is obvious to everyone, even very left-wing people, that you simply cannot have an anti-Western pacifist as PM.

Corbyn's in this campaign has been pathetic. Contrary to popular belief, he doesn't really have any policy at all. Even I was impressed when he gathered a large number of renowned anti-austerity economists - Blanchflower, Pikketty, Stiglitz and so on. But it turns out he never bothered to have them meet. McDonnell occasionally comes up with bits and pieces of policy, but only really reactionary against Tory plans and never a complete policy platform like this despite having much more time to do so.

The only policy he has advanced during this campaign is a pathetic and ridiculous attack on pharmaceuticals, blatantly aimed at the fact that Owen Smith worked for Pfizer in the past, suggesting it should be nationalised, despite 'big pharma' making up almost 1% of UK GDP and employing over 70,000 people. Apparently it is outrageous to work for five years at 'big pharma' Pfizer then ten years at the 'Tory propaganda outlet' BBC before becoming an MP, but normal to work for Iranian state TV.

If Corbyn is reelected, Labour are dead.

[Camundongo]

I'm hoping my application as an affiliate member goes through (as I'm a USDAW member), because I can't wait to vote for Owen Smith - Corbyn has done nothing for Labour but weaken it.

[MissZoey]

Yet my parents will still furiously denounce anyone who opposes Corbyn as being "tory-lite".

ffs