In a competition to be the best Jeremy Corbyn, Owen Smith might do OK but not as well as the actual Jeremy Corbyn. Nominally, of course, the current contest is to choose a Labour leader who may have another name but the tone for most of tonight’s hustings in Solihull – and the audience reaction to the candidates’ statements – made it clear that Corbynism is not to be challenged as the default creed of the party.
Smith appears to have accepted that logic in domestic affairs. He pitches himself as the man who can combine the socialist principles that Corbyn’s supporters see incarnate in the incumbent leader and meld them with a practical aim to win general elections. The essential premise of that argument is that Corbyn is steering the party towards defeat; that things are going badly.
But it became clear that a large portion of the audience doesn’t believe that to be the case. When Smith mentioned dire opinion polls, he was heckled. When he tried to explain why his parliamentary colleagues are unhappy with their boss he was jeered. One of the most revealing exchanges of the evening was not between the candidates but between the challenger and the crowd. “We need to win over people who voted Tory. They are not contemplating voting Labour,” said Smith. “Rubbish!” someone shouted from the hall. “It’s just true. We can’t deny reality. We’ve got to be honest with ourselves,” Smith pleaded.
But Corbyn’s response – that an election could be won with more ardent arguments for public investment and declarations of compassion – elicited warm applause. Smith thinks that too, apparently. The two men ramped up quite a spending bill in the first 15 minutes: new railways were criss-crossing the land, Sure Start centres were being restored, benefit cuts were being reversed. It was all easily affordable because old taboos about borrowing were gone, old squeamishness about raising taxes was banished too. Besides, austerity was morally and intellectually defeated, so fiscal discipline was no longer an electoral obstacle. Or that was the apparent consensus in a room full of Labour members and, in this race, they’re the electorate that counts.
The sharpest divergence came on foreign policy. Smith said he would honour the Nato treaty – defending an east European ally if it were attacked by Russia. Corbyn would not commit. In the wider scheme of things, when the wider public is choosing a prime minister, that is a problem. A candidate who cannot bring himself to say that an international mutual assistance pact between democracies is diplomatically, strategically and morally sacrosanct will not be given charge of the nation’s defences. But Corbyn sees things in rather more nebulous terms. “I want to achieve a world where we don’t need to go to war,” he said to more hearty applause. Smith wanted to achieve that kind of world too but the crowd didn’t want to hear it from him. It was a Corbyn ideal for a Corbyn party and Smith, with all his cavilling and compromising and buzz-kill talk about electability and power, just can’t out-Jeremy the real thing.
