Owen Smith to launch Labour leadership bid at time of 'deep peril' for party

Owen Smith, Labour’s former shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, will officially launch his delayed bid for the Labour leadership today.

The unusual choice of a Sunday morning to begin a leadership campaign was forced on him after he had decided at short notice to postpone the announcement on Friday, out of respect for victims of the atrocity in Nice.

He wanted his campaign to begin in his Pontypridd constituency, and on Monday morning will need to be back in London. All three potential candidates in the impending Labour leadership election have been invited to a lunchtime hustings in front of fellow MPs.

After the hustings event is over, Mr Smith and the former shadow Business Secretary Angela Eagle will come under intense pressure from fellow MPs to come to an agreement under which one of them withdraws from the contest to back the other, to maximise the chance of defeating the incumbent, Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Corbyn’s relations with fellow MPs have deteriorated to a point where 172 of them – three quarters of the total – backed a vote of no confidence in him, but he retains substantial support among party members and supporters who gave him an overwhelming victory in last year’s leadership contest.

Speaking at his launch, Mr Smith is expected to put himself forward as the unity candidate at a time of “deep peril” for the Labour Party.

He is expected to say: “The Labour Party must pull through this crisis and unite, we owe it to the millions of people across Britain who look to the Labour Party to provide hope and optimism for their lives.

“So now it falls to a new generation of Labour MPs to step forward and secure Labour’s future. I am the only person in this race than can do that.

Explaining why he is holding the launch in Pontypridd, he is expected to say: “This is the constituency I grew up in, where I went to school, where my kids go to school and I am deeply proud to represent Pontypridd in Parliament.

“It is in this town that my politics, my socialism, is rooted. I was 14 when the Miners’ Strike began and we had friends and family who were at the heart of that terrible year-long strike. For me it was an awakening, a moment when I saw what solidarity and community really meant and how politics can make – or break them.”

Mr Smith has less political experience than Angela Eagle, who was the first to commit to challenging Jeremy Corbyn, and who in 1997 was the youngest member of the incoming Labour government.

She is also well regarded by leading party activists because of the way she chaired Labour’s National Policy Forum before the last election – but Mr Smith’s backers say her support for the Iraq war in 2003 and other military initiatives would fatally undermine her chance of winning a leadership election. Jeremy Corbyn’s ally, Diane Abbott has scathingly described Eagle as “the Empire Strikes Back candidate.”

Mr Smith, who was elected an MP for the first time in 2010, was not involved in the decision to go to war in Iraq, but did work as a special adviser to the former Cabinet minister, Paul Murphy, who backed the Iraq war.