How Owen Smith can save Labour from Jeremy Corbyn As David Cameron settled himself back in Downing Street with his unexpected majority last year, and Ed Miliband stepped down […]

As David Cameron settled himself back in Downing Street with his unexpected majority last year, and Ed Miliband stepped down as Labour leader, I was doing the media rounds on College Green opposite Parliament. A Radio Five Live producer bustled me into a green tent where presenter Peter Allen was sitting with Labour backbencher Jeremy Corbyn. He asked if we minded being interviewed together. We didn’t.

We both said the Labour Party would have to think long and hard. He felt we had lacked radical edge. I felt we had allowed the Tories to get away with the Big Lie that Labour caused the crash. When Peter Allen asked ‘what happens next?’ neither of us suggested that Jeremy Corbyn would become the next leader. Had we done so, I can only imagine the look on Mr Allen’s face.

Why ‘Anyone But Corbyn’ failed

Yet a few months later, that is exactly what happened. If Ed defeating his brother David had been a shock, that was as nothing compared with this; a lifelong backbencher well into his Sixties was now the Leader, winning in all sections of the electoral college, the engine of his win the new members he attracted to the Party.

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I was very much an ABC man. Anyone But Corbyn. The reason was that I could not see him ever being accepted by the country as their Prime Minister. He has devoted his long career to being a figure of protest, not of power. Politics needs people like that. But not as leaders of parties which exist to win general elections, and put their values, beliefs, ideals into practice in the form of actual policy detail.

Of course, there was a fundamental flaw with the ABC approach. It contained within it an admission that his rivals, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, were failing to put over the kind of ideas and leadership skills that a recently defeated Labour Party was looking for. So the Party, instead of ABC, went for C precisely because he was so different, so unexpectable, so defiant of what people took to be the rules of modern politics. I am not comparing him with Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen, but his rise is part of the same phenomenon, the desire to kick established politics, the scream for something different. That, every bit as much as Corbyn’s half-hearted campaigning and Cameron’s strategic misjudgements, also explains Brexit.

No build on wider support

But my basic fear, that he would not inspire the country, that he could not reach out beyond the comfort zone of people in basic agreement with his fine words and intentions, has been borne out. This is not about polls, bad headlines, or fantasy Blairite plots. It is about the hard reality of MPs and supporters, when outside the Westminster bubble, hearing the same thing, again and again and again … Labour cannot win with Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Those shadow cabinet members who stepped down have seen close up, day in day out, a simple reality: he cannot lead. He cannot make decisions. He cannot build a team to win. He is losing not gaining ground with the public.

There has always been a section of the Labour Party that cares more about power inside the party than power in the country. Politics needs people like that too. But again, not leading the Party. Not when there is a real risk that the Tories, despite missing every economic target, dividing on Europe, losing a Prime Minister on the back of a disastrous referendum, are in for a generation.

Owen Smith qualities: Leadership, electability, policy

So step forward Owen Smith. We are not going to agree on everything, but then I accept I remain in a minority in the Party in standing up for Tony Blair over Iraq. But there are four things I have noticed about Owen Smith that make me think he may be a cut above those Corbyn defeated so easily last time.

First, in standing at this time, and in winning the support he has managed to garner among MPs, he has shown political courage, and the ability to win people over through argument.

Second, he appears to me to be rightly obsessed about what Labour needs to do to win a general election, an issue Corbyn seems embarrassed to discuss.

Third, looking at the breadth of his support, he will be able to put together a really strong front bench capable of giving Theresa May and Co a real run for their money. The party in Parliament matters so much more than Corbyn’s supporters appear willing to accept. Fourth, importantly, he is already sketching out policy ideas that go beyond mere sloganizing about us wanting a better, happier world.

This has been the really big disappointment about Corbyn’s Labour. Can even his most fervent supporters explain what his actual policies are, on the economy, on education – about which he says next to nothing – about health, about housing, about law and order?

We have a leadership vacuum in part because we have a policy vacuum, a dysfunctional operation around both leadership and policy development.

Owen Smith, an MP for just six years, now has a matter of weeks to win round the Party. He has started well, in showing that the reason it matters is because for Labour to have any future at all, we must show we can win round the country. Under Corbyn, that will simply never happen. Under Smith, it might, and that prospect is so much better than where we are right now.