Since losing the Labour leadership contest, the Pontypridd MP has withdrawn from the spotlight. But now he’s preparing to return to the fray

Owen Smith still receives death threats following his unsuccessful challenge to Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership last summer but, as the Pontypridd MP reflects on 2016, he has no regrets.

“I’m proud that I showed the leadership to challenge and to seek to revive the Labour party,” he says, sitting bolt upright at the table in his quiet Westminster office.

Smith was soundly beaten by Corbyn, and has deliberately stayed out of the public eye since September, after a bruising contest that saw his past as a special adviser for the Blair government, and a lobbyist for drugs company Pfizer, raked over for evidence that he was a “red Tory”.

“Jeremy won a big and clear victory, and I made it very clear all summer as to what I thought the issues were and why I thought I was a better bet to lead the Labour party back to power than Jeremy. Clearly the majority of the membership didn’t agree with me and, therefore, I didn’t think I needed to inflict myself on them any more,” he says. “They’d seen lots of me all summer long and they’d probably had a guts full of me.”

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He has not spoken to Corbyn since he stepped off the stage in Liverpool after the results were announced at the start of the party’s annual conference in September.

But asked whether he has any regrets about throwing his hat in the ring – and knocking out Angela Eagle, who had been the first to declare – he says: “No, because that would have been cowardly and it wouldn’t have been showing leadership.

“I think I can look back with respect to myself at having said, very clearly, what I thought about our party, its past and its future.”

Some of Eagle’s supporters still feel Smith should have thrown his weight behind her and they point out that she suffered intense personal abuse for being the first to put her head above the parapet. But he says: “Angela was, yes, brave to challenge; but I think we both took a lot of flak over the summer.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Angela Eagle was the first Labour MP to put forward a challenge to Corbyn’s leadership. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

He repeats his insistence that he was never involved in any coup and was not contacted by the shadow ministers who took part in a wave of resignations in the days after the Brexit vote. He also admits that many Labour members, particularly those who had joined to back Corbyn, believed he had not been given long enough to make his mark on the party. “The reality is, I think we stumbled – others stumbled, truthfully – into the challenge to Jeremy.”

Asked why he believes Corbyn inspires such passionate loyalty, he says: “I think in part it is a rejection of New Labour, and there is a visceral sense among many in the party, old and new members, that New Labour wasn’t radical enough and New Labour wasn’t Labour enough.

“That’s definitely out there and felt by many, many people. I think there was also just a human, emotional reaction to the notion that Jeremy was being unfairly challenged.”

He adds that efforts by the party’s national executive committee to prevent new members from voting, which led to a legal challenge, “compounded the narrative that this was an attempt by the parliamentary Labour party, which is sort of like a swear word these days in the party, to undermine Jeremy.”

In the event, Smith won the support of two-thirds of members who had been part of Labour for more than a year, but Corbyn thrashed him among new recruits.

As 2016 began, Smith was settling into his role as shadow work and pensions spokesman and enjoying needling his opposite number, Iain Duncan Smith, over tax credit cuts and the cruelties of the benefits regime. He was regarded by colleagues as a good communicator with a bright future, but few would have expected that by the summer, he would be crisscrossing Britain in a campaign bus bidding to dislodge Corbyn.

Both major parties were plunged into turmoil by the referendum result, but such was the Conservatives’ ruthless efficiency at stabbing each other in the back – or, in Andrea Leadsom’s case, shooting herself in the foot – that their leadership crisis was resolved in early July, in plenty of time for MPs to head off for a restorative summer break.

There was no vacancy for Labour leader but the simmering discontent with Corbyn’s leadership exploded into open revolt after the EU referendum. The result was a deeply personal race, which lasted until September.

Smith says now that he was not surprised at the attacks he endured, but thinks the tone of debate in the party has become more strident. “Part of the big difference was definitely social media and the extent to which Jeremy supporters were very, very active, and very aggressive on social media,” he says. “I think they did very effectively play the man as well as the ball.”

And he confirms that he is still receiving a rough ride. “I had police at my surgery last Friday because of some of the death threats I’ve had,” he admits. “Some of those are to do with the contest and some of those are to do with other political things I’ve said.” During the summer, he says he had “lots and lots” of death threats. Asked how that felt, he says, with a clipped laugh: “A bit miserable.”

Now Smith says he is ready to return to the fray, in a modest way at least, cooperating with backbench colleagues to formulate some of the policies a future Labour government might need, particularly on tax reform.

“One of the glaring examples of weakness on the left is the fact that we have not really engaged in any meaningful debate about reform of taxation in this country,” he says. “The one big step that Labour took in the 1990s and 2000s was the introduction of tax credits but, other than that really, we left tax untouched and it’s the biggest tool in the state’s armoury. It’s the most important underpinning of everything you can do.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn comprehensively beat Smith in the summer’s leadership contest. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

He talks about the need for the left to rethink the role of the state and how best to tame unfettered markets.

Smith is careful not to be too openly critical of the current shadow frontbench. But it is clear his plans emerge partly from a concern that, while Corbyn and his colleagues style themselves as radicals, their detailed policies do not always match that rhetoric.

“We need to have specific, concrete ideas that people see are credible and up to the scale of the task we face today,” he says. “One of the things I can help do behind the scenes is think about those things and convene discussions about it.”

Choosing his words carefully, he welcomes Corbyn’s improved performance at prime minister’s questions, which has been widely remarked upon in Westminster. “I think he’s definitely done better at PMQs; he’s been much sharper at PMQs, more forensic, and pursued a single theme more effectively, so I think that’s really encouraging.”

But it is clear that he stands by the apocalyptic picture he painted back in the summer, of a political party peering into the abyss. “Anybody who looks at modern politics, across the world, and thinks that parties can’t disappear, is looking with their eyes closed. It can absolutely happen. As I said over the summer, parties take a long time to rise, but history shows they can disappear overnight.

He believes the Brexit vote was a response to long-term changes to society and the economy that will make it harder for Labour to unite its traditional supporters. “The ability Labour had previously to forge a coalition, in those more homogenous communities, has been in decline for a long period. Brexit shone a light on that, it highlighted those fissures, but it’s deeper-rooted than that, I fear.”

Despite his bleak mood, however, Smith has no intention of following the example of Copeland MP and fellow Corbyn-sceptic Jamie Reed, who announced just before Christmas that he was stepping down from parliament. “I’m frustrated and disappointed that I didn’t win and I’m frustrated and disappointed that we’re still at a low ebb, but I’m hopeful that we can revive and I’m hopeful that I can continue to play a part.”