LABOUR leadership challenger Owen Smith has said he would raise the top rate of tax to 50p as he claimed the party had been “too timid” about taxation in a pitch to the left in his bid to replace Jeremy Corbyn.
Smith has sought to portray himself as a soft-left candidate in the contest, which also includes fellow Labour MP Angela Eagle, who served in the governments of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair and backed the last Iraq war.
The former shadow work and pensions secretary also promised to rewrite Clause IV of the party’s constitution to put tackling inequality at the heart of its mission.
Smith evoked Blair’s “Clause IV moment” – when the former Prime Minister controversially amended the passage to remove Labour’s historic commitment to public ownership.
Smith repeatedly praised Corbyn’s influence on the party but spoke of the need to create a “radical but credible” movement.
But Labour MSP Neil Findlay, who helped launch the campaign Scottish Labour for Jeremy in Glasgow on Sunday, told the BBC that “Labour should’ve been in there putting the boot into the Tory party” and said that, instead, the “parliamentary party turned in on itself.”
Meanwhile, Corbyn said he thinks the rules which exclude recently signed-up Labour members from voting in the contest are “not very fair” and suggested that there may be a legal challenge to the restrictions.
Corbyn said a £25 fee for registered supporters to vote in the contest is too high, which the Labour leader’s supporters have said represents the latest attempt to oust him.
Labour’s ruling national executive committee controversially imposed a back-dated voting ban on members who joined after January 12, restrictions that also apply to trade union members signing up to the party.
Anyone wanting a say on who will be leader has just two days this week to sign up and must pay £25, compared with £3 last year in the contest that saw Corbyn overwhelmingly elected as Labour leader in a ballot of members and registered supporters. Corbyn said: “I’m very concerned. We haven’t heard the end of this. A lot of people joined the party in the last six months and will be extremely annoyed.
“They joined because they want to be involved in the party and they’re not being allowed to.
“There may be a legal move, but nothing has been decided yet. Not by me anyway.”
Meanwhile, Smith said the tax system needed to be more “progressive”, as he formally launched his leadership campaign.
Speaking on yesterday’s Andrew Marr Show, when asked if he would raise taxes on the richest in society, the Welsh MP said: “I think we need to completely overhaul our tax system, so yes.”
Smith stated that he would reintroduce a 50p top rate of tax “tomorrow” and also said it was “completely anomalous” for capital gains tax to be 20 per cent when the higher rate of income tax was 45 per cent.
Launching his leadership bid, Smith later told an audience in his Pontypridd constituency: “I want to rewrite Clause IV to put tackling inequality right at the heart of everything that we do.”
He also indicated he would bow out of the Labour leadership race if Eagle won the most support in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), to give her the best shot of toppling Corbyn.
Smith said the leadership contender with the most support among Labour MPs should become the unity candidate to take on Corbyn.
He was not an MP when Blair’s government actively supported the US-led invasion of Iraq and has styled his candidature as being a progressive left-leaning alternative to Corbyn and Eagle, who has also denied she is a Blairite.
However, Smith stated his support for the renewal of Trident in today’s (Mon) House of Commons vote on the issue.
Smith said: “I will vote to renew Trident. I want a world without nuclear weapons altogether, but I don’t believe that we hasten that by divesting.”
Meanwhile, Eagle, who launched her leadership bid last week, refused to sign up to the idea that the contender with the fewest nominations should step aside.
She said: “I think we have to have the person who is most likely to beat Jeremy Corbyn, and I think that is me.”
Corbyn has published a code of conduct for the coming election, which is due to run until the autumn, including “no tolerance” of abuse aimed at candidates or their supporters on social media.
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