Owen Smith

Owen Smith (born 2 May 1970) is a British lobbyist and former Labour Party politician who has been the UK government relations director for pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb since 2020.

Smith became a special adviser for Paul Murphy, at the time the Secretary of State for Wales, in 2002.

He later followed Murphy to the Northern Ireland Office.

Smith then worked in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals industry for five years, and became Head of Policy and Government Relations for pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer in 2005.

In 2006, while still Head of Policy and Government Relations for Pfizer, Smith fought the 2006 Blaenau Gwent by-election.

At the time he said that Pfizer had been "extremely supportive" of his aspirations to public office.

He lost to independent candidate Dai Davies, polling 37% of the vote while Davies polled 46.2%.

During the by-election campaign, Smith spoke with Wales Online and expressed his support for the private sector playing a supportive role in the NHS, private finance initiative (PFI) schemes, but has since described such schemes as a failure.

After leaving Pfizer in September 2008, he joined Amgen, another pharmaceutical company.

Smith was Member of Parliament (MP) for Pontypridd from 2010 to 2019.

Before being elected to Parliament, Smith worked as a radio and television producer for the BBC, as a special adviser for Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy, and as a political lobbyist for Pfizer.

Subsequently, he was selected as the candidate for the safe Labour seat of Pontypridd and won it by a majority of 2,785 votes over the Liberal Democrat candidate at the 2010 general election, a much narrower margin than that of the previous Labour MP, Kim Howells, with the Labour majority falling by 25.7%.

He then joined the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and was appointed as a Shadow minister for Wales.

Smith went on to serve as Shadow Welsh Secretary under Ed Miliband from 2012 until 2015, and then as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn from 2015 until he resigned in June 2016.

In 2012, Smith was promoted to Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Wales, after Peter Hain stepped down.

Smith was named as a potential contender in the 2015 Labour leadership election to replace Ed Miliband.

Ultimately, nothing came of this.

On 14 September 2015, he was named as the new Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party.

On 13 July 2016, he contested the leadership of the Labour Party and was defeated.

On 9 January 2016, Smith voiced an interest in eventually standing for the Labour leadership, saying it would be an "incredible honour and privilege" to do the job.

On 27 June 2016, following the mass resignations from the Labour Shadow Cabinet after the British electorate narrowly voted in favour of leaving the European Union in the EU membership referendum, Smith announced he was stepping down as the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

He resigned over concerns about the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, saying "It breaks my heart to say I cannot see how he can continue as leader."

On 10 July 2016, Owen Smith claimed Corbyn and his allies were prepared to see the party split.

He claimed on Twitter: "On July 27 I asked Jeremy Corbyn if he was prepared to see our party split & worse, wanted it to. He offered no answer".

Smith also claimed "In the same meeting, in response to the same question [ John McDonnell ] shrugged his shoulders and said 'if that's what it takes'."

Three days later, on 13 July 2016, Smith announced his intention to stand as a candidate in the leadership ballot.

He said that he supported many of Corbyn's policies but that Corbyn was "not a leader who can lead us into an election and win for Labour."

He suggested that the party's MPs or NEC could choose between him and Angela Eagle, so that only one of the two would go forward to a ballot.

He postponed the scheduled official launch of his campaign in Pontypridd on 15 July following the Bastille Day attack in Nice, which he described as "heartbreaking".

In launching his campaign on 17 July, he called for a rewriting of Clause IV of the party's constitution to make a specific reference to tackling inequality, which he said should be "right at the heart of everything that we do".

On 18 July 2016, Angela Eagle pulled out of the leadership race because she had approximately 20 fewer nominations than Smith.

In an interview, Smith offered the following endorsement of the former contender: "Angela is a star in the Labour firmament. She will be at my right hand throughout this contest and if I am successful, Angela will be alongside me as my right hand woman."

After the 2017 general election, Corbyn appointed Smith as Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

He was dismissed from this post on 23 March 2018 after he publicly called for a referendum on the final Brexit deal, a position that was against Labour policy of the time.

Smith was born in Morecambe, Lancashire, the son of the Welsh historian and writer David "Dai" Smith, a former chair of the Arts Council of Wales.

He was brought up in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, and attended Barry Comprehensive School.

He joined the Labour Party aged 16, and later read History and French at the University of Sussex.

He worked for the BBC as a radio producer for ten years, working on a variety of programmes in both Wales and London, including Today for BBC Radio 4 and the weekly politics programme Dragon's Eye for BBC Cymru Wales.

On 29 October 2019, following a Parliamentary vote to back a 12 December general election, Smith tendered his resignation as an MP.

He stated: "For political and personal reasons, I have written tonight to Jeremy Corbyn informing him of my decision not to stand at the coming General Election. It has been a great honour and a privilege to serve the people of the Pontypridd Constituency."