Why on earth did Owen Smith say that he might consider re-joining not just the European Union but also the euro and Schengen? Some of the Labour leadership contender’s colleagues have been asking the ‘why on earth’ question a fair bit this summer, not least when he made the interesting decision to out-Corbyn Corbyn on the small matter of Islamic State.
But today the Pontypridd MP told Andrew Marr that if certain conditions, such as a further recession, privatisation of the NHS and so on, were met, ‘I think the sensible and responsible thing for a Labour government to do is to say we’re better off in the European Union’. Marr then asked whether this meant joining the euro and Schengen for the first time:
‘Potentially, but again we’re getting into hypotheticals built on hypotheticals. I think the key thing is they’ve not said definitively, there was a couple of weeks ago they were briefing it might be 2019 before we trigger Article 50.’
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