Owen Smith MP |
said the ex £80K a year lobbyist for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and then Amgen on Radio 4 today.
Mr Smith was the Head of Policy and Government
relations at Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals from
2005 to 2008. The American company generously allowed Mr Smith to fight
the 2006 Blaenau Gwent by-election as a Labour candidate – which he
lost.
At the time Mr Smith boasted that Pfizer had been “extremely supportive” of his aspirations to public office. We bet they were. Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the World. Since the year 2000 Pfizer has been on a mission to make Big Pharma even bigger, by taking over other pharmaceutical companies, even trying (and failing) to take over the huge AstaZeneca. You can't do that without political friends.
New! The Entirely Fake Owen Smith "As chief lobbyist for Pfizer, Smith actively pushed for
privatisation of NHS services."
No surprise then that Owen Smith "generally voted against a statutory register of lobbyists".
This is not the first contradiction for Owen. On Radio 4’s Today programme 13/7/2016 he was asked “Iraq War, For or Against?”. He said the following,
"Against. I wasn’t in Parliament at the time, I would have voted against, I was opposed to it at the time."
Except of course, he wasn’t. Here’s what Smith actually said about the Iraq War when asked in 2006,
"We are making significant inroads in improving what is happening in Iraq.When asked whether he would have voted against the war, he told Wales Online that he didn’t know.
I thought at the time the tradition of the Labour Party and the tradition of left-wing engagement to remove dictators was a noble, valuable tradition, and one that in South Wales, from the Spanish Civil War onwards, we have recognised and played a part in"
Not knowing if you’re opposed to something is what many in the Parliamentary Labour Party have been best at for a long time. Owen himself is known to be very committed to ridding the world of nuclear weapons but wants to replace Trident; he’s also a supporter of women only shortlists, unless people are against them. If Labour want to return to their position as incredible abstainers instead of being the opposition, they may have found their man, although Owen bravely picked a side and voted with the Tories to introduce the welfare cap.
Thanks to www.athousandflowers.net
You may have but a few hours to save a Left Labour Party.
Thanks to www.athousandflowers.net
You may have but a few hours to save a Left Labour Party.
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