Smith supported the campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union, at the referendum on Britain's membership in June 2016. After the referendum, Smith said that those who had voted to leave the EU had done so "because they felt a sense of loss in their communities, decline, cuts that have hammered away at vital public services and they haven't felt that any politicians, certainly not the politicians they expect to stand up for them, the Labour Party, has been standing up for them." His recommendation was to "put in place concrete policies that will bring real improvements to people's lives so I'm talking about a British New Deal for every part of Britain ..."