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  • Paul, thank you both very much indeed for joining us this week as the label contest gets properly underway.

  • Who's have a good week of those candidates?

  • Would you say I think we can say that Lisa Nandi has had a good week.

  • I mean, she certainly had a high profile week.

  • Think so.

  • We were just on a pole for labor list by observation, with labels, readers who Labour members.

  • And she had very low levels of familiarity with her and her policy platform.

  • I think we can expect that to change.

  • She did a speech on Monday, her launch speech.

  • Then she did a speech yesterday on freedom of movement and how.

  • Actually she believes in actually rebutting those accusations that she's kind of close to blue labour on those sort of anti migration sentiments.

  • So she's really going for it now and really trying to appeal to Labour members basically and she just at least it is well, as we've got the better of Andrew Neil on the BBC which you don't see exactly and I think I mean it really was a consensus that she had done very, very well and she handled all of his questioning, and brilliantly, I think I mean, that you can disagree with some of her ideas on Dhe.

  • She did have a little slip up in terms of when she's talking about Scottish Independence movement, and she talked about Catalonia.

  • So she's released an article today to rebut that.

  • But I mean, she was impressive, overrule, and she clearly held her own.

  • Paul, you've endorsed this time.

  • I didn't need my endorsement.

  • Presumably, you think he's had a good week with that endorsement.

  • But what do you think?

  • I have a look at that?

  • I think that what we're seeing with the mall is that they're all detaching themselves from the former cells really much Jess Phillips.

  • You know, the kind of aren't you know, I'll stab you in the front, you know, fuck off to die on Albert complete.

  • But that's what she said.

  • Uh, yeah, exactly.

  • But she's moved.

  • Just Phillips has moved.

  • So you should know about Melanie on on her team.

  • There is an arch.

  • I mean, so, Lex, it's so Brexit that she was gonna go for a no deal.

  • At one point, just Felix was her entire entire selling point.

  • Waas was remaining second referendum.

  • So I think what's been good is that all the candidates that survive are I'm disappointed, for example, that Clive Lewis had to pull out because he had no no support.

  • All the candidates have survived a moving, I think, beyond the original base of support they thought they were gonna get.

  • And that's a sign.

  • All the fact that while these campaigns they're all ramping up during their GDP our data, the data laws that say you got to do X Y Z reality is finally sinking in.

  • This was a huge and historic defeat.

  • It means that going just carry on doing the same thing a bit better, won't work on politicians and not great with intellectuals, not paid to be intellectuals.

  • But they're having to do some some fast footwork of the mind on get their heads round.

  • What did it Actually, what actually happened?

  • Because we're only, you know, finding out through evidence to discussing with each other.

  • What happened, I think Look, I think our Mr Storm a supporter, I think they've all had a good week.

  • I'm just disappointed them all doesn't include Clive.

  • I'm Why you supporting kids, Dharma, Some people would imagine you were a natural.

  • Rebecca Long, Bailey supported you were a big backer of the Corbin projects for quite a quite a long time.

  • Well, I certainly you could I wouldn't say it was the architect of Corbin is, um but if I was, I was an architecture was never alone on the building site because by fromthe screenful case on words, which I can no say, don't make my made my blood boil that with a response that they gave to this creep off thing.

  • I think I I'm saying it in a way from scree Powell, where he failed to nail the national security thing which is so important for all labor leaders right the way through to the shenanigans, with hot over his office failing to implement the line that was agreed on for a second referendum.

  • In whatever circumstances, I began to feel that the that that there's two.

  • Let's on.

  • I'm part of one left which I believe to be open, internationalist, democratically minded on this other left which, you know, you know, is too too soft on Russia too soft on Syria too soft on Dictatorships that they happen to like bad at running the party bureaucratic to the very last moment.

  • I felt increasingly disengaged from them.

  • Know if Rebecca Long Bailey had come out and said, You know what, Paul?

  • I've been feeling something like that, too.

  • I didn't like the fact that we had wholly unsuitable candidate imposed, who then lost, imposed at the last minute in the in the election, all women short.

  • This court called here to to annoy this person.

  • If Rebecca had said, Yeah, I've been feeling like that a long time I thought great.

  • But instead, what's happened?

  • The reason I think Rebecca one really took so long for her company to get out of the starting blocks is because they didn't really know what they wanted, because on this is even know why you get some of the officials in the United Union even know talking about switching to Nandi on.

  • There were even to the last moment for talking about about getting Barry Gardner O'Ryan Lavery to stand because what they want is a red Brexit.

  • I'm afraid a red Brexit doesn't exist.

  • Brexit, for me, is a disaster.

  • I can no longer fight it.

  • We can fight its effects, but I see Starmer as the inheritor off at its best what the Labour Shadow Covenant was trying to do at its most open at its most engaged with the rest of the party.

  • And, of course, with reality.

  • If you go back to we've all been in, the storm account would be the same well, since Lisa Honey said, You know, drop that bombshell on Corbin.

  • I think yesterday or the day before you know, you really betrayed national security over over script only in the trailer.

  • I don't think he just did the right line.

  • It was bad.

  • We said, Well, what this care say at the time, Lo behold, Starmer was spot on.

  • On the night he condemned Russia called for sanctions.

  • He mentioned into Aaliyah that he had represented Alexander Litvinenko's wife in court.

  • I mean, who hasn't represented over that video video being central, like Zelig to every single discord in there?

  • But let me make a serious point here.

  • It's a different kind of left on.

  • One of my criticism off that sort of Morningstar Unite left in the party is like Blair is, um, it's very chopped down.

  • Its very prepared to use the bureaucratic methodologies of the party views that starting this recently.

  • Well, if somebody walks around with a badge of style and on the lapel, it's not an insult to call them Stalinist.

  • If they celebrate the murder of Leon Trotsky by the GPU, the KGB, as someone that I mind a person in Beckett's team did, then you have to be prepared to say what it is.

  • And this is not a new thing for me.

  • I mean, written to entire books, trying to distance the left from that tradition.

  • Toxic.

  • Let's come back to some of those things We talked.

  • You brought up Brexit.

  • How radical is kids?

  • Thomas the scene as you listen.

  • Toe Paul, Do you feel the left coalition that came together around Corbin has fractured on DDE Can?

  • Could that be fatal for Rebecca Mom Bailey's chances?

  • But definitely, that's exactly what's happened.

  • I think Jeremy Corbyn's leadership kind of held all these strands of the labour left together on.

  • We're obviously once he's gone, you know, we can see on one that's once that vacancy comes up, we can see that people have completely different ideas of how to do labor, politics and howto sell those policies and all the rest of it on the Labour left.

  • And I think that is why Rebecca on Bailey's campaign has been, you know, so slow to start as well.

  • From what I understand, you know, there has been a lot of infighting within her camp.

  • There are there's a left and right within her campaign team.

  • Even.

  • There's a lot of factionalism there, and that has contributed her very slow star.

  • I think we're going to see it kick off now, because momentum I mean, obviously there was a little criticism the way that they did this.

  • There's no there's no coincidence the fact that John Lanzmann is both chair of Momentum and director of Rebecca Long Bailey's campaign in the way that they've done yes, so So yes.

  • So Momentum balloted its its members, but it decided to recommend Rebecca Monday in Angela Raina.

  • Interestingly, that's another interesting decision to its members.

  • And then the questions put out to the members for 48 hours.

  • Well, yes, no questions, no.

  • So the Venezuelan referendum.

  • What better what home?

  • What better thing to do to dispel the idea that you installed some way a kind of autocratic centralised bureaucratic, manipulative machine that to do Venezuela style referendum yes or no for the great leader.

  • I heard that momentum.

  • We're going about its members.

  • And I was surprised because I thought, you know, actually, you can overestimate just how factional momentum members are.

  • And I thought that actually kissed armor would have a very strong showing in that poll.

  • And then, of course, when I when the news came out of how they were gonna do it means exactly, I think, as a momentum momentum momentum member.

  • And I joined it because I just thought, I've got to protect this this group from the witch and the level of witch hunting kind of attacks that were going on against it.

  • A lot of the mainstream media, I think, including Channel four had a big thing about momentum had been ill.

  • Kill traded should be shut down.

  • Since then.

  • I joined because I wanted to show solidarity with quite a diverse group of people, and I'm still a member.

  • But the problem is that what am I going to do now?

  • I mean, why I have to do what I'd like to do is form a group of momentum members to campaign for Kira.

  • My worry about momentum momentum did fantastic work.

  • I think even its enemies would agree.

  • It did fantastic work for labor in both elections in this last election.

  • Technically speaking, it beat conservative central office on its own, with its social media reach.

  • Maybe no in in in persuasiveness but in technical reach.

  • I want momentum to carry on doing that on How does it do that if it's endorsed somebody who doesn't win because then what it has to become is an opposition I don't and that could really happen under kids down the left could look could become here.

  • The force it always.

  • Here's some more risky, but with more clout here, some ball breaking news.

  • If Starmer wins, what I wanna do is form a left group that hold him to account and, if necessary, criticizes him on Does what labor leaders find so difficult, which is to think the unthinkable about policy democracy on lots of things that you politicians often don't know what they don't know.

  • So the point about left group that can say left group I mean a policy making a factional with a small group that carries on what we've done on the Jeremy, which is the left, which is internationalism, which is which is a class struggle.

  • Yeah, I want all that.

  • If necessary.

  • I will do it separately from Starmer, even though I support.

  • But I've spoken to a lot of people who would've been your natural soul mates over the years were certainly part of the Corbin project at the beginning.

  • Like you think left organization trying to hold kids stammer to a left agenda will have an awful lot of work to do because he is, they would say they do say he is a Kinnick figure, not Ed Miliband figure.

  • Even those politics, you could argue, quite admit event, but a Kinnick figure because he is transitional two on even bigger move to the right beyond him.

  • That's what they say, You know that.

  • So I don't wantto rabbit on at length about this, but I wouldn't see storm it as any kind of parallel to any of those recent leaders that the person he reminds me of the most is Alexis Tsipras, who ran Syriza who, basically this is the Greek scare.

  • Some more Labour MPs off, but there's a reason for this.

  • Look at what shit sippers did.

  • He systematically took a left force.

  • Andi confronted them with some very hard news, which is?

  • Look, guys, you're not gonna win unless you lose some of your doctrine, Airness.

  • Unless we get some of the expertise from the party.

  • We've just destroyed the centrist Social Democracy PASOK in Greece.

  • The parallels there, no exact.

  • But he was also able, through force of character by kind of representing modernity.

  • Sort of professionalism.

  • Sure, I had the privilege to make documentaries.

  • Where was inside?

  • As close as I am to you while they're in their version of Turn Downing Street on.

  • I was actually impressed by the professional professionalism off it on.

  • That's what I want.

  • I mean, I can live with Lisa Nandi because I think she's equally professional.

  • I couldn't Certainly I think Emily Thornberry is equally professional.

  • I think he just got that thing that allows you to look like you're gonna run a major state in the world.

  • Do you think a lot of Corbyn Easter's feel their legacy would be intact?

  • With kids start, we can see his team is peppered with a few names that might give that impression.

  • What do you think?

  • Yeah, it's interesting how I mean come back to what you said earlier.

  • Actually, a lot of the campaign teams are put together in a very careful way.

  • So Jess Phillips has Melanie on West treating, but also a lot of people's vote campaign staffers on dhe on.

  • Then there's yes, the case.

  • Thoma has brought on Simon Fletcher on Cat Fletcher's of these people who were instrumental and Jeremy Corbyn's 2015 2016 successes and his leadership campaign.

  • So he's got some real experts there would call when I was onboard.

  • He's definitely signaling, of course.

  • He also has Owen Smith supporters on his campaign and his own staffers.

  • People who supported Liz Kendall owns Myth, those kind of people.

  • So we know that in terms of who he associates with in his home constituency and in terms of the stuff is that he currently has their very much not on the court tonight wing of the party, and I think he will have to build trust if he is going to get those kind of soft momentum type members.

  • He is gonna have to build trust with them because it's not entirely clear, for instance, at the moment which public ownership plans that he would keep on which ones he would reject his passion about the rail.

  • But not so much men on water, for instance.

  • So this these the kind of things they're gonna come out in the hostage ings and the televised Bates the sort of details on dhe it could derail his campaign.

  • Actually, if r L.

  • B is seen as definitely the Left Canada and actually kissed arma moves Maura Maura over to the right off the Labour Party, he's looking a sense, maybe just Phillips.

  • Is that yes, it's very useful to have her on the ballot paper.

  • I think she will get through this second stage off the leadership contest.

  • They have someone who flank outflank Sue on the right, as it were exactly is quite otherwise.

  • He'd be not only the only bloke standing there, but the most right wing could be projected is that I think these, um, to an outsider, that Jess Phillips is a social Democrat.

  • She is a centrist Social Democrat.

  • Lisa Dandy is.

  • Should I think Lisa's done enough at the moment?

  • Tow non blue labour.

  • All this stuff about internationalism is interesting to me.

  • I want to I want to get to the bottom of what it really means.

  • Starmer, unformed Marie off quite clearly in the in the left social Democratic mold.

  • On what?

  • I actually want to hear what Becky stands for because because there are so many of that unite lot as we call them the office you know, the old office behind who do have a very hard left, a very economic nationalist and, I think bureaucratic review of over to run the party.

  • I'd love it if you came out of all of that a bit, but in the end of the day, that's the material we have to win the next election.

  • It is right wing social democracy at Central Social Democracy is the soft left is the hard left.

  • My question is not here should run it, because if one more of these factions spend another five years like the three that we've gone through trying to run the party as a faction, you're not gonna win an election.

  • That's what I learned on the night of the 12.

  • We can't win if the leadership has runners a faction against everybody else in the party.

  • This is what attracted me to Starmer Mawr than any specific policy issue or whether he wants rail or water.

  • It's his understanding of that coalition building that I think it makes him the most attractive candidate at the heart of the kids started recent political story is what many people would see as his holding German going by the hand and walking him to a place on Europe that on Brexit that Jeremy Corbyn didn't initially really want to go.

  • So we have the 10 16 2017 general election and Labor's run on implementing Brexit.

  • But after that case, Thomas seems to take Jeremy Corbyn on the journey.

  • John MacDonald joins the journey on.

  • They moved closer and closer towards a second referendum, eventually putting the flag in the second referendum, never quite coming out in Jeffrey Corbin's case for remain.

  • But that journey have floored.

  • Do you think, as we sit here now and potentially looking at Boris Johnson Brexit, which would be more divergence from Europe, how floored wants that central bit of the care Starmer the story?

  • If I've got that story right, I think that's pretty much an accurate account of what happened.

  • I think his team will always say that Que stammer is incredibly understanding off the MPs who represented leave constituencies MPs like Lisa Nandi, who was saying, You know, I might vote for Brexit, why not vote for Brexit?

  • But I understand the reasons and we need to engage with that and we can't just take this anti Democratic view of rejecting the 2016 referendum result.

  • I I personally was never in favor of a fresh referendum, so I'm certainly no on Paul's wavelength on that issue.

  • I think basically is a difficult one because Jeremy Corbyn certainly was very skeptical about all of this.

  • But he his style of leadership is all about compromise and building consensus.

  • He needed to get the trade unions on board.

  • He needed to move them over slowly, slowly, inch by inch, get the members who were already there to just compromise that little bit and not go full remain.

  • But just say we want another referendum.

  • So we came to a compromise position by the time we got to September and caught at conference.

  • But to the outside that looked like weak leadership, it looks like indecisiveness on Jeremy Corbyn's part, but from the inside there's an argument to be made that was quite skillful.

  • Management of all of the stakeholders within the Labour Party who deserved to have a say over the process really know how it looked to me.

  • Let's go back a bit.

  • From December 2018 onwards, the TSA union on Hope not hate to ah kind of semen in the labor room is quite blue, laboring, quite naturally sympathetic to Lex.

  • It'll or leaving blue blue home, not hating on TSA were presenting Corbin and his team repeatedly with polling evidence that said will lose three votes to the Lib Dems on any new centrist party that's formed, which could, which at that point was a reality.

  • We'll lose votes.

  • The Lib Dems greens and on Scottish nationalists.

  • Three for everyone we lose to the tour is over.

  • Leave that.

  • I believe that at the time was right, so people like me and it wasn't just me, said spent the whole of springs trying to say it's not just a second referendum.

  • We've got to commit to remain.

  • If we really believe hard Brexit is a disaster for the working class, we ought to tell them that if we didn't commit to it, well, then you ought to think About what?

  • About that one person we're gonna lose.

  • Um, in the end, we couldn't persuade Jeremy's people on John McDonald played, I think, a brilliant role trying to sew.

  • It wasn't consensual.

  • It was a battle.

  • But Donald was fighting for that position.

  • So was Starmer.

  • But Jeremy's office word on above all, whenever he did move, unite the union on his own member, his own stuff would pull him back.

  • So the to the extent the externalize not wrong here it looked like dithering because it was dithering.

  • But you still.

  • But if if you've got the dream you wanted and he'd gone even faster But even more definitive prayer remain Position What?

  • What would have happened for me?

  • Seats that lost for me on the trade unions?

  • Oh, arguing this way weren't we weren't ignorant of the fact that this cultural dissociation had taken place.

  • Indeed, it last year I went up to Lisa's.

  • Leeson, on these constituency did some work with her.

  • Listen to people.

  • You don't have to be there five minutes to hear the antipathy of even the members towards everything.

  • Europe.

  • I mean, it's not just that they have a sort of soft left position on Europe.

  • Many of our members in those constituencies just want to leave Europe.

  • So we said Lou saw the position.

  • We're hemorrhaging votes.

  • In the end, we hemorrhage something like 1.1 million to the lib Dems even know the right position.

  • Uh, we went down after the NBC decision on the 29th of April not to go for the second referendum.

  • We fell from 32 to 22% were neck and neck with the lib Dems, with 1/3 party being formed at the same time.

  • So my idea was sort that on no move to the main task with main task is to get busted.

  • Lawley Wherever you've got to try and offer them something that that balances the fact that you've taken a clear decision, you're never going to be balanced.

  • Well, you see, you see, it's a counterfactual you don't know.

  • It could have been the balance, but you could see the point of one.

  • The point I'm making is trying to get your view on is kids Thomas Biggest judgment call that he's ever made this journey to a more pro remain position that Jeremy Corbyn was comfortable.

  • History could turn around and say, That was That was a really bad move, which particular one?

  • Because if you look at it, Starmer spent quite a lot of time along.

  • It wasn't holding Corbin or anybody else's hand.

  • He was there in the team trying to get Brexit done.

  • If you remember, Labor's position was to try and do a deal, especially at that time, where Theresa May failed and she invoked, finally invited Labor in that those discussions were unfortunately, going on a time when we're just losing votes.

  • So I think that what we should have, don't think Labor did blow an opportunity that was there to try in the beginning.

  • After with the Capitol offices thing, this is not a popular view on that.

  • Couldn't the weirdest thing is, the only attraction I could get for it was with Stephen Kinnock on briefly with people like Alex, So Belle, who are on the open labor side towards the end of 2018.

  • I came to the conclusion that if we had a second referendum we should just go straight forward Gangbusters for a Norway style deal.

  • But that means freedom of movement.

  • Clear upfront, freedom of movement, single market, Norway style deal.

  • Get out.

  • But you know what nobody wanted it on yet again.

  • The labour frontbench they just could never bring themselves either.

  • Tiu a clearly defensible full of Brexit.

  • They have this this we called it the Unicorn.

  • And without this unicorn Brexit having tried that well, it came.

  • My conclusion was well, I don't want to lose the vast majority of progressive young left wing people over to the Lib Dems, the greens and the SNP.

  • I'd rather keep them.

  • That was That's a choice I made.

  • Does anybody sound like they have ah, path to winning back?

  • Those northern towns that are have always been called labour Heartlands?

  • I wantedto Gordon was on the girls Or are they Are they beyond reach?

  • And labor's gonna completely redefine what its electoral base is.

  • What's what's the future?

  • That I think the really worrying thing about the 2019 election is not just how many of those so called Red War seats were lost but harmony now still labor held but incredibly marginal Hominy Maur we could have lost actually and it was fortunate that it wasn't an even bigger landslide.

  • That's what is so worrying, obviously, Leeson Andy in terms of leadership contenders who were talking about this stuff.

  • I mean, she is the sort of towns candidate that's the kind of mean is going on.

  • Is that that, you know, that's what she talks about predominantly, because it's been her analysis for such a long time now she co founded Scent of Towns that think tank, and she's been talking about how that aging population, the lack of local bus service is the fact that those priorities weren't talks about in terms of Labour's manifesto.

  • We may, you know, we've done a whole press conference on free board band, which is very interesting policy.

  • Inaccessibility in that sense is very important to those towns.

  • But the fact that there wasn't a whole press conference on bus service is really says something.

  • So she's really focusing on this.

  • I think we need to hear more from Qwest armor on exactly these problems because, of course he has this challenge of the fact that he is a north London MP.

  • He represents Camden.

  • I mean, yeah, again, we have a potential leader who is gonna come from exactly the same part of London has the last.

  • You're nodding, Paul.

  • That's a problem, isn't it?

  • Even though you supported, cousin is not ideal candidates the 69th most deprived borough in Britain.

  • You know what Wigan is the 75th most deprived borrow.

  • The difference is that how cursed armor will be seen?

  • Well, whether he is or not, I'm just making a point here.

  • The work.

  • I was delighted when Clyde Lewis launched his campaign in Brixton, and his first words were.

  • Brixton is a labor hall that I come from the northwest part of Wigan on.

  • What I've always thought is that what I like about Lisa's idea is that we need to build a red bridge between these two cultures.

  • But let's understand something that Jeremy never acknowledged that something understand this Corbin used to make these speeches.

  • You know, whether you're in Wakefield or whether you're in Camden or whatever.

  • You know, it's the same every got this thing.

  • It's not true that it's the same because the poverty of Camden you look at the health statistics have counted their excellent.

  • They're better than average because it's got a young population suicide.

  • What perinatal mortality deaths on the 75.

  • They're all better than the average in Britain, you goto Wigan.

  • It's absolutely dire because there's no money and it's it's It's people like people in my family who have worked in heavy industrial jobs, dying young because that's what you do.

  • Have you working in a steel works?

  • No, we have to understand, And I'm delighted know that Lisa Lundy has always understood this.

  • You know the types of poverty.

  • We're not talking about a rich place in a poor place.

  • We're talking about two kinds of poor place Now.

  • What we need to do is to demonstrate that you can come from one of these places and you can cross.

  • Lisa herself demonstrated this as well, because Lisa only spent 10 years in the first place.

  • Starmer went after the election.

  • Was Lee to talk to the defeated MP and talk to my friends and colleagues who lived there.

  • So I think everybody's showing willing to try and cross that divide.

  • But here's what I what I said, the problem that arose during the election waas I think many in labor and not willing to acknowledge it was the rise of native ism.

  • What if your native ism says that people who dug the mines worked in the coal mines for World War two et cetera, should basically have more of a say than the Lithuanian taxi driver on?

  • Better well know is, it's a way we put some social capital in this into this country.

  • Therefore we need we need to get some return greater than use just arrived.

  • That is the kind of logic to native ism.

  • I heard it again and again on the doorstep, and even our own activists were coming up to us and say, You know, look Plymouth one in four patients in Plymouth doesn't have a GP regular G p a.

  • Any waiting times through the roof.

  • These issues should have been playing for us for labor.

  • They were playing for the Tory's because the message waas too many migrants, too many too many shirkers as well.

  • The wrong people are going to any all these people we don't like, so you turn people against each other on I don't think really any wing of labor was quite understood the moment we've got to climb to try and put a moral case to the working class people who we lost.

  • That native isn't a good idea.

  • They're all reachable.

  • These people are.

  • There were some of them beyond reach for me.

  • No, nobody's beyond reach.

  • You know, I know what a miserable old Racists and club on golf club balls with the alliance.

  • You said that the door is put together when you're fighting an ideological battle.

  • You have to be prepared to stigmatize the opposition.

  • Yeah, miserable racist golf club boars is the core of the Tory vote.

  • I'm afraid when I go to look like I went to my home tonally and undisturbed campaigning.

  • I know because I'm from their people.

  • Love arguing.

  • I mean, if you go in a pope and you're wearing some kind of a badge SR extinction rebellion, expect 45 old blokes outgoing and say we want to open the coal mines, but then argue back.

  • Working class life is about an argument on.

  • I think that I want a friendly argument with with all those people who said to me we wanted to vote labour, but we couldn't do because of X and try and work out how many of them Put some of me.

  • I'm afraid it's racism.

  • Assume it's just They didn't like the look of Corbyn.

  • Andi.

  • It was very hard to sell Corbin.

  • I'm sure you'll agree.

  • We're just very hard to go home.

  • Yeah, and I think the thing is that he became a professional politician the first time around.

  • People were willing to give him the benefit of doubt because they thought he's interesting, He's fractures, knew and he seems like he's straight talking and honest.

  • And by the time that there had been so much apparent perfect provocation over the Brexit position and lots of other policy areas, it just looked like he was one of one of the others.

  • He exactly he turned into the establishment on Boris Johnson represented, it seemed the antiestablishment force, which was what was so strange about that election.

  • And I think also, I mean, it came in tow, came in kind of became very clear when you know there was all those battles over the BBC coverage and that that was partly because there were these two parties, the two main parties fighting to be the anti establishment in that election, which is very weird scenario to be.

  • And I always thought that once Johnson took over the leadership of the Conservative Party, that would be a huge challenge for Labor and for Jeremy Corbyn specifically.

  • Now, how is kissed Armand not going to be the establishment versus Boris Johnson?

  • I think one of the things that we don't talk about enough and I'd love to hear your views on it is the fact that he has been talking about in that launch video, which was very skillfully.

  • Dino's brilliant, but he was.

  • He was really putting his DPP record at the forefront of his campaign.

  • And actually, there's a lot there that really be criticized and used against him in a general election.

  • And it is quite worrying the prospect that the Tories could turn that into a law and order election.

  • Things like the drone War Boys case.

  • Of course, Kiss Tom is gonna have some very robust replies on that, And he's gonna be saying, you know, this particular distance from one steak wasn't taken directly by me, et cetera, et cetera.

  • But just the fact that that could play out is incredibly risky.

  • Move for labor as a party.

  • Do you think going back to the mechanics of the contest.

  • This is gonna come down to second preferences on Rebecca Long Baby's gotta be.

  • What sort of numbers do you think in the first round?

  • What do you Of course, this labor internal election is being run under rules that we have never used before.

  • We've never seen them use before, and it's gonna be really interesting to see how that plays out.

  • Because in Ed Miliband time there was an electoral recorded college on the trade union block.

  • Vote was very important there.

  • So this time it's remember one very body was also has three stages to the process of.

  • Right now we're in the second stage on.

  • That means there are local party nominations.

  • They've got to get 33 each, which doesn't sound too difficult.

  • But actually, in 2016 Owen Smith only got 50 yard and that was literally a two horse race with only two candidates.

  • So that's gonna be quite hard.

  • Or they could go down the route of affiliates.

  • So that's they need one big trading in one of the Big Five that are affiliated to Labour Party.

  • Unite gm.

  • Be that that kind of Union, another union Andan other affiliate group.

  • So Kissed Armor is well on his way to getting that getting through that route, and he'll probably fly through the local party route as well.

  • And then there's Rebecca Long Bailey probably do the same thing once she gets her campaign really going, there'll be momentum.

  • There's very likely to be unite on her side as well, so they'll probably get through those roots.

  • Then there's Leeson.

  • Andy, who could get GNB support, actually will see that results soon.

  • And that will be really interesting if she gets that.

  • And then she doesn't have to put quite as much resources into the local party route.

  • That would be really valuable to her campaign.

  • There's just Phillips, who obviously be kind of piggybacking on Ian Murray's success in Scottish constituencies.

  • So we're gonna see all that play out.

  • Emily Thornberry is gonna is gonna have to do a lot of work in order to get onto the ballot paper.

  • So first of all, there's that process on.

  • Then, once we get the all member ballot, well, we don't know yet how it's gonna be affected by how many new members have joined up because, unlike the last race, they could join with full voting rights until Monday.

  • Actually, so the registered supporters scheme doesn't matter quite so much.

  • That where you pay £25 because they can sign up as four members is no even as expensive on.

  • Then there will be affiliate members people like Joe Jewish labor Movement who have just announced their house stings, and they can actually very in the contest as well without being full members.

  • So we don't quite know the effect of that.

  • Yet.

  • Once we get the ballot paper, there's a preferential voting system.

  • It's all quite complicated.

  • And there, I mean, according to our poll, that we just did label estimates ovation.

  • We can see that Rebecca Long Bailey is quite divisive.

  • She gets a lot of first preferences, but also a lot of six preferences.

  • So she's right to last quite quite a lot of people about 1/4 just Phillips is the most disliked by far, although she comes 3rd 50% of our respondents put her six in their ranking of candidates.

  • Kissed armor is basically pretty much a middleman in a little bit like Lisa Nandi, people don't mind him.

  • They put him quite high, inflicting her in terms of first preferences.

  • But then, in terms of the 123456 ranking, these numbers sort of go down like that.

  • Which just means that, like, Lisa, uh, it's their moderately popular and they're not very divisive, not very disliked.

  • So how that's gonna play out in terms of the final round of counting?

  • Those will be really interesting.

  • I think Lisa Nandi and kissed arm are really gonna benefit from those second preferences on from other people being knocked out and then being re distributed.

  • I don't think we're going to see someone win a stocking majority on the first round.

  • I think we're going to see preferences.

  • Redistributed, I think, was interesting as well.

  • To know is that Angela Raina is probably it looks like this point going Thio smash the deputy leader race, and actually, she's probably going to have far bigger mandate than whoever Rin wins the leadership race.

  • Whether that's Rebecca and rarely or kissed Armand, I do think we've got to be realistic and it's probably going to be one of those too brilliant summation of everything.

  • Can I ask you the question that Rebecca Long Bailey, in one of her rare media outings, was asked.

  • Jeremy Corbyn's leadership marks out of 10.

  • What is it?

  • Declined.

  • I give him seven in 2017 and I give him five now because I think that it wasn't just the mishandling of Brexit.

  • It was the mishandling of the of the reputational attacks.

  • And they were attacks.

  • Someone smears somewhere slanders somewhere self inflicted on personally as someone who tried to penetrate that wall of not listening and tell people how they should be reacting, I could tell you that.

  • But almost no time did the people around him ever take the right advice.

  • You know, if yours, if you're facing going on the doorstep with I saw people open the door to me and say I'm a labour supporter, but Jeremy is going to destroy our country.

  • Quite difficult to take, isn't it?

  • You have to.

  • You have to, you know, you have to move beyond sentimentality.

  • When something like that happens, you've got to say you could We have learned the lesson earlier.

  • You know, I famously I'm vilified for calling for the advisers to go that I was accused of launching a coup against him for doing that.

  • I really I really meant is he should start taking good advice.

  • And I don't think he ever did for that from that moment on from losing the European election.

  • Eso no, That's why I would say it is time to go for Jeremy Morse, definitely of the people who are zealous, zealous of pro Corbyn.

  • Many of them were very unhappy with Rebecca because they don't even want to sign up to this Board of Deputies called of conduct.

  • You know, there's all sorts of bad things happening in individual labor branches about that right now.

  • I'd say to them, Get over it.

  • You're never going to see a person like that in charge again.

  • We need to learn the lesson.

  • Uh, unless at least choose someone who looks like they could be prime minister.

  • I definitely sorry.

  • I'm just not going to give him marks.

  • I would say that's history will give.

  • I think I mean a bit like a storm has identified.

  • He's gonna be recognized returning the Labour Party into an anti austerity party and being very clear on that on dhe.

  • I think people will look at the 2017 election as something that was very, you know, very interesting result.

  • And it was a surprise and it was testament to a lot of his messaging on the way that he handled the kind of party direction there.

  • But obviously the 2019 result is absolutely devastating.

  • I mean, for the Labour Party and obviously all the communities that seeks to represent I wouldn't put any mark on Corbett.

  • I would only say that I mean, I really wanted obviously, as a Labour member as well as a journalist, for Corbin to do incredibly well on dhe.

  • I think that that he failed on on so many levels on, I think something that Labour members will be looking for in one of the reasons where they're attracted to Starmer is they want to see someone who can rebut media attacks in an effective way.

  • They won't they know that we have a right wing press in this country.

  • That's not gonna change anytime soon.

  • We need a strategy for handling that.

  • And who has that in this contest on?

  • A lot of people will be saying that's kissed armor.

  • Thank you both very much indeed.

  • For your love to talk to you.

  • Thanks very much.

  • Thank you.

Paul, thank you both very much indeed for joining us this week as the label contest gets properly underway.

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