ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: Labour were of course hoping to make some big gains on Thursday night, building on their success in the 2017 General Election but the party’s performance fell short of their own perhaps overly inflated expectations and the man responsible for that election strategy is Party Chairman, Ian Lavery, who joins us now live from Newcastle, thanks for being with us today.

IAN LAVERY: Good morning.

SR: I hope you manage to get rid of that fly before the interview!

IAN LAVERY: As always, they just come right on your nose just as the programme starts!

SR: At least it seems to have left you alone now. Let’s talk about the local elections shall we, Labour won just 78 more councillors and ended up unchanged in terms of councils, were you disappointed by those results?

IAN LAVERY: If you look back, I mean we’ve not only consolidated at the local elections, we’ve made an advance as well. If you look back, Sophy, it was only fourteen months when the Labour party was some 24 percentage points behind in the polls and then leading up to the snap election, we were just behind the Conservatives following the General Election and the results which we had on Thursday were an improvement by probably somewhere in the region of 2.5% which brought the Labour party neck and neck with the Conservatives so although we didn’t have massive gains as perhaps was projected by the Conservative Central Office, we were happy enough to say that we didn’t stand still and we moved forward and we believe there’s much, much more to come by the way, much, much more to come.

SR: You see I can’t work out genuinely if you are trying to put a positive spin on things, fair enough that’s your job, or if you really think that these results are an advance, that they really are something to be pleased about?

IAN LAVERY: Well it isn’t spinning, it’s factually correct and I’ve mentioned the statistics. We gained by about 2.5% percentage points on Thursday and if you look at John Curtis, the renowned pollist, he said on Thursday that if we replicated the results on Thursday, the actual vote share, then the Labour party would be in government now, we would be the biggest party in the country and the Conservatives would be way behind, they would lose 30-odd seats so we’ve got to look at that as being a positive. Only 13 months ago people were suggesting that we were facing annihilation and that the party had nowhere else to go, so we are quite pleased with that. We made some advances on Thursday, we made advances in London and let us just say, Sophy, the fact that the Conservatives headquarters, Central Office, predicted through the media that there would be a Tory wipe out in London, they weren’t our projections, they weren’t our predictions, we wanted to have a good result in London, we got a very good result in the constituencies in London and we’re quite, quite pleased with that.

SR: It’s not just the Conservatives talking about a Conservative wipe out in London was it? I mean Sadiq Khan said there’s now no corner of London where Labour can’t win, Jeremy Corbyn launched the Labour campaign from Westminster, I mean it wasn’t just the Conservatives who were expecting you to do better in London, you were as well.

IAN LAVERY: Well we did do better in London. Look at Wandsworth for example, Wandsworth, the Conservatives headquarters suggested that we would win that easy. That’s where Theresa May went to Friday morning, she hung on to the flag at Wandsworth by her very fingertips but when you look and just dig a little bit and look at the statistics, the Labour party got the popular vote at Wandsworth by more than 2000 votes, we got good results in lots of the constituencies, the wards within Wandsworth. We actually won seven seats, huge strides forward in Wandsworth and we only fell short of taking Wandsworth council by roughly 131 votes. Listen, that cannot be sniffed at, it’s huge progress, this is the flagship council in the Tory party, this is Thatcher’s big flagship of the Conservatives for generations and we were only a whisker away from taking Wandsworth. That’s not something we should be disappointed at, it’s something we will build on and we’ll take forward and I think we’ve got to a bright future in those wards, those constituencies in London in particular, but it wasn’t just London. Look at what happened in Trafford for example, we took the Trafford council, the last Tory blue flagship in Greater Manchester in the north-west, we took that from Tory, from no overall control from the Tories, the Labour party being the biggest party in Trafford. What a brilliant success. We won Plymouth, we won Kirklees, we took control of Tower Hamlets, we had a reasonable night despite the fact that the press would like to say that it was a miserably poor night for the Labour party.

SR: At the same time, it seems to me looking at these results that what you’re seeing is stasis, the Conservatives doing well in the suburbs and the shires, Labour piling up votes in places like Trafford, in places like London, not really breaking through outside the areas that you already feel quite comfortable in and from what you’re saying, it doesn’t seem like there is much soul searching going on as to why that is. Are you actually learning any lessons from the results?

IAN LAVERY: Sophy, let me tell you, at the conclusion of any election, whether it be local elections, whether it would be a by-election or whether it would be a general election, the party – and most parties do the same – have a complete and utter post-mortem into what happened in the different areas and the different regions, we’ll be doing exactly the same and we will be learning, yes, because people make mistakes and we will be learning from what actually happened during the campaign in 2018 but it’s not as negative as people, or some people, would like to portray it. We have made an advancement of something in the region of 2.5%, if we can replicate that in the next two or three years, come the general election we’ll be on 37, 38 percentage points, that would be enough to win a general election.

SR: Okay, now I want to talk about Barnet. On paper it should it have been one of your easiest targets and of course you fell short there and there was this anti-Semitism row which many people feel cost you that council. This morning Sky News spoke to Adam Langleben who was a Labour councillor who lost his seat in that area and we asked him if he had a question to put to you, to put to the Labour leadership, what would you want to say? So let’s just listen to that.

ADAM LANGLEBEN: This is not a smear, I’d say he needs to come to Barnet to meet with the Jewish community. It wasn’t just Barnet actually, it was also Haringey and Manchester and Liverpool, we lost in any area that had large numbers of Jewish people. They need to really engage with and understand and feel the pain that people feel, that I feel, that my family feel, that the Labour party, the party that the Jewish community helped build 100 years ago, has all of a sudden turned on the Jewish community and that is so painful. I don't think people at the top of the Labour party quite recognise how painful this is for so many people in the Jewish community.

SR: Now Adam believes that elements of the Labour party have a problem with racism, is he right?

IAN LAVERY: I think in the Labour party there has been a problem with anti-Semitism, there’s a problem with racism, with all forms of bullying and harassment and intimidation, we will root that out. Let me make clear to Adam and all his colleagues, we will again integrate within the Jewish community, we will make this right, we will put this right. There will be massive discussions, lots of intense discussions with the Jewish community, we met with the Board of Deputies etc only a couple of weeks ago, those discussions will continue and my heart goes out to the likes of Adam and others in the Jewish communities who have put a lot into the Labour party and yes, many of them councillors that is, may not have been returned within their constituencies or we’ve lost constituencies because of what happened in the row on anti-Semitism. We’ll put this right, we’ve got a new General Secretary, Jennie Formby, Jennie has got this at the top of her political agenda. Anti-Semitism has no role, no place at all in the Labour party, we will root it out from top to bottom and that, as the Chairman of the party, I can categorically tell you.

SR: A strong message from you there on anti-Semitism, I wonder if you’ll be equally strong in another area where it feels as if Labour perhaps slipped behind expectations and that’s in areas that voted to Leave the European Union. Do you think that Labour’s stance on Brexit, remaining in the Customs Union, is damaging the party in some of those areas that voted Leave?

IAN LAVERY: Well again, Sophy, it’s a mixed bag. We look at the Midlands of course, they were really disappointing results, the Leave areas in the Midlands, the working class, white working class areas, we’ve got a challenge there. Look at the north-east where we are at this moment in time, hugely again a Leave area, where we cleaned the floor, again basically totally [inaudible], we gained seats in different constituencies in the north-east so it is a whole mishmash with regards to the issue of Brexit. But the Labour party is absolutely adamant, we stand clear by what we said in our manifesto, we want a Brexit which secures jobs, the economy and a whole number of other things. We also say we are happy with the transitional period, during that transitional period what we will do is abide by the customs union and the single market rules and following that we would want a deal on a customs union and a deal on the single market as well. Of course it is very, very difficult as a party where you’ve got diverse views, but listen, it’s not the only party with problems with regards to the Brexit situation, the Conservatives are tearing themselves apart. Only this morning in the press you can see the attacks on the Brexiteers and the Remainers, both groups are saying that Theresa May must adhere to what they say or they’ll walk. Now she’s got a multitude of problems facing her as a Prime Minister. We are absolutely crystal clear on where we stand with regards to Brexit.

SR: Okay, I think we’ll be speaking about some of the Conservatives positions on Brexit after the break. Thank you very much Ian Lavery, because after the break we’ll be speaking to the former Education Secretary, Justine Greening.