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

SOPHY RIDGE: Voters certainly sent a message to the two main parties in this week’s local elections but what was that message? Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have interpreted it as a call for them to get on with Brexit and redouble their efforts to reach a deal but is that right? Joining us now from Leicester is the Shadow Health Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, thank you very much for being on the programme this morning.

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: Delighted.

SR: It feels like we should start with those local election results. You have been in opposition now for nine years, the government is tearing itself apart on Brexit and frankly doing very little else and yet you lost seats at the local elections. Why isn’t Labour doing better?

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: Well we should be doing better and I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed that we’ve lost seats but it is worth emphasising that the Tories got absolutely monstered, the worst result for the Tories since … I think it’s important, this is the worst result for the Tories since 1995, they lost over 1300 seats when they were briefing they would only lose around a thousand which was part of their expectations management. We should have done better, of course we should, be we made gains in important marginal seats in the south, in Thanet, in Worthing, we’ve won councils back in Midlands marginals like Amber Valley so we did make progress but of course there were other disappointing results across the country and we have to reflect upon that, we have to understand why that’s happened and we have to work harder as a party to regain the trust of people so that we can form a government. But we have made progress in the sorts of marginal seats, particularly in the south, that will decide the next general election.

SR: It’s interesting isn’t it, because you are talking about making progress in some seats in the south but in Labour’s traditional heartland, in places like Bolsover, like Ashfield, like Bolton, like Walsall, you have been losing ground. It feels you are doing well with graduates but perhaps losing touch with some of your more traditional support base and you say that you are making progress in marginals but actually if you look at some analysis done by for example Professor Michael Thrasher in today’s Sunday Times, the implication is that you are actually further away from winning a general election because you are actually down on where you would have been at the last general election. So I just wonder are you managing to find the right coalition of supporters here?

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: Well I think Michael Thrasher’s analysis in the Times actually shows Labour gaining seats, constituency seats, on what we have today but not enough to form a got outright so we do need to make further progress but it does show us inching forward if you like and I think the situation is more complex, if I may say so, than the way in which it has been characterised in recent days. Yes, we’ve done badly in former coalfield seats in Nottinghamshire like Ashfield, really badly, but next door in Mansfield, another Nottinghamshire coalfield seat, we actually took the mayorality and that’s a seat we have to win back off the Tories. And next door in another Nottinghamshire coalfield seat, Gedling, we have actually increased our result, our vote share, by 8% and took seats off the Tories, so the picture is much more complicated. I am stood outside my house in Leicester and in Leicester we actually took 53 out of 54 council seats so the picture is more complicated than some of the immediate knee-jerk reactions that we’ve seen on Twitter in recent days, if I may say so.

SR: I can understand and of course no one is arguing that there aren’t areas of the country where Labour is making gains but overall do you still think that it is pretty astonishing that you are down 86 seats and control of six councils?

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: We are down and as I say, that is disappointing, so we’ve got to look at the areas where we’ve not done very well. If we looked at these, if you did a ballot read across the constituencies – which you should do, we shouldn’t always read across, I’ve been doing these sorts of interviews for years now and they don’t always read across subsequent general elections but on these results we would have lost [inaudible] for example but there are other seats we would have gained but I don’t want to be losing constituencies anywhere, I want to be gaining constituencies to form the next government so we have to work harder to win the trust of the British people. We have to look, we have made progress in some southern marginals and Midlands marginals but recognise that we have gone backwards in other marginals, we have to respond to that but I would emphasise, the Tories got absolutely monstered in this set of local government elections, their worst results since the mid-90s and there are lots of Tory MPs now who if these results were repeated in a general election, for example in Plymouth and places like that, those Tory MPs would lose their seats and Labour candidates would become Labour MPs in those marginal constituencies.

SR: Some people think Jeremy Corbyn is part of the problem here and your colleague, Lisa Nandy, who represents Wigan, just the sort of place that you need to win, said yesterday that Jeremy came up on the doorstep a number of times negatively. Is he a help or a hindrance?

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: Well Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership allowed us to have that remarkable general election result in 2017 and by the way, in 2017 I was doing similar programmes to yours Sophy, on election night and so on, around the 2016 local government elections and we were being told, oh what a terrible set of local government elections for Labour and then of course we had …

SR: But you didn’t win the election though, did you?

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: No, but we had some remarkable victories in seats that people didn’t expect us to win and everyone told us at the start of that election campaign that we were going to get absolutely hammered. Look, I’m not complacent, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying, oh this is nothing to worry about, it’s all fine, not at all. I’m just trying to step back and recognise that we have made progress in marginal seats, particularly in the south and places like Thanet and Plymouth and some of the Midlands marginals like Amber Valley, but we need to work harder and we need to do more to win the trust of the British people, we need to be talking about the big issues that affect people’s lives such as schools that are being cut back …

SR: Well let’s talk about some of those big issues shall we because it was clear that a message was sent by voters and I’m interested to know what your interpretation of that message is. Jeremy Corbyn said after the results on Brexit an arrangement has to be made, a deal has to be done, so is that the next step? Labour trying to do a Brexit deal with the government?

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: Well there were all kinds of different motivations for the way in which voters voted in these elections and you can’t always interpret them as just sentiment about Brexit but on the issue of a deal, we’ve seen a lot of speculation in the newspapers today and I think that’s quite disappointing, it looks like Tory Ministers and Tory spin doctors have been briefing about what’s happening in the negotiations. We’ve entered these negotiations in good faith, they should be confidential at this stage because if you want to get an agreement we have to be able to respect the position of those sat around the table and we seem to be reading all kinds of things in the newspapers today, so I would say to those Tories negotiating, this isn’t really the best way to go about it to be frank. But look, we’ve entered into those negotiations in good faith, we’ve said, we said in our general election manifesto two years ago that we accept the referendum result and that we believe the correct way to bring this desperately divided country back together is an arrangement where we would have a permanent customs union deal with our ability to have a say over trade deals, a single market relationship and guarantees about workers’ rights but the problem about the way the negotiations are going – and I’m not part of the negotiations but as I understand it, although the government are trying to redress up their customs union offers, they haven’t really shifted and the key thing is the government wants to be able to do their own trade deals. My concern is that if we have a trade deal with the United States for example, that could mean Trump, Trump’s America and big private healthcare corporations getting their hands on NHS contracts. I’m not prepared to countenance that which is why we need instead a permanent and comprehensive customs union arrangement where we do our trade deals as part of the European Union not a trade deal which allows the Americans to come in and buy various different NHS contracts. I think that is a real problem if the Conservatives are prepared to go down that line. Our NHS mustn’t be for sale to private health care companies in the US.

SR: You talk about the government not being prepared to shift its position so I’m just trying to work out if Labour is prepared to compromise on its red lines as well. Is a second referendum or, if you prefer to call it, a confirmatory vote on a deal a red line for the Labour party in these negotiations?

JONATHAN ASHWORTH: A confirmatory vote clearly has huge support amongst parliamentarians, the Labour parliamentarians particularly, we’ve seen that in the newspapers today, it’s got huge support about the party membership and we’ve always said if we cannot get a customs union arrangement, a customs union deal and a single market arrangement, if it looks like we are going to have a bad Tory deal or indeed no deal, which would be disastrous for the British economy and people’s jobs and livelihoods, then it should be put to the British people in a confirmatory vote so we should put it back to the British people but at the moment we are trying to negotiate in good faith a deal with the government which secures a permanent customs union and which allows us to have a say in trade deals in the European Union because we don’t – as I say, there is a real danger that we could have a trade deal with for example the US which puts the NHS up for sale and I’m not prepared to countenance that.

SR: Jonathan Ashworth, thank you very much for being on the programme today.