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SKY NEWS – EU: IN OR OUT? DEBATE WITH JEREMY CORBYN – 18.00 – 20.06.16

FAISAL ISLAM: Welcome back to the Loft Restaurant here at Sky Centre where the sun is shining on our audience waiting to hear from the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. They are even split between Remainers, Leavers and those who have yet to decide, they are all under 35 so whatever the decision they’ll have to live with it over the coming decades.  Ladies and gentlemen, Jeremy Corbyn.  [Applause]  So thank you for making it on what must have been a tough day, we’ll crack on with the questions in just a moment but before we do I know you want to reflect on the events over the past few days.

JEREMY CORBYN: Last Thursday afternoon I was on a train back from Sheffield to London and the reception came and went on the train so it was a very frustrating journey.  About fifteen minutes into the journey I heard there had been an incident in Birstall, 30 minutes later I discovered how bad it was and that Jo Cox had been murdered in front of the library in her constituency, doing her job as an MP and ever since then I’ve been involved in memorial activities and I went straight to Birstall on Friday morning with the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the House to show respect to her and to her community.  I think we should all reflect on this, not just the sheer brutality of the way in which she was killed but to kill a public representative, an elected representative of the people in that brutal way is actually an attack on all of us. It’s an attack on our society and on our democracy, it’s not just about the safety and security of MPs, it’s about the way in which we lead our lives. This afternoon parliament was recalled to pay tribute to Jo and I led the tributes from the Labour party and made the points about her life: she worked for anti-slavery campaigns, she worked for Oxfam, she worked in Darfur, she worked in Syria, she worked in Congo and she worked in Batley and Spen, a wonderful woman but in her memory we have to think about the way we do our politics, the way we do our business and the way in which hate is routinely meted out against the very poorest, the way we treat refugees as a threat and an enemy and so I would ask for something a bit kinder and a bit more intelligent in the future, in her memory.  It was a very moving day, every member of the House wore a white rose from Yorkshire.

FAISAL ISLAM: Thank you, Mr Corbyn. I think we should press on though with the questions ahead of this important referendum.  Many young people want to know some answers and we are going to bring in Lucy Kendrick for the first question, Lucy.

LUCY KENDRICK: Hiya, do you think that the public truly understand why we are having the referendum and what they are voting for?

JEREMY CORBYN: I hope they do but I somewhat doubt it because this is a referendum that has been discussed amongst the political classes for some years, pushed very hard by those who wish to leave the European Union and then finally got to fruition in the last general election when the Conservatives promised a referendum and when the vote was put in parliament to have the referendum after the general election and we all supported it, so it went through parliament without a problem.  Do people fully understand all of it?  Probably not, I would hope so but people I hope will just think quite seriously about it. It’s a big decision, if we stay in Europe there are implications, if we leave Europe there are massive implications but it is also a turning point because if we leave I don't think there is any easy way back, if we remain I believe Europe has got to change quite dramatically to something much more democratic, much more accountable and to share our wealth and improve our living standards and working conditions all across the whole continent.   But there are a couple of days to go and my experience, and I have been involved in lots of elections over my life, that in the last two or three days when all the politicians have become exhausted with the campaigning, the public finally catch on and get interested in it.  So we have got two days of intense interest I hope.  Tomorrow I am in Manchester hoping to find lots of intense interest.

FAISAL ISLAM: Lucy, you’re a boffin, you’re an Applied Data Analytics Master, do you understand it?

LUCY: It’s difficult.

FAISAL ISLAM: Okay let’s move on to a related question from Jade White.  Jade?

JADE WHITE:  Mr Corbyn, being a socialist surely you should be opposing the EU which is undemocratic and a failing institution but seem to have forgotten that now that you are a member of the establishment.

JEREMY CORBYN: Well two points here, one is that I’m not a member of the establishment, I’m a member of the Labour party, I’m the leader of the Labour party and I’m a Labour MP and my socialist views are totally unchanged.  Do I think that we can achieve greater social justice across Europe by working with trade unions and socialist parties across Europe?  Yes otherwise I wouldn’t be advocating a remain vote but mine is not unconditional on Europe by any means.  I’m opposed to the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership which is being negotiated, largely in secret, between the European Union and the US because it would import the worse working conditions and standards from the US into Europe.  I am also opposed to the way in which Europe shields tax havens, this country as well shields tax havens and the way in which systematically big companies are exploiting loopholes in employment law.  So I’m calling for a Europe of solidarity.  But I would also say that if we are to deal with issues like climate change, like environmental issues, you cannot do it within national borders, you can only do it across national borders.  The refugee crisis has to be dealt with internationally not nationally so I do think working together but mine isn’t unconditional, mine is positioned that I want to remain in Europe in order to be in a position to work with others to change it.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Mr Corbyn, just to clarify a couple of things, in 1975 you voted out, yes?

JEREMY CORBYN: Yes.

FAISAL ISLAM: In 1993 you voted against Maastricht, 2007 Lisbon, and you think the EU is too beholden to corporate interests, there’s a democratic deficit.  So do you really believe this or have you had your head turned by meeting Francois Hollande at various Brussels summits that I’ve seen you at?

JEREMY CORBYN: My head’s not been turned by anything, my head doesn’t get turned.  No, I’ll just explain what I mean.  Maastricht was about a free market Europe, that was Margaret Thatcher’s vision of Europe which was a free market Europe, free of all restrictions, free of protective working conditions, environmental protections and all that.  Lisbon was a step in the same direction.  The Social Chapter, which was pressed for and negotiated for by a lot of socialist parties and trade unions has helped to put into law something we’ve been demanding, trade unionists all across Europe – four weeks holiday, maternity and paternity leave.  It has made some difference to a lot of people’s working conditions and the equality legislation, some of which we have, is very important because of that.

FAISAL ISLAM: We’ll come on to that but there is a specific question along these lines by Tom Greenstein, Tom?

TOM GREENSTEIN: Hi, if you were to be elected Prime Minister in 2020 how would you fulfil your pledge to renationalise the railways amongst other sectors like energy and industry, if EU competition laws prohibit you from doing that?

JEREMY CORBYN: At the moment the fourth rail package is being negotiated in the European parliament, this is the one which if the right get their way will require member states to privatise rail services.  We have a publicly owned rail system and a privatised system of the train operating companies, the actual services.  I am strongly opposed to the fourth rail package, it is very unlikely to go through, I keep in daily contact almost with some of our MEPs who are opposing it because as far as I’m concerned, if we are elected in 2020 or sooner as a Labour government on a clear manifesto commitment to bring our railways into public ownership we will do it.  If that means an argument then we’ll have that argument but I want to head it off now by saying that member states do have a right to have publicly owned railway systems at the moment.  The Dutch, the French, the German and Italian and Spanish systems are all almost totally or totally publicly owned.  They are operating on our rail networks in Britain so we do have a publicly owned rail system in Britain, the only problem is it’s not the British public who own it.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Mr Corbyn, you did say in your Morning Star column in 2008 “It is almost impossible for a government to take any industry into public ownership of its own free will because it would be accused of giving illegal state subsidies”, this also applies to steel as well.  How can you have the actual tools that you want for your Labour agenda whilst staying in the EU?

JEREMY CORBYN: The EU state aid rules are being challenged, they are being challenged by Germany and France and Italy at the moment over the steel crisis and I would want to challenge those as well because I do think Europe as a whole has to react towards the dumping of under-priced, priced below production cost, Chinese steel on the European market and we have to be prepared, willing and able to invest in our own steel industry, which is actually a very highly productive industry, to maintain that manufacturing base for our economy.

FAISAL ISLAM: So for this agenda though you are going to have to be elected Prime Minister and then persuade the likes of Angela Merkel and Victor Orban round to your vision.  It doesn’t seem hugely likely.

JEREMY CORBYN: Well I’ll tell you this, when the French government decides what it wants to do on its agricultural policy, it does it and the rest of Europe follows on behind. I just think the national governments have to be assertive on this and the state aid rules are open to a great deal of interpretation but as far as I’m concerned, our agenda, my agenda as leader of the Labour party is public ownership of the railways, is an investment in manufacturing industry and it is about the social Europe that I want to see.

FAISAL ISLAM: And being a bit more French.  

JEREMY CORBYN: Being a bit more French with who?

FAISAL ISLAM: With the EU.

JEREMY CORBYN: I’ve got lots of friends in lots of countries.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Daniel?  

DANIEL: I witnessed severe deprivation through my job as a student social worker, what is the case for voting to remain in an organisation that promotes policies such as TTIP, policies that in the long term would sustain inequalities in our society?

JEREMY CORBYN: TTIP is the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership and the idea behind TTIP is that fundamentally there is investor protection so a big company investing in say Sweden or Britain or Italy and a law is changed which is seen as detrimental to that company, they can then sue the national government so in effect it empowers national governments.  The example in operation at the moment is NAFTA, the North Atlantic Free Trade Association, which is extremely damaging to the people of Mexico and a great advantage to the big companies in the USA and very damaging to working class interests in the USA.  TTIP is being very strongly opposed in the USA by some of the right who don’t think that the USA should ever sign a treaty with anybody because they just don’t believe in treaties and by many trade unions on the left who think it will damage their working conditions, and it is being opposed all across Europe. I think there is every chance it will never even see the light of day, that’s one of the reasons why we have to press on very hard in opposition to it. I don’t want to see the enfranchisement of global corporations at the expense of national democratic parliaments and I think the EU is wholly wrong in doing this negotiation but I do think that working within Europe on a market in Europe in which our manufacturing goods from this country can be exported and sold in Europe and more than  half our trade is with Europe, is important.  Crucially I do believe that the environmental protections which would be under threat with TTIP are very strong in Europe and should indeed be strengthened.  You can’t deal with pollution behind a national frontier.

FAISAL ISLAM: Mr Corbyn, the Stronger In campaign says that the EU-US trade deal, which is what TTIP, is one of the main reasons why they want to stay in.  This is not coherent across all of your coalition that wants to remain.

JEREMY CORBYN: My view is that TTIP, as it stands, is the enfranchisement of global corporations at the expense of democratic governments, that is why I have made the position very clear on why I am opposed to it and very clear what I would want to do.  Does it mean that there are differences of opinion in Europe and on Europe?  Of course it does.  Mine is a practical view that if we stay in the European Union we can fight against things.  If we come out of the European Union, a government led by the main people that are leading the Leave campaign, they would sign a TTIP straight away with the USA if they could.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Okay, this gentleman here on this issue.

MAN: Will voting to Remain lead to the privatisation of the NHS?

JEREMY CORBYN: Voting to remain?  No, no it won’t because we have already got a guarantee of exemption of the NHS on this.  I think it is more likely that a vote to Leave would do more damage to the NHS because of the economic consequences that go with it but also there are 52,000 EU nationals working in our National Health Service helping to treat all of us and as far as I’m concerned, the National Health Service as a human right, free at the point of use, is something I would absolutely defend to the end because I think it is the most civilised thing about this country.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Okay Vidanta Kumar, changing the subject.  

VIDANTA KUMAR: The EU’s response to the refugee crisis has been appalling and has failed the most fundamental test of any political organisation to protect basic human rights.  Given this, why should we vote to stay in?  Can we change it for the better and if so, how?

JEREMY CORBYN: The refugee crisis is appalling and the human rights issues are very important.  This country signed the European Convention on Human Rights after the Second World War and that in turn established the European Court of Human Rights.  That is actually not an EU institution, it’s a Council of Europe institution which is a predecessor coming together of a much wider group of countries.  The EU has to a large extent incorporated the European Convention into its EU positions and in 1998 Britain passed its own Human Rights Act, I indeed voted for it, very proudly voted for it, which incorporates into UK law all of that.  We leave the European Union, we then have a problem of what we do about those areas of human rights law.  I think we’ve treated human rights law very badly, many of our media spend their whole time denigrating human rights law and saying it’s a problem.  Our right to free speech, our right to express ourselves, our right to be lesbian, be gay, be straight, whatever you want to be is very, very important.  On the refugee crisis, I’ve been to Calais and I’ve been to Dunkirk, indeed we did an interview when we were there.  You and I think were both appalled by the conditions that we saw and I find the treatment of refugees by this country and by Europe deeply disturbing.  We now have more distressed and displaced people around the world that at any point in recorded history.  We are not going to solve that crisis with barbed wire, with surveillance, with CS gas, you are only going to solve it with humanity and a political solution in Syria.  So the EU has given aid, has given support in that sense but the member states have started to erect barriers to prevent the movement of refugees.  I think Germany has probably done the best, other countries have done considerably worse.  My role, and I’m going to France next month at a meeting of socialist parties in France, I shall be making a very strong plea on behalf of our party that every government across Europe has got to play its part in housing those refugees because Syrian refugees are just like all of us in this room.  They are fleeing from a war looking for somewhere safe to go to, surely there has to be a humanitarian response, not the bigoted response of putting up a 32 sheet poster that says a group of desperate people are somehow or other a threat to us.  No they’re not, they are no threat at all, the threat is the hatred that is put towards those people by those people that put up that poster.  

FAISAL ISLAM: What makes you think that the European Union has got a handle on this? The aid group, the respected aid group Medecins Sans Frontiers, has just announced it will no longer take any money from a member of the EU, including Britain, in protest at the way that Europe has responded to the refugee crisis with this special deal with Turkey.  They have called it a shameful European response focusing on deterrents rather than providing people with the assistance and protection they need.  Why is staying in the EU going to help?

JEREMY CORBYN: I challenged the Turkey deal when it came up and I said to the Prime Minister at the time that I thought the whole thing was questionably legal and indeed I think the treatment of the refugees is appalling. I  want to be there to argue that Europe has to have a different response.  Look, if there was no European Union and instead you had 27 member states would there be any co-ordinated response or not?  Probably not.  Would there be any route out for those refugees?  Probably not.  

FAISAL ISLAM: But you don’t back the co-ordinated response that’s come up.

JEREMY CORBYN: No, I support the co-ordinated response that gives support and aid, what I don’t support is the co-ordinated response which has actually turned Greece into a transit camp for refugees many of whom have been returned to Turkey.  I raised this matter with the Greek government, I don’t blame the Greek government for this, I blame the consortium of European leaders who I don’t think have done enough on this.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Vidanta, do you want to come back on this?

VIDANTA KUMAR: No, I completely agree with what was said actually.  

FAISAL ISLAM: The gentleman over here, what’s your name?

MATTHEW: Matthew.  I don’t have an issue with the Syrian refugees themselves, it’s more a case of the people that would come across with them because there’s not adequate checks in place to check who is actually coming through with them.

JEREMY CORBYN: Well I have dealt with a very large number of refugee cases over many years as an MP and member of the human rights groups in parliament.   I can tell you, getting refugee status is very difficult and there are very detailed checks done on anyone applying for refugee status and I’ve been dealing with these cases ever since the 1970s when I was supporting refugees from Chile, many of whom have now gone back and some of them still keep in touch with me.  The idea that you can just walk in a country and announce you are a refugee and get status is far, far, far from the reality of it.  The numbers who actually get refused, sadly some of whom get deported to a third country, is very great indeed.  I think we should also reflect for a moment that somebody seeking asylum is a human like us, as I said, but also they are here to make a contribution.  Many of our doctors, many of our scientists, many people who are making a huge contribution to our society came here as refugees. The iconic car, the Mini, was designed by Alex Issigonis who was himself a refugee.  

JORDAN: These checks you just outlined, what about the people that have been discovered in the back of lorries that we see on the news daily?  They are not going through checks and they are getting in.

JEREMY CORBYN: Well at the point when they apply for asylum status, yes they are and I have met some people that have just arrived in this country from Afghanistan by a series of lorries because they had been translators for the Western forces in Afghanistan, were no longer safe to live there, weren’t allowed to leave or given advance entry to any western country so came in by an illegal route.  Everything we do has consequences so yes, they are given those checks and if we want to make ourselves safe, then you try and reduce the tension at the source, hence my very strong view that there should be much greater effort put in to bringing about a political settlement in Syria and a political settlement in Libya.  There is something strange that is going on at the moment, hundreds of people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean or trying to cross the sea into Greece.  Has it had headline coverage day after day after day?  No, it’s had minimal coverage.  It’s had some coverage more lately but this isn’t a new thing, this has gone on for several years.  I just think we need to recognise the humanitarian disasters right on the shores of our continent.  

MAN: I find it absolutely fascinating how you say the EU and Germany have done really well, especially Germany.  Angela Merkel made the worst foreign policy ever by saying everyone can come and that is the cause of people thinking they are going to get a better life and they risk going over the Mediterranean, they’ve been drowning as a consequence of that really bad error which I think is probably the worst I’ve ever seen since I’ve been alive, a shocking person.  

JEREMY CORBYN: I think hers was a human response, a feeling that for many people, particularly Jewish people from Germany, were denied a place of safety in the 1930s by the cold hearted attitudes of many other countries and they died as a result.  Quite rightly we praise the Kinder Transport and those that got through, absolutely.  Tens of thousands didn’t and they ended up dying in the concentration camps.  I think Angela Merkel was actually trying to make a humanitarian response.  She assumed – and I’ve never met Angela Merkel, I’ve had this discussion with her, I would look forward to doing it – I think behind her assumption was that the rest of Europe would be prepared to play its part and provide a haven for a proportion of those Syrian refugees.  That started to happen then suddenly the rise of the right in Germany, the rise of the right in other places stopped all that and we ended up with the quite frankly appalling situation we have at this time.

FAISAL ISLAM: So Mr Corbyn do you think both that there should be unlimited freedom of movement in the EU context and also more refugees?  There’s not going be much public support for that is there?

JEREMY CORBYN: What I’m saying on the refugees is deal with the problem at source because actually being a refugee isn’t necessarily a solution to your problems.  It might be a last resort because of the dangerous situation you’re in which is why I keep repeating the point about the question of our arms sales to our people and our foreign policy so I think that’s quite important.  On the freedom of movement, if we are in one market then yes, there is going to be freedom of movement of labour as well as capital.  My point is that working conditions are different across Europe, there are some basics, such as the holiday, such as the maternity and paternity leave and the working time directive, those things  are important but we have a situation where some very greedy companies import their entire workforce from a low paying economy somewhere in central Europe, bring them lock, stock and barrel to a higher paying country like Holland, France, Germany, Britain and pay them at the local rate. So the scandal of what’s going on at Shirebrooke with Sports Direct is an example of all of that which is why the proposal by the European Union Commission for a posting of workers directive, which would mean that any company employing people must pay the appropriate rate for the country concerned and respect local agreements such as construction agreements, those things are quite important and also ban the advertising of jobs in this country solely outside this country.  If jobs are available they should be advertised locally to everybody here as well as anywhere else.

FAISAL ISLAM: Would it not be easier just to leave?

JEREMY CORBYN: No, it wouldn’t be easier to leave because I think the problems then are economic, very greatly because roughly half of our trade is with the European Union, whole swathes of our manufacturing industry rely solely on exports to Europe.  There are job consequences.  

RYAN SCOTT: You are the leader of the party that traditionally supports the working class people so how do you intend to help out people on the lowest wages who are potentially seeing their wage being driven down by the uncontrolled levels of migration from the EU?

JEREMY CORBYN:  By ensuring that local wage rates are paid, that the minimum wage is respected, that the living wage becomes a reality - £10 an hour seems to me the figure that we should be campaigning for – but also to ensure there is lower levels of disparity so that people don’t necessarily feel so attracted to go and work elsewhere because they get better wages.  It’s complicated it’s not easy but there is also two million British people or thereabouts, a million who live and others who work on shorter term contracts, living in Europe and working in Europe.  If we decide to leave there is a problem about those people as well because I guess many of us would know people that have gone to live in France or Spain or wherever else and are working and contributing to those societies as well.  

RYAN: My question was people are prepared to come from Eastern European countries as an example and work longer hours, forgetting the working time directive and anything, work longer hours and sometimes harder than say British people would do.  Now I am not saying that British people think that they are a step ahead but companies know that they can employ labour from the EU for cheaper than British people would be prepared to work for so that’s where the underlying issue is I believe, that companies know they can pay lower wages.  Without the uncontrolled levels of migration companies would be forced into paying a higher wage to attract British people to do the jobs.

JEREMY CORBYN: Exactly my point, those companies are exploiting the migrant workers as well as the people that are here, they are all suffering as a result because of the lack of regulation of what they do therefore a higher minimum wage is important to stop that happening and much more control of the way that these companies behave.  Now I mentioned Mike Ashley and Sports Direct, most of the people he employs, in fact probably more than three-quarters of them, are on zero hours contracts and so people are brought here under the false pretence they are going to get a steady job with a good income.  In reality they get a very low income on a zero hours contract so one of my strong proposals is to join with the majority of other countries across Europe that have actually banned zero hour contracts and said anyone in work has to have a minimum number of hours and therefore a minimum income as a result of it.  The people we should blame aren’t the migrant workers, the people we should blame is the grotesque exploitation which I’m sure you would agree with me on, of these companies and the way that they treat people.  It is a question surely of our solidarity with those that are victims as well.

FAISAL ISLAM: Mr Corbyn, on this issue you have some strange bedfellows now.  The Chancellor, George Osborne, told Sky News last week it’s the people on the lower incomes who will be hit first if there’s a recession, Brexit is for the richest in our country.  Do you agree with the Chancellor?

JEREMY CORBYN: That’s a very odd statement coming from George Osborne, I confess it’s the first I’ve heard of it so … Can I reflect on that?!  

FAISAL ISLAM: Well you may be able to reflect on it later, let’s go to … Anyone else want to come back on that?  Ben.

BEN: You are an internationalist and I’m sure even you there should be some controls on immigration.  Personally I’m not a shut the borders kind of guy, I think that immigration is good for our country but how can you defend a system whereby in the EU it is unlimited immigration therefore outside we have to prevent people who are skilled from coming here? Why should someone from outside the EU be turned down in favour of an unskilled worker from inside?

JEREMY CORBYN: Well it isn’t unlimited in either respect actually.

BEN: It is inside because there is free movement.

JEREMY CORBYN: No, it’s not completely, I’ll explain. Outside the EU it certainly is restricted and it is quite difficult often to get family reunions, I have many constituents who are very upset about that.  Within the EU there is not immediate access to benefits, there isn’t immediate benefits of every kind such as access to housing and things like that so people who are coming in work here and contribute here.  The vast majority of EU nationals who make their homes in Britain are actually working and paying tax and not drawing benefits.

BEN: But that’s not the point, the point is that you are still turning out skilled people from outside in favour of less skilled people from inside, how is that fair?

FAISAL ISLAM: A quick answer, we’ve got to move on.

JEREMY CORBYN: Well if you restrict movement of labour across Europe then you are defeating the whole point of there being one market within Europe.  I made the point earlier to the gentleman over there that there are more than a million British people working in other parts of Europe so if we decided to leave and therefore stop people working here, we’d have a problem because we’d lose a very large number of people working in very crucial industries in this country.  There would possibly be retribution on the other side and what would happen to those million British people living in Europe?  Surely the important thing is to improve the working conditions and living standards across the whole continent because at the moment there a pretty big disparity between working conditions, living standards in the west of Europe and in central Europe and the east, surely that imbalance has to be addressed.  The numbers of Polish people who have come in, actually many have gone back and helped to develop the economy there as well so there are economic benefits both ways.

FAISAL ISLAM: Let’s move on, Madeleine where are you?

MADELEINE: Hi Jeremy.  Why should older people be deciding on something that is so important to young people and do you think that 16 and 17 year olds should have been given the right to vote on this referendum?

JEREMY CORBYN: I do think that the 16 and 17 year olds should have been given the right to vote and it is not only older people that are going to decide, it is everybody who is registered to vote that are going to decide.  I think what you are referring to is the generality that older people vote and younger people don’t.  Only half of young people voted in the last general election, very sad.  I hope that we can get everybody voting, every young person voting.  I want the voting age reduced to 16, I supported reducing it to 16 for this referendum as indeed it was done for the Scottish referendum because it is young people’s future to decide what kind of relationships they have with the rest of Europe and that is their future.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Madeleine, why do you think young people aren’t engaged when this EU referendum is their future?

MADELEINE: I think younger people, probably especially teenagers, the 16 and 17 year olds are put off by the butting of heads of the leading politicians, it’s kind of embarrassing to watch these sort of clownish figures like Boris Johnson making and Nigel Farage …

JEREMY CORBYN: I think the way politics is conducted so often is actually a total put-off.  I personally don’t do abuse of anybody because I think it’s wrong and it’s counterproductive.  If you and I were having a difference of opinion on something and I called you something rude, you called me something rude, the first exchange is quite funny, the second exchange about half the audience would be listening and the third one, nobody would care and they wouldn’t be interested in what either of us were saying, all they would see is two politicians hurling abuse at each other.  So I just think we have got to focus on the subject, focus on the issues and I say to young people, try and engage. I do think that political parties and politicians are often very bad at communicating with young people and assume that the methods that have been tried and tested of doorstep conversations and leaflets are not necessarily the way a lot of young people communicate.  They do much more by social media and indeed I try to do as much as I can by social media.

FAISAL ISLAM: The Mayor of London has said this current referendum campaign has been poisonous, do you agree?

JEREMY CORBYN: Well he suffered a lot of poisonous abuse during the Mayoral campaign himself and I think a lot of it has been very poisonous with catastrophist theories on one side or both sides and really people should rationally think about it.  I am not a lover of the European Union, I think it is a rational decision, we should stay in order to try and improve it but does that mean I change my views on the points that are raised, on public ownership of railways and things like that?  Absolutely not but it means that I would want to be working with people across Europe on environmental protection, on public ownership issues and I think we’d get a long way down the line like that.

FAISAL ISLAM: You are not a lover of the European Union, there we go.  Brian, last question from Brian.

BRIAN: Hi Jeremy.  I just wondered, will you shoulder some of the blame in the event of a Brexit?

JEREMY CORBYN: I’m not going to take blame for people’s decision.  There will be a decision made on Thursday … I am hoping there is going to be a Remain vote, there may well be a Remain vote, there may well be a Leave vote.  Whatever the result, that is the result of the referendum, we’ve got to work with it.

BRIAN: You don’t sound too keen on the EU.

JEREMY CORBYN: Whatever the result we’ve got to work with it and I would say to the EU, whatever the result I want to see better working conditions across Europe, I want to see better environmental protections across Europe, we all suffer from these things.  I want to see a trade policy that doesn’t export pollution by importing goods that have been made in a deeply polluted way.  I want to see all of that so I will be pursuing exactly the same agenda on Friday morning that I put to you tonight.  

BRIAN: So it is immaterial one way or the other.

JEREMY CORBYN: No, it’s not immaterial because it is much harder if we leave.

FAISAL ISLAM: So you are definitely voting to Remain?

JEREMY CORBYN: Yes, I’ll be there.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Your brother thought maybe you wouldn’t be but we’ve got a confirmation.  

JEREMY CORBYN: My brother has many thoughts!  

FAISAL ISLAM: Well thank you Mr Corbyn, it was a tough audience and even tougher on a day like today, so we appreciate that.  

JEREMY CORBYN: Thank you very much.

FAISAL ISLAM: I don't know if you want to make a final statement.

JEREMY CORBYN: Thank you for inviting me along tonight and thank you for the questions that have been put.  It is an important decision, it’s an important vote that is taking place this Thursday. I hope people will think about the kind of continent we want to live in and the kind of society we want to live in.  We live in a world where there are humanitarian disasters, we live in a world where there are great dangers.  There is also a world we could live in where we work much closer together with people, popular movements and ordinary people who think the way that we do so that we can bring about more social justice across this continent, we can be an influence for better environmental protection and standards around the world.  I’ve come to this conclusion after a lot of thought, a lot of process, my party has come to that conclusion after also a lot of thought, a lot of process but above all it is about the kind of democratic society in which we want to live, in which everyone’s point of view is important and everyone is able to take part and contribute to that.  So I think tonight we’ve had an interesting exchange, it won’t stop here, it will never stop because if we are determined to look after other people and create a fairer and more just world, we do it together, not by the individuals and certainly not by being abusive to each other or abusive to the most vulnerable and most desperate people who are pleading for our help at the present time. Thank you very much for inviting me today.  [Applause]

FAISAL ISLAM: Anybody want to come back with a quick point?

MAN: I have a question.  My question is we’re in the middle of a housing crisis and many economists say that actually being in Europe is propping up our housing prices because of flows of money coming into the UK.  How will staying in Europe help us overcome the housing crisis?

JEREMY CORBYN: Chase down the tax avoiders and the tax havens, some of them are in Europe, some of them in the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands, but secondly challenge the British government on not building council housing, not regulating the private rented sector, not building housing for sale that is remotely affordable and allowing the social cleansing of the centres of all of the great cities of this country.  It’s a UK responsibility, it’s a British government responsibility, we can, must and will conquer the housing crisis by building homes for people that need them rather than building them as investment opportunities to avoid tax.  

FAISAL ISLAM: Okay, that’s all we’ve got time for, thank you very much Jeremy Corbyn.  Thank you Mr Corbyn.   [Applause]