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ADAM BOULTON: So let’s take another question from the audience here, this one comes from Bijul Korecha.
MAN: Would you be willing to compromise your political principles in order to get elected?
ADAM BOULTON: Right, would you be willing to compromise your political principles in order to get elected, Andy Burnham?
ANDY BURNHAM: No is the answer to that.  I’ll pick up an issue that came up actually in the summer where we had a debate on George Osborne’s Welfare Bill where I said in Shadow Cabinet twice, I was the only one of the candidates in Shadow Cabinet to say that we should oppose it and I believe that is still the case, I still will oppose it, I will.  But then people say to me, well why didn’t you resign?  My principles, my Labour principles go back to that motto that has underpinned our movement for generations, that unity is strength, you have to stand together, you have to be a united force. So as much as I have huge misgivings about what the party was proposing, I’ve always put the party first if you like so that we can then put the country first.  So yes, that was difficult and that’s what happens when you are in Shadow Cabinet or Cabinet but I hope that people can see in me, because the work I’ve done over the years on issues like Hillsborough, I’ve always put the people first and my principles first and that is the kind of Labour leader that I will be. I will always make my arguments in private, I will support whatever the party agrees in public but the reason I am standing to be leader of the Labour party is because actually I think the Labour party has lost sight of its own principles. The fact that it couldn’t take a view on a Bill of that kind tells you how far we have lost our way.  This Labour party needs to get its principles back.  I want to give all of you in this room a Labour party you can believe in and be proud of again.  
LIZ KENDALL: In answer to your question, no.  Throughout this contest I have I believe told the truth about why I think we lost the election and why we need to change to win in 2020 and I believe in sound public finances because I don’t think it’s right to be spending more on servicing your debt than educating your children.  I believe the public didn’t vote for us because they didn’t trust us on the economy or with their taxes but I am actually making that case from a position of principle.  We need to change our economy so that we have a real long term strategy for the future and the way that we get skills and jobs in future is going to be different from the past and I also believe that one of the reasons we lost was because people didn’t trust us on welfare and I believe in real welfare reform. I don’t want to see 95% of government spending going on housing benefit and only 5% on house building, I don’t want to see £30 billion going on tax credits to subsidise low pay when we could be getting the high skilled, high wage jobs of the future and I want to see real reform of the state.  We waste billions of pounds on picking up problems after they’ve happened, in the health service, in prisons, in education and we need to shift the focus and real reform of our public services so that they get better results and better value for money.  I make that case not simply because I want to appeal to the electorate but it’s by winning that we put our principles into practice.  I actually believe that Labour needs to change our principles to the world as it is and as it will be not to problems of the past.  
ADAM BOULTON: I suppose there is a problem that if you don’t compromise you might not get elected.
YVETTE COOPER: Well I think that you don’t compromise on your principles but you do have to work hard to put them into practice.  I think there is a myth that’s going around at the moment that somehow the Labour party has to choose right now between our principles and getting into power, that we have to choose between our heads and our hearts and actually we can’t do that.  We’re the Labour party, our whole purpose from our very founding was in order to put our principles into practice.  If all we do is shout from the sidelines we won’t change anything, we can’t just be angry at the world, we’ve got to change the world but I think we can be confident enough in our values, it’s what we’ve been doing and it’s what a lot of people have been doing across the country talking about the refugees and those issues this week.  It’s also what we do when we talk about equality, when we talk about fighting child poverty.  I think we can be proud of our values but also be strong enough to persuade people to argue, to build up the consensus and support behind them so that we can win.  Let’s both stand up for our principles and put them into practice.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Principles are very important, the principles of social justice, the principle of democracy, the principle of accountability, the principle of defending human rights and all our liberties are crucial but we also as a party have to face up to something which is an unpleasant truth, that we fought the 2015 election on very good policies included in the manifesto but fundamentally we were going to be making continuing cuts in central government expenditure, we were going to continue under-funding local government, there were still going to be job losses, there were still going to be people suffering because of the cuts we were going to impose by accepting an arbitrary date to move into budget surplus, accepting the language of austerity.  My suggestion is that the party has to challenge the politics of austerity, the politics of increasing the gap between the richest and the poorest in society and be prepared to invest in a growing economy rather than accepting what is being foisted upon us by the banking crisis of 2008/9.  We don’t have to set this arbitrary date which in effect means the poorest and most vulnerable in our society pay for the banking crisis rather than those that caused it.  
ADAM BOULTON: Do you on the platform share a common set of principles, Labour principles?
LIZ KENDALL: Yes, I think we do, we all believe in a more equal society, we believe in human rights and solidarity but there are different ways of achieving your principles and I believe that John Prescott was right when he said traditional Labour values in a modern setting. The solutions we need for today and tomorrow aren’t going to be the same as they were in the 1980s.  
ANDY BURNHAM: As a party at times I think our problem is, and it goes back to what Jeremy was just talking about, we put presentation before our principles.  We are a bit worried about what the Tory papers will say about us so we then give too much support in my view to things like free schools and academies or, as Jeremy rightly said, we didn’t set out an alternative to George’s Osborne’s punishing austerity because we weren’t prepared to use the word tax and say yes, we should have a more balanced plan to reduce the deficit.  This is, I think our problem as a Labour party is when we knock on those doors at election time what’s the thing we hear time and again?  There’s no point, you’re all the same.  The people out there are waiting for a Labour party to wake up again and that’s what we’ve got to do.  
ANDY BURNHAM: What do you think, is it worth compromising to get power?
MAN: It wasn’t intended to be an either/or question. I think distinctive powerful principles do get you elected eventually, powerful messages in fact are really, really important.  I think there is always going to be some compromise to able to run a good government and at the softer end you need to bring most of the people with you.  Obviously the key thing from the last election is that we are going to have to be able to get back the voters that we lost, the left wing voters that went to the Greens, the disaffected that went to UKIP and all those voters that we lost or who remained with the Tories so compromise is going to be important because we need to be inclusive and we need to obviously win next time and not lose.  
YVETTE COOPER: That’s really important because in the end this has got to be about real hope and not false promise and in the end I think that probably my biggest disagreement with Jeremy is that we agree that we should have an alternative to George Osborne’s austerity of 40% cuts, that is what he is talking about now, that is not about good economics, that is about an ideology of austerity which is about shrinking our public services but where we disagree is that I don't think that alternative comes from printing money.  I think that alternative has to be a credible, strong, Labour alternative because that is the way we can both be true to our principles and also be credible enough to win.
LIZ KENDALL: I wanted to come back to the point you made, you talked about winning back voters including those who maybe had been Labour and then voted Conservative in places like Watford where I grew up but I don't think that that is compromising to want to appeal to those voters.  We should be a party that wants to speak to the vast majority of people in this country and one of the issues about the last election is while we rightly campaigned to scrap the Bedroom Tax, abolish zero hours contracts and raise the minimum wage, if you weren’t on the minimum wage, maybe owned your own home or ran a business or were self-employed, we just had too little to say.  It isn’t just because we need those voters to get it elected, I want to be a party that does stand and represent the many and not the few.  
ADAM BOULTON: On that protestation, let’s go to our next question which comes from Alan Burkitt here, Mr Burkitt.
MAN: I am slightly deviating from the card so apologies for that but I am particularly looking forward to Jeremy’s answer.  Why are the Labour party members who still openly admire Tony Blair sometimes treated like outsiders in the party and marginalised?  
JEREMY CORBYN: Everybody in the party should be treated with respect and their views should be treated with respect. I have some pretty fundamental differences with Tony Blair on economic and on some global issues but there is no secret about that.  There are people in the Labour party … I so fundamentally disagree with Tony Blair over Iraq and over the way that he conducted himself in the lead up to the Iraq War and the close relationship that he developed with George Bush.  I recognise that there were achievements during his time as Prime Minister, I was very happy to vote for the minimum wage laws, the Human Rights Act, the Equalities Act, the Disability Discrimination Act, Sure Start, Children’s Centres – all those issues – but I think he made such a tragic mistake, his history will always be the question of Iraq and the dishonesty that went with the Iraq decision.  
LIZ KENDALL: For some people like Jeremy and others, the Iraq War does wipe out for them all the good that we did as a government …
JEREMY CORBYN: No it doesn’t.
LIZ KENDALL: … but for me, but for me …
JEREMY CORBYN: I just gave you a whole list of things.  
LIZ KENDALL: You said you so profoundly disagreed with him including on economic policy and I actually believe being trusted on the economy and being economically credible was one reason why we won so that we could implement the minimum wage, Sure Start, maternity and paternity pay and leave.  I think the real issue goes back to the last gentleman’s question about do you compromise your principles and I think for too long those of us on the moderate progressive wing of the party allowed ourselves to be portrayed as only interested in winning when in fact it was about realising our principles and I think that’s been part of the problem.  
ANDY BURNHAM: I do find some of the way the discourse has been conducted around this leadership election has been conducted between different sides of the party quite worrying to be honest with you.  To direct all of this anger towards a man who won three general elections for us and say that he doesn’t have a right to speak out, I mean that is obviously a ridiculous thing for people to say.  Tony made mistakes but so does every politicians and overall we did a lot of things to change this country for the better and everybody does need to remember that but this brings me to my main point, I am worried given some of the nature of some of the debate we have seen, this party could go into a period of infighting coming out of this leadership election.  We could repeat the mistakes of the 1980s where we were more interested in fighting each other and we left the pitch clear for Margaret Thatcher to bulldoze her way through communities across the north-east, the north of England, the whole country and if Labour does that again coming out of this we will make a terrible mistake, we will let down millions of people out there who are losing their tax credits, who are having their disability benefits cut, young people who can’t get on in life.  If Labour turns in on itself coming out of this because of these fights and people being more interested in fighting each other than the real enemy, the Tories, then we will make a huge mistake.  That is why I say, I’ve never been a factional politician, I believe I can unite Labour coming out of this contest and that is what we need to do. Stop fighting each other, fight the Conservatives, stand up for people who have been hit hard by them.  
YVETTE COOPER: In the end this is not going to be an election that is about looking back to 1997 or to the 1980s or to beyond, we are not going to win the next election, we are not going to have the radical ideas of the future actually just by looking back to our past and becoming an inward looking party and looking back to that.  We have got to be able to have a robust and honest debate about different ideas and different ideas for the future without that being about personalities, without that being about division, without us having the tensions and disagreements between us as we do so and it is really important that we can come together as part of this because that’s what we did when we were first founded, when we first came together as the Labour party, you had the Marxist and the Methodist, you had the co-operative and the trade union movement and the Fabians all coming together because to be honest we were fed up of losing, we were fed up of not being able to change anything and that is why we want to reach out and it’s not just about all of our party that we’re reaching out and making sure that everybody can feel part of a strong party, we want to reach out across the country as well because we want more people to be supporting the Labour party of the future.  We can only get more people to support us if we are also prepared to be strong enough and united enough ourselves.  
ADAM BOULTON: Do you think if you become leader, Jeremy Corbyn, that the party will be able to unite around you?  I mean unnamed, unattributed supporters of yours are talking about deselecting people like Tristram Hunt.
JEREMY CORBYN: The party membership is now the biggest it has ever been.  The numbers of people taking part in this election are the biggest it’s ever been for a party of election at any time in British history. The enthusiasm and interest is something that people should understand and my suggestions are that the party needs to look at the issues of how we address the economic question in the last election and I pointed that out in the last question on austerity but also about how the party operates.  We have top down decision making and top down policy making, I want to see that basically reversed.  I have also as part of …
ADAM BOULTON: And does that mean marginalising MPs in the parliamentary party?  
JEREMY CORBYN: No, you’d start with the strength and ideas and enthusiasm and intelligence of the members and activists in the party who have got very good ideas about how we do things and you have a process where that goes upwards rather than downwards from the top, I think that is actually something that is very important.  How the party does its business is important because it gives people… sorry?   
ADAM BOULTON: You want to be party leader so it is obviously important.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes, and what I’ve done in this campaign is put out a whole series of policy consultation ideas because there is a whole need for debate and interest in the party and that is what this election is bringing out.  People have got great ideas, let’s hear them rather than having a leader of a party …
LIZ KENDALL: Without doubt we have been too centralised a party in the past and we haven’t drawn on the massive experience, skills and knowledge of our party members.  I’d like to also see us involving the public far more too, those who aren’t members of the party but let’s get real.  The Tories want to wipe us out and the minute that the new leader is elected they are going to throw everything at us.  They are trying to take our politics claiming they are the one nation party and the party of the low paid.  We know they’re not but they know they won’t be re-elected if they are seen as for the privileged few. They want to take our money and our funding from trade unions, that’s what they are doing with the trade union legislation and they are going to change the constituencies, reduce the number, do it on individual voter registration which they are bringing forward by a year and they are going to whip up English nationalism aided and abetted by the SNP.  They want to wipe us out and we’ve got to get real.  We’ve got to go back on the attack on the Tories, they’ve had too much space during this leadership election, we’ve got to get real, they’ll be bringing it on and we need a strong Labour leader who understands what they are going to do and is going to fight back for Labour so we can win in 2020.
ADAM BOULTON: Our next question is relevant to that last point, it comes from Gordon Mayburn.
MAN: How do you attract SNP and UKIP supporters back to Labour?
YVETTE COOPER: Yes, we do have to reach out and I don’t think we will solve that by just moving our narrow party a bit to the left or our narrow party a bit to the right because we’re going to have to reach out in all directions.  In Scotland that means challenging the SNP as Kezia Dugdale, our new Scottish leader, has already started doing and we have to back her in the process, challenging them actually on their record on basic things like you have got kids in Scotland who are losing out, if they come from the most deprived backgrounds they are getting a worse education, they are getting worse education results and that’s as a result of the decisions that the SNP are making in schools in Scotland so we have got to be championing Labour’s values, having the ideas for the future and recognising it is going to take time to rebuild.  We have also got to, I think, stand up for that classic principle of Labour solidarity which is we are stronger when we stand together than if we leave people to sink or swim alone and we care as much about children who are in poverty in Gateshead as we do children who are in poverty in Glasgow. That is a fundamental Labour principle which we should defend.
ADAM BOULTON: Andy Burnham, are you for or against the SNP for example?
ANDY BURNHAM: I think in opposition if you can stop the Tories doing things you work with them but it’s different when it comes to government but let me just deal with the question directly because for me the same underlying reason explains why we have lost votes to the SNP in Scotland and UKIP in England and it’s this: when the public have looked at the Labour party in recent times they have seen a party that they can’t relate to.  It’s London centric, it doesn’t speak to them, it doesn’t look like the people who are speaking for Labour understand them and their lives, they look out of touch and the way I put it is that the people of England and Scotland haven’t drifted away from Labour, Labour has drifted away from them and this is what we have got to face up to.  I think the way we win them back is not running a different message in Scotland from the one in England, that would be a big mistake, the way you win them back is you give them a party you can believe in again but actually policies of substance and scale that answer the issues that they are worried about. For instance, having a policy at the next election of an affordable and decent home for everybody to rent or to own. I think that would have huge resonance across all parts of the country and indeed saying hasn’t rail privatisation been a disaster, shouldn’t we bring the railways back into public control and ownership because my judgement is, the reason we haven’t said that in recent times is because Labour has been bowing down before the mantra that the market is the answer to everything and this is why we’ve lost a lot of people who don’t see what we stand for anymore.  This party has got to have the courage of its convictions, stand for things again, things that people can believe in and if we do that, we will win votes back north and south of the border.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Only 47% of young voters turned out in the last election, 36% of the entire electorate didn’t vote at all.  We also lost votes to the SNP in Scotland and we lost votes to UKIP and others in England as well as losing votes to Green. I think you confront it by a policy which is clear on the economic way we are going to go forward, clear about reducing the ghastly levels of inequality that exist within our society, clear about the health inequalities and clear that we are going to do something about it rather than blame people for it and in the case of Scotland particularly, challenge the agenda of privatisation, challenge the privatisation of CalMac Ferries which is now being pushed through by the SNP government but above all, unite people, unite people on the basis that we can have a fairer more decent society but you have to challenge the inequality and challenge that through corporate taxation, challenge that through providing the vital health and social services, all of which have been cut.
ADAM BOULTON: Isn’t that what Ed Miliband did in the last election?  
JEREMY CORBYN: Ed was trying to do that, I think the problem was, as I said earlier, the economic strategy that was being followed but there is a question about Labour traditions and Labour values.  Those Labour traditions and values are about defending trade unions, are about increasing wage levels, are about giving real opportunities to young people, are about defending the principle of a universal welfare state rather than joining in the attacks on it that happen all the time from some of our newspapers.  
ADAM BOULTON: Liz Kendall, is there something that would bring back if you like from both sides, SNP supporters and UKIP supporters?
LIZ KENDALL: Sometimes I think we over-complicate politics.  What people in Glasgow or Grimsby or Gateshead want is pretty much the same thing, they want a good job that pays a decent wage, a home to call their own, a safe place to bring up kids, knowing that their children may have a better chance of getting on than they had and if they are going to retire that they’ll have something to look forward to, enough to live on, not be frightened of getting ill and we have to bring it back to what people want.  Sometimes I don't think that it’s that complicated and this idea that you have a separate strategy for different parts of the country won’t wash because people can smell a rat if you say different things to different people. But they also want a strong leader, someone who is prepared to say the difficult things to their own party and to the country, not just the easy or inspiring things. They want to know there is someone they can trust and who has the guts and the courage to do what’s right no matter what’s thrown at them and I think that’s what will convince people right across the country.
ADAM BOULTON: Let’s ask Mr Mayburn, did you find the answers in any of that?  
MAN: A little bit in all the candidates. I believe a lot of people believe that they have lost their voice and no one listens to them anymore.  In the Labour party we lost votes to the left and the right and I don't know what the answer is but I do know that people want a party that they can be proud of again.  
ADAM BOULTON:  The gentleman in the front row.  
MAN: The answer is inspiring people, the answer is showing you have the power of your convictions, that you stand up for yourself, you stand up for what you believe in and that’s exactly, Jeremy has said everything I’d want to say about how you inspire new people to stand up and take their vote.  There is nearly a third of the electorate didn’t bother voting last time and it’s because  everybody looks the same.  No offence, we’re all one party but honestly, you really do look the same, Jeremy is the only one with the principles.  
ADAM BOULTON: He is certainly the only one with a beard anyway.  We’re going to have to pause there but there’s lots more coming up in a moment including some of the questions the candidates have aimed at each other and remember you can take part at home as well via social media using the hashtag #labourdebate on @skynews.