Murnaghan Interview Angela Eagle, MP, Labour leadership contender

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, as the new Conservative government gears up for its first Cabinet meeting, the Labour party shadow cabinet remains kind of half full. Both the former Shadow Welfare Secretary, Owen Smith and the former Shadow Business Secretary, Angela Eagle, are campaigning now to become the new Labour leader trying to replace Jeremy Corbyn.  Well Angela Eagle joins me now and a very good morning to you Ms Eagle.  This issue, and Owen Smith has been saying it, that really there should be one of you takes on Jeremy Corbyn or you are going to split the vote, what’s your response to that.  

ANGELA EAGLE: Look none of us want to be here but we are here because Jeremy has failed to connect with Labour voters outside, much less talk to other voters so with an early general election still beckoning I think, we have to try to replace the Labour leader and that’s why I put my name forward because I think I’m the best candidate to do this job and I think I’d be a good Prime Minister so we are going to be at the Labour hustings tomorrow and we’ll see what colleagues think, nominations open at seven o’clock.  

DM: Is that a way of saying yes, you’ve got to agree it would be better if one of you takes on Jeremy Corbyn, you know how difficult it is going to be to try and get him out as you want.  You are saying there should be one candidate and it should be me.

ANGELA EAGLE: I’m not getting involved in any of that at the moment, I’m putting my pitch both to my Labour colleagues in the hustings but also to the party as a whole.  We do need a change of leadership, I think Jeremy has opened up the party to new thinking, we’ve got a lot of new members which is extremely welcome but he isn’t a leader and he is not connecting with the British people so now we need to make a change and get somebody to take that forward and yes, I wouldn’t have put myself forward if I didn’t think I would be the person, the best person as a working class woman from the north who understands how difficult it is for working class kids to get on, because my mum and dad, my mum was a seamstress, she couldn’t get on, she was very clever, didn’t get the opportunities that Labour governments made sure I had.  When she went to try and get a job she was told she couldn’t work in an office because she was a factory girl. We don’t want that kind of society.  

DM: But just back to the very, you know, the mechanism of getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn, that’s what you want to see.  It would be better, would it not, if there was just one candidate garnering those anti-Corbyn votes?  You’re in danger of splitting … let me turn this round, John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, key lieutenant of Jeremy Corbyn, has just been on saying he really wants to see you stay on the ballot paper and Owen Smith, in other words the Corbynistas if we may term them that, want to see the vote split.

ANGELA EAGLE: Well we don’t know what will happen or what the PLP will decide.  I’m concentrating on putting my pitch to them, I don’t want to be involved in some backroom deal at the moment before nominations have even opened.  You’re anticipating things a bit too much, let’s put our arguments to the country and let’s remember, do we want another all male leadership team?  I’m a woman, I’ve got strong working class roots, I understand the areas of our country that have been so alienated that they voted to leave and are now being threatened with yet another economic hit as a result of the challenges faced by Brexit when they have already borne the brunt of Tory austerity.

DM: What about this idea, again coming from Owen Smith, you mentioned the hustings there, whoever has the most support at the hustings, they should be the one that goes forward?  

ANGELA EAGLE: Look let’s just wait and see what happens.  I don’t want to get involved in this studio before we’ve even had the hustings with some view that there should be a backroom deal …

DM: But it would be logical wouldn’t it, if one of the candidates seems to have more support that they take the standard forward.

ANGELA EAGLE: We have an alternative vote system and so I don’t think that’s clear at all but let’s see what the PLP do.  I’m putting a pitch because of my experience in parliament.  Whenever I’ve been asked to step up I have, look at how I wiped the floor with George Osborne at Prime Minister’s Questions when I was in there for Jeremy deputising.  I think I’m someone who’s got a lot of experience and a lot to offer the Labour party in these very difficult times.   

DM: But aren’t you a bit tainted just by being in the Parliamentary Labour Party for so long … ?

ANGELA EAGLE: I don't think I’m tainted.  

DM: Well we’ve got this from a source who doesn’t want to see Jeremy Corbyn stay on saying that Angela Eagle has surrounded herself with too many Blairites and in the past week you have a growing sense of entitlement about yourself.

ANGELA EAGLE: I have never had a sense of entitlement, I have had to fight for everything I’ve got in my life as somebody who came from very humble beginnings with my dad being a printer and my mum a seamstress and I am in nobody’s camp.  My camp is the Labour party because the Labour party is the only vehicle for giving working class children like I was when I was growing up, proper opportunities and that’s been my mission in politics.  Anyone who knows me knows that I’m my own woman.

DM: But it is an albatross around your neck isn’t it?  Voting in parliament alongside Tony Blair and many others it must be said, to invade Iraq.  

ANGELA EAGLE: Can I just say that I was sacked by Tony Blair and I was the only member of the Tribune Executive when we had that leadership election who didn’t nominate Tony Blair, I actually nominated Margaret Beckett because I felt we needed to have a woman leader.  I’m very straightforward, I say what I think, I’m not in any  camp and now is the time when we don’t need to be thinking about those old Blairite, Brownite, Corbynista camps.  We need to be looking forward …

DM: It’s not me, it’s within your party.  You saw what happened after Chilcot.

ANGELA EAGLE: Listen, we need to be looking forwards.  Our country faces huge challenges at the moment with the shock of Brexit and it’s our communities in the north of England that’ll suffer the most on top of the austerity cuts that they’ve been hit with already if we don’t do our job as a progressive Labour party.

DM: And can I just ask you finally, this issue of the tenor, the tone of the debate, how nasty it is getting in some areas, in social media and indeed face to face.  You just head John McDonnell there saying yet again he wants it to be respectful and polite then he goes out one night and uses the F word.  Do you believe him?

ANGELA EAGLE: Well I launched a hashtag called #keepitcomradely because I think it’s really important that we debate ideas. There has been a nasty poisonous tone, I’ve never had so much misogyny or homophobia thrown at me since I stood up and said we needed …

DM: Do you think they really ought to come down on it?

ANGELA EAGLE: They need to ensure that it stops and they can call it to stop more effectively.  I think that people who are party members, if they are party members that are doing that, they need to be expelled.  

DM: Okay, Angela Eagle, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed.