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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now, the former Acting Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman, has broken her silence over the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader by condemning his failure to appoint women to top jobs in the Shadow Cabinet.  She said there had been a clean sweep of men in senior positions and told Mr Corbyn to sort it out.  Well I am joined now from the Labour party conference in Brighton by the Labour MP and former frontbencher, Caroline Flint, she was a Minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and served of course in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet for five years but she won’t be serving under Mr Corbyn.  A very good morning to you, Ms Flint.  I know you heard the comments from Harriet Harman first of all, do you agree with her that Jeremy Corbyn has something to sort out?

CAROLINE FLINT: Yes, I do agree with Harriet.  I think, look, without taking anything away from Jeremy and Tom who won the leadership contest this summer, we haven’t got women in the top jobs in our party and that includes the major offices of state so I think that’s a missed opportunity and I think Harriet is 100% right.

DM: I also noticed Yvette Cooper, the former Shadow Home Secretary, she made another but related point about the course of her leadership campaign, how she was trolled, the word is quite often, for being a woman and presumably you found some of that during your campaign to be deputy leader.  Do you feel there is something wrong within the party?

CAROLINE FLINT: Look, I think there is something about social media that people tweet before they engage their brains quite frankly often and it’s a bit like when emails came in, people would type away and then afterwards think is that the right thing I should say.  There is no doubt about it, in the political world – and I don't think it’s something just in our party – there are people, some of whom may be party members, some of who may not be, we just don’t know – who take to social media with only one purpose and that is to be insulting, abusive and undermine women and others.  I think again Yvette’s right to say that if there is evidence that there are party members engaging in this activity it should be tackled.  When I was Chair of the constituency party and I was chairing party meetings, if members were abusive to other members in that meeting, as the Chair of that party I would sort it out.  Now we have to deal with social media and make sure that if party members are doing that on social media that we tackle it, just in the same way we would in a party meeting.  

DM: People are going to be saying why didn’t you say something to Jeremy Corbyn and his advisors this time two weeks ago when presumably he was making contact with people like you and Yvette Cooper and saying would you like to serve with me on the front bench, you said no.  Why didn’t you say to him then that you need women in senior positions?

CAROLINE FLINT: Well I made a decision actually before a conversation that I wanted to go onto the back benches.  I have been in the shadow cabinet for five years, before that six years as a Minister and personally for myself, Dermot, I wanted to have some time and space to help the party the best way that I can and part of that is by making sure we are focused on a conversation we need to have with the British public – because we’ve had five months talking to ourselves – but also I wanted to have some freedom to talk about some of the policy areas like welfare reform, about social mobility and other areas that I have more freedom to do from the back benches, that was my choice and that’s why I decided that I actually didn’t want to be in the shadow cabinet but I want to help the party in whatever I can.  You don’t have to be in the shadow cabinet to do that.  

DM: Okay, let me just ask you, you just said there you want to have a key role in formulating policy, what does it sound like to you when it seems that everyone who has paid their £3 is going to have as much say as you do in forming policy.  Yes, they voted in those elections but now, according to Jeremy Corbyn, there’s a revolution taking place within your party, a democratisation, a true democratisation of it and people like you will have no more say than anyone else.

CAROLINE FLINT: I am not asking in that sense to have any more say than anyone else but look, the fact is that Jeremy won this contest in an overwhelming fashion, there was no doubt about that and he needs to be supported but importantly, let’s remember Dermot we had nearly five months talking to each other.  People seem to sometimes forget that we lost an election in May and we lost badly, we do need to start making sure that when we are developing policy inside the party not only do we talk to each other and discuss and have a healthy debate and Jeremy has said that should be the way we do things and I agree with that, but we actually have to have a conversation with the public and we need to understand why they didn’t vote for us in May, why we haven’t got a Labour government and we haven’t even begun to do that.  I think we have been in denial for quite a time now before the election that actually the public weren’t on the same level as us and they weren’t actually supporting our policies.  

DM: Yes, but didn’t you have that conversation under Ed Miliband?  I remember the 10 million individual conversations, you were part of that team and you have come out of it and said you learnt that you were out of tune with the great British public on many issues, fundamental issues such as immigration, the deficit of course and welfare, you’ve had those conversations so are you going to say to Jeremy Corbyn you don’t need have them again, you’re out of step?

CAROLINE FLINT: No, hang on a second, you say we had the conversations.  In January of this year as part of the short campaign Ed Miliband had an initiative to have these five million conversations but actually a conversation isn’t just about one conversation, it’s also about understanding what are the concerns of people and too often in the Labour party over some time now, when the public have raised concerns about welfare, about immigration, we sort of dealt with it but we dealt with it not in a way that I think really resonates with the public, we deal with it in a way that is palatable to us but actually doesn’t have cut through to the public and I think one of the things about Jeremy which is really interesting, there is no doubt about it that whether people agree with him on everything or not, and I’m talking about inside the party and outside the party, what he has got is an authenticity.  Jeremy is what you see, he does speak his mind, he does say what he thinks about things and he does it in this unspun way and actually that is part of what we lost as a party, that authenticity that when we speak we believe in what we’re talking about. Too often on some of the issues of major concerns to the public it just sounded a bit like we were doing it to tick the box and because we thought that was useful to our electoral success and the public I think can smell insincerity a mile off.

DM: Okay, Caroline Flint, thank you very much indeed, good to talk to you.  Caroline Flint there live from Brighton at the Labour party conference.