ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the Labour party hasn’t been far from the headlines this week and indeed for many weeks and there are reports this morning that the Shadow Cabinet could be bracing itself for a reshuffle after a number of front benchers voted in favour of air strikes in Syria.  There have been calls for unity in the party, for a new politics where people can agree to disagree but that’s come hand in hand with threats of deselection and for some a torrent of online abuse.  Well I’m joined now by the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, Chris Bryant, who did vote in favour of air strikes.  A very good morning to you Mr Bryant.  And you’re on the front bench, do you think Mr Corbyn and others could be mulling over a list with your name and others on it thinking time to move him?

CHRIS BRYANT: Who knows?  I haven’t the faintest idea but I am going to add to the calls for unity I’m afraid.  You know, we had a brilliant election result on Thursday in Oldham.  Who would have expected that at a time such as this we would end up increasing our share of the vote, that is brilliant news, a great new MP, and we should be taking the fight to the Tories. There are lots of things that we’ve won some battles on this year, not least working tax credits, the Chancellor was forced to reverse his original plan.  We ought to be scrutinising the fact that in actual fact he is going to be taking that money out of Universal Credit in two years’ time and that will mean average families will be £1600 worse off a year.    

DM: Something for you to get your teeth into but will you be able to get your teeth into it from the front bench because, you mentioned Oldham there, it is seen as strengthening Jeremy Corbyn’s hand within the Labour party and those – you must have read the reports, you are probably hearing it within the party as well, those who support him very strongly saying get rid of those that disagree with you, let’s have a front bench cast in your own image and beliefs.  

CHRIS BRYANT: Well it’s up to Jeremy to decide who is on his front bench and I’m not going to tell him who should or shouldn’t be there but I see from the Independent on Sunday that I am apparently too independently minded.  I cannot possibly imagine that Jeremy Corbyn would say that someone is too independently minded, that’s one of the things that Jeremy … that’s like Brighton rock, it’s written all the way through Jeremy, independently minded and I remember in the Blair years I always loved the fact that we had a Labour party that was a broad church and it’s a broad church today and …

DM: But everyone was on message when it came to the core line, the core offering that New Labour gave to the public, it sang from the same hymn sheet.

CHRIS BRYANT: I don't think Jeremy Corbyn was!  And that’s the good thing, why can’t you have a political party that … and the truth is actually of course because we’ve got the first past the post system, both of the big political parties are coalitions because you need to get enough people together to be able to form a majority in the House of Commons, to be able to form a government and so in the Tory party you have the authoritarian right and the libertarian right and in the Labour party you have a broad tradition, not least on issues of war and peace.  

DM: So your message quite clearly to the leader is keep it this way, it’s a good thing, it is the new politics but you must be aware there are those saying and asking, why did you serve in the first place if you disagree so fundamentally with some of the things that Jeremy Corbyn says?

CHRIS BRYANT: Well because in the end there are 220 or whatever Labour MPs, one more now.  I would say actually the most important thing about winning the by-election is that we strengthen the parliamentary Labour party and we’ve got one more vote in a House of Commons which is fairly tightly divided, the government has only got a small majority, we should be able to win more votes between now and the general election, we’ve got to take that fight to the Tories.  There’ll be other by-elections, let’s hope we can take some seat off …

DM: But you didn’t position yourself to be poised should Jeremy Corbyn falter early, you’ll remember when he was elected a lot of people saying – I’m not sure if you were one of them privately saying he’d be out by Christmas.

CHRIS BRYANT: I’ve never said that Jeremy Corbyn will be out by Christmas.  Look, the only person who could ever remove Jeremy from the leadership of the Labour party is Jeremy himself.  

DM: Would you like him to do that?

CHRIS BRYANT: No, I’m not calling for that.  Jeremy has a massive mandate from hundreds of thousands of people in the Labour party who voted for him.  I think we as a party have got to do better, we can’t just look like a rabble, we have got to be co-ordinated and as I said several times now, we’ve got to take the fight to the Conservatives.  The one thing incidentally I’d say about, there has been a lot of talk about online abuse and all that kind of stuff and I’ve had some fairly wild emails this week, one chap wanted to drop a brimstone missile on me  Now I’m fairly certain he hasn’t got one so I wasn’t taking that one all that seriously but some of it has been quite nasty.  You must remember that this is the first time that we’ve taking a vote of this kind when Twitter and Facebook and the internet has been so prominent and that has changed.  

DB: But you know where it’s disseminating from, you know the source of that don’t you?  It’s from people, some people who support Jeremy Corbyn and others.

CHRIS BRYANT: But it’s not Jeremy who’s doing that.  Those who suggest that Jeremy …

DM: But that’s the oldest trick in the book isn’t it?  You have this organisation and you can deny it all, it’s not me guvnor.  

CHRIS BRYANT: It’s just not Jeremy’s style of doing politics, it really isn’t.

DM: Well would you like him to speak out more volubly and strongly about it?  

CHRIS BRYANT: He has, Jeremy has said many, many times that kind of abuse, that kind of verbal trolling and all the rest of it is just not on and I wish, well I hope people will take that to heart.  Of course if you are an MP, shrinking violets need not apply frankly and by nature most of us are quite good at arguing, that’s what got us into politics, arguing for a set of convictions and beliefs so robust debate is good but there just comes a point where people have crossed the line and it ends up feeling like intimidation and it’s an old, old principle of British politics that we’re not delegates, we’re representatives in Parliament and we should be free then to come to our own conclusions.  Of course we listen to our constituents but that’s always the complicated …

DB: But the question is, this goes beyond that, that there is some kind of organisation behind it, there are organisations, there are movements within the Labour party now to push the so-called Corbynista agenda, Momentum, let’s mention them.  Some of the abuse you are getting and others are getting may be coming from members from that quarter.

CHRIS BRYANT: Not that I’m aware of.  I mean there are members of … there was one hilarious interview I saw earlier in the week where there was a woman was demanding that an MP be deselected and the person who was doing the demanding wasn’t even a member of the Labour party.  So you kind of go, well we’re living in a slightly unreal world here and the whole business of let’s deselect and all of that, let’s just get rid of that language, let’s talk about taking out the Conservative government, let’s not talk about trying to diminish the number of Labour MPs.

DM: I want to talk to you about taking people on, Tyson Fury, the heavyweight champion of the world.  I saw the column you wrote the other day saying you want to go head to head with him, obviously not in the ring I suspect, but on the serious issue about some of the comments he’s been making about homosexuality and other issues.  Do you think he is an appropriate person to be nominated for Sports Personality of the Year?

CHRIS BRYANT: No, I don’t.  In the end it is not for me to tell the BBC what to do with their programme or for that matter Sky but look, Tyson Fury, my real problem is that Tyson has equated homosexuality with paedophilia and actually that is a very dangerous equation to make because it means that we don’t take child abuse seriously.  Actually the vast majority of child abuse happens within the family and it is heterosexual so if you really want to tackle child abuse, and apart from anything else there are millions of gay and lesbian couples the whole world over who would never touch a child except to prevent harm to them, and for that matter there are thousands and thousands in this country who have provided a loving, caring and gentle home to children.  So there is something deeply offensive about what he’s said but it’s not the offence that I care about, it’s the fact that it means we end up not taking child abuse seriously.  

DM: Have you had any response from him?

CHRIS BRYANT: He’s not replied, he’s not replied.  Mr Fury – I don't know which camera – Mr Fury, please get in touch, come to tea at the House of Commons and we can talk about your issues.  

DM: Or come on this programme and talk about it in front of an audience.

CHRIS BRYANT: Or come in here as well but in part I’m joking obviously about going head to head with him but again, I think in politics it is possible to change people’s minds but not if you send pictures of dead babies or if you are arguing against air strikes or pictures of severed heads if you are arguing in favour of air strikes, that’s not how you change people’s minds.  You change people’s minds by decent respectful debate.

DM: Chris Bryant, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed for that.