Murnaghan Interview with Chris Leslie MP, former Shadow Chancellor, 17.04.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:  Now then, last week Jeremy Corbyn made his first big intervention in the EU debate after accusations that the Labour leadership’s heart wasn’t really in the campaign. Mr Corbyn promised to make the case for Remain and reform in Europe.  Well I’m joined now by Chris Leslie who was Shadow Chancellor until last September and who is backing the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, a very good morning to you Mr Leslie.  So you and others have been urging Mr Corbyn to get involved, to get more involved in this camp with passion and without equivocation, I quote.  Did you see that from his speech?   

CHRIS LESLIE: Well it was very welcome and we have got to get the whole of the Labour leadership enthusiastic about this risk I think to Britain’s future if we end up leaving the European Union, there are big, big risks to jobs and trade.  Of course all the social protections on the Labour side in the chamber in the House of Commons we are particularly concerned about but there are living standard issues, Britain’s influence in the rest of the world so I welcome Jeremy’s speech…

DM: But is there equivocation?  

CHRIS LESLIE: Well I think my point would be that it can’t be a one off, I think there’s no point just having a tick box exercise.  The whole of the Labour leadership has to consistently campaign on this, there shouldn’t be any question at all about the Labour party supporting Britain’s place in Europe.  So Alan Johnson’s been doing a good job, Hilary Benn, Angela Eagle, I’d quite like to see John McDonnell as the Shadow Chancellor actually talk about the European Union, so there’s lots of things I think still to be done, we can’t just leave it to one side, oh a speech has been given, move on.   This has got to be surely the top priority for all the political party leaders given the risk to our country.

DM: But you’ve got big elections coming up, well for all parties but indeed for the Labour party and for the leadership on May 6th, is there a sense in your analysis that the leadership are saying well post-May 6th we can really roll up our sleeves and get involved in that campaign but up to that point we don’t want to be sharing platforms on this issue or saying the same things on this issue, as parties we are fighting at those elections?

CHRIS LESLIE: Well we do have not just local government elections and London Mayoral, the Scotland and Wales, we’ve got the Police Commissioners and so forth, I don't think we should be necessarily separating these things out.  People make their minds up on the referendum of course over a course of time, it’s not just something that will come at the last minute so I think we have to run these things in parallel and I think people will get a sense of the vibe, the pheromones that leaders send out on these particular issues.  If there is a sense of equivocation, that somehow the heart isn’t in it then people will say maybe there are reasons not to back this particular course.  So yes, let’s focus and win on those local elections, we have got to have real progress made there and of course we should be absolutely steaming ahead given how bad the Conservatives are doing. I mean I’ve never known a period of time when the Conservative party has been in such disarray, devouring itself with resignations and when you look at rebellions on the Conservative benches on education, on all sorts of things, we should be ten, fifteen points ahead in the polls so those local elections I think ought to be strong for us but let’s not neglect the bigger strategic question facing Britain in the future.  It’s not just for Prime Ministers to take leads on these things, it’s for leaders of all the main political parties because that’s where the votes to remain in Britain will have to come from.  

DM: There are two main questions flowing from what you’ve just said, Mr Leslie, let me ask you the one about Labour’s performance on May 6th. You say you should be steaming ahead, you should be so many points ahead, what happens if you don’t do that well in those polls, what does that mean for the leadership?

CHRIS LESLIE: Well I’m not going to pre-empt any bad results or anything like that, we’ve got a poll out today …

DM: You said you should be steaming ahead and you’re not.  

CHRIS LESLIE: We should be … We ought to be doing really, really well in those local elections and in London, I think it’s clear now that Sadiq Khan is on course to win there and of course in Scotland and Wales too, some really crucial elections. I think if you look back to where Ed Miliband was after 2011 which is the equivalent period, we had a sort of 8, 9, 10% opinion poll leads, today we’re sort of five points behind.  I mean opinion polls come and go of course but we really ought to be doing better.  I’ve never known a time when the Conservatives have been on the floor so badly …

DM: So why do you think you are doing badly?  

CHRIS LESLIE: Well I think there are issues because it’s not just about how badly the Conservatives are doing, the public of course know that, I think they can see that but of course they also want the alternative government of the day and they look to the Labour party to have a strong strategic offer and to be able to confront difficult questions.  I could spend all this interview attacking George Osborne for some of their appalling decisions that they’ve made and the wrong priorities but you would just ask me, well what would you do?  I think as you get towards general elections – and we’re a long way off from that – people are going to be saying where is the Labour party on some of these big questions: national security, economic competence – those are the issues which I think we’ve really got to focus on and so yes, I think at this moment in time we’ve got to focus on winning that European referendum in particular, that’s the top priority for the country.  Heaven knows what would happen in terms of jobs and trade and living standards if the pound suffers as well, what would happen in terms of inflation?  That’s where our focus has to be but I think beneath that we’ve also got to keep focusing on the difficult stuff for a political party, getting out of just protest mode and starting to think about ourselves as an alternative government.

DM: But with the focus on the referendum campaign and hearing what you just said, the other question that flowed from what you’ve been saying was on the Labour support.  We saw from your leadership election you have to use the awful phrase, the Americanised phrase, an energised base, you’ve got a lot of voters out there and a lot of them are presumably pro-EU voters, if they read those equivocal signals you’ve been talking about from the leadership and think it’s not really a priority for our leadership, I won’t go out and vote in the referendum because it doesn’t really matter, is there a danger of us slipping out of the European Union because Labour didn’t campaign hard enough?

CHRIS LESLIE: I think if I’m honest if you look at those polls between Remain and Exit, they are apparently level pegging but most people seem to get the sense that those who are in favour of Leave feel that quite fervently and the question is to those who are saying well yes, stay in, remain, do they feel that with the right passion, are they fired up to believe in that to actually go out and vote?  The differential in turnout is I think going to be quite crucial here and when you are out on the doorstep people definitely want more information but they want leadership on this issue and they don’t just want it from David Cameron, my constituents won’t take it from David Cameron, they want the Labour party’s leadership to be out there saying bang the drum, talking about the risks but also why there are positives to stay engaged and actually build alliances.  Yes, they can be messy, sometimes you’ve got to be pragmatic about these things but let’s have a centre left case for staying in.

DM: So you are saying to Jeremy Corbyn, nice start but keep it up and to John McDonnell, get out there?

CHRIS LESLIE: Well John McDonnell made a big speech yesterday in Trafalgar Square and he made commitments to scrap Trident even though of course we’ve got a review on those things but there was absolutely no mention of the European Union and the referendum.  I think we’ve got to do better than that and I think the whole of the Labour party’s leadership team have to now roll their sleeves up and focus on this bigger picture.  That’s what I’m going to keep prodding them to do.  

DM: Great seeing you, Mr Leslie, thank you very much indeed.  Chris Leslie there.