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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The Labour MP Frank Field was elected to Parliament back in 1970 when James Callaghan was Labour leader and he stayed on quite a time after losing that election, it makes Jeremy Corbyn in actual fact the eighth leader Mr Field  has served under and do you think he will be the last leader you serve under?  

FRANK FIELD: That partly depends on how long I last.  I don’t think this is actually now necessarily a debate about who is going to survive and what.  I disagree fundamentally with what Dave Prentis has just said, he said we had this great debate in the Labour party – we had no such debate.  I nominated Jeremy hoping that we would get this debate and Jeremy set out as he’s always done, over all the years that I’ve known him, the views he held when he first came in to parliament.  What was shocking and surprising and challenging was that the other three candidates who in a sense in different way represent the Blair children in the Labour party, had nothing much to say, the cupboard’s bare.  

DM: They didn’t take him on.  

FRANK FIELD: They didn’t take him on because it turned out they didn’t actually have much to say.  We were offered thin Blairite gruel which one realised immediately where this would have landed us in 2020 so the crisis …

DM: So that explains Jeremy Corbyn’s appeal then doesn’t it?  There was no gruel there.

FRANK FIELD: No, I think there were two parts of an appeal which lay the policies for the rest of us in the Labour party.  One was that he’s not part of the old machine, I think there is a wonderful world-wide revolt against the spin doctors and the well paid elite who determine successions in parties, that’s been overthrown and in this sense of course Jeremy’s success is very similar to Mrs Thatcher who got on board the Tory ship of state, threw the crew overboard and sailed the ship in another direction. The differences of course, this time some of the crew are jumping off board, he doesn’t have to throw them overboard and whereas Mrs T took the Tory party into oceans which were generally favourable to her, on Jeremy’s main stances he is taking us into an ocean where the voters will be hostile to us.  It is one thing getting a leadership right, it’s another one saying that we think we can change the electorate’s view, we actually have to work with the electorate.  

DM: Because there is a particularly acute problem, isn’t there, that doesn’t seem to be much discussed.  There’s been a lot of analysis as to where the Labour votes went from Labour to other parties during the course of the last general election and that was huge swathe, hundreds of thousands if not millions of votes that actually went to UKIP, particularly in the north, the Midlands, places like that.  Do you think Jeremy Corbyn could win back those kind of Labour voters who perhaps have different concerns from many of the Metropolitan liberal elite?

FRANK FIELD: I think you have summarised really where we are but there is a group that is very vocal in Britain whose views represent their own peer group but do not actually run in Birkenhead, in most other Labour areas and of the bleeding of our vote, it was obvious before but people wouldn’t listen to it, certainly not in the PLP, that we were going to have a huge bleed into UKIP.  Now that group, we know what their values are about, they’re about the family, they’re about national identity, they’re about defending our borders and the big issue that is actually going to, in a sense, wipe clean the political map of this parliament is the borders issue.  What we are seeing normally on our television, Jeremy’s success has actually put it down to second or third ranking, we are seeing now a movement of people of the like we have never, ever seen in our history and I think the pressures of this, as Europe’s borders buckle, the demand for national borders and for a different political settlement will certainly begin to change who survives in political leadership in Europe.  

DM: Well let’s take that and add it to the other policies we know from Jeremy Corbyn and relate it to some more … we heard there from Dave Prentis, one of his key supporters there, when I put that question to him about what does he do with his policy mix, you heard Dave Prentis, he was unequivocal, you hold the line there Mr Corbyn.  Now for some members, for some MPs, he has to change, he has to change on so many issues such as defence and borders and tax and spend and that type of thing, and reaching out more widely to the electorate.  Does he not have to change and in a sense disappoint all those people who voted for him in this election?

FRANK FIELD: Well the dilemma is I doubt whether the voters are going to change and therefore we have to actually think about what is going to be our response but the borders issue will actually ricochet through British politics.  One issue why we’ve been losing votes is our stance on welfare. Our voters and many other voters believe it is brutally unfair that people draw benefits without making adequate contributions, that will massively increase as the borders begin to crumble.  Similarly if I can with health, the idea that we are running an international health service rather than a national health service will, with the borders crisis, start to push back onto the agenda ID cards. At the end of this parliament the agenda will be totally different from the agenda we’re talking about today.

DM: What’s your best guess?  Eight Labour leaders you’ve served under, will Mr Corbyn be leading the party, what’s your feeling, leading the party into the 2020 General Election?  

FRANK FIELD: Well it will actually be up to him won’t it, about how he does respond in this way.  Dave Prentis was saying he’s not for moving, Jeremy served on the Select Committee that I chaired for two parliaments from 1990 onwards, we never, ever produced a report for the House of Commons [with] a minority report with either his views separate or the Tory views separate, so I do think people might be underestimating the ability that Jeremy has of actually maintaining his views but in a way which allows views of others as well.   

DM: Fascinating talking to you, Frank Field, thank you very much indeed for your time.