ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNGHAN: So Labour’s election post-mortem continues this weekend.  The acting Labour leader, Harriet Harman, has set up a taskforce  to learn the lessons from defeat, it will be chaired by the former Cabinet Minister and leader one time herself, Margaret Beckett, who will report back to the party in September.  Harriet Harman joins me now and a very good morning to you.  Now you say that now is not the time to paper over the cracks for Labour so is this taskforce going to be warts and all, a look at everything in an honest and open way?  

HARRIET HARMAN: I think it’s got to be, it’s got to look at all the evidence, the data, crunch all the numbers but it’s also got to hear what people think happened and that will be quite uncomfortable I’m sure in some respects but there’s no point in sweeping it under the carpet, we lost and we lost badly and we’ve got to look at why it was that the public wouldn’t trust us to be the government so I think that’s very serious and we’ve actually got to have …

DM: But haven’t Labour got a very thin line to tread because you want to do that and it will therefore involve some strong disagreements, some strong opinions aired as you say openly yet at the same time you don’t want the party to tear itself apart.  

HARRIET HARMAN: I think it will be uncomfortable and there will be disagreements but I think that we have got to do that.  If you think of what happened when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, we didn’t have a big fundamental discussion about the future direction of the party and after 2010…

DM: Was that a mistake?  

HARRIET HARMAN: Well after 2010 as well when Gordon Brown was then succeeded by Ed Miliband, we chose a new leader but we didn’t say … we looked at who was going to be the new captain of the ship but we didn’t say is the ship steering in the right direction and we’ve really got to have that fundamental rethink and it will be uncomfortable  but rather than having a veneer of tranquillity and unity, we’ve got to let people speak their minds and I think we won’t tear ourselves apart but we will hear some uncomfortable truths.  It is going to be a bit like a truth and reconciliation commission I think really.  

DM: Seriously?

HARRIET HARMAN: Seriously, yes.

DM: Well that means that some views, as you say again, openly aired and it has to focus then doesn’t it on policies, the policy mix, was it right, and the leadership.  

HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think it has to focus on everything – the policies, the leadership, the organisation, how people perceive us, whether it was something about how people perceived the Conservative campaign and I think we’ve all got our own anecdotes and we’ve all got our own experience and our hunches about actually why it happened but the point is to put that all together and also listen to people all around the country, was it different things happening in different areas, different things happening in Scotland, different things happening in Plymouth or was there fundamentally the same problem that was afflicting us all around the country so we’ve got to put all of that together.  

DM: Okay but does this style of truth and reconciliation therefore have implications then for the style of leadership for the future in that we heard, I heard from Mary Creagh, one of the leadership campaigners last week, when it came to the Mansion Tax, she said no discussion with the Shadow Cabinet, once you elect your leader well then you may have different views but you all fall in behind whoever that leader may be.  

HARRIET HARMAN: I think there does have to be a wide discussion alongside the leadership election and we’re doing the leadership election in a very different way this time.  Always previously what we’ve done is that Labour party members, people who feel strongly enough about their support for Labour they actually join the party, have sat in rooms together and we’ve looked at Labour candidates and decided who we like and actually the job of the Leader of the Opposition is to reach out to the public much more widely and convince them, it’s not just about who we feel comfortable with, it’s who can reach out to the public, so we’re doing our leadership election hustings and meetings very differently, we’re doing them in areas where we were rejected rather than areas where people supported us and we’re doing them on television as well.  In fact we’re in discussions with Sky about broadcasting some of our hustings so we’ll hopefully choose a leader who we can have real confidence in and who can reach out to the public.

DM: Are you pleased with the mix then amongst the contenders, do you think the range of views within the Labour party is represented by those personalities?  

HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think the candidates who will be on the ballot paper for people to vote on, and by the way anybody who is a supporter of the Labour party can vote in this election, you don’t have to be a member of the Labour party, we are throwing it much more widely open which is the first time any political party has done that.  If you support the Labour party, you can pay £3 which is an administration fee and register your support and vote and I do think that we should have a broad, we should have a good choice of candidates.  

DM: Are they different enough?  

HARRIET HARMAN: Well the parliamentary Labour party decides who to nominate and who will go on the ballot paper and obviously you know we have got a number of people who have thrown their hat in the ring and …

DM: Well out of those, that’s what I’m asking about.  

HARRIET HARMAN: I have to be completely scrupulously …

DM: Sure, but I’m I know you want to hear a range of views, do they from what we’ve heard so far – and you’ve expressed some yourself in terms of past policies and things like that – what we’re hearing from Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper and Mary Creagh and Liz Kendall, are they different enough?  

HARRIET HARMAN: But you see is it really about what I think or is it really about what the public thinks?  

DM: But you’re the acting leader.

HARRIET HARMAN: Exactly, therefore I am passionately supportive of Labour and support all of these, they are all my colleagues.  The question is, do they appeal to people in the public and that’s the issue, not do I support them.  I support all of them.  

DM: But it’s exactly what you’ve been saying about the policies, you want to get it out there, you want to have discussions, you want to see disagreements because of course that’s the way you find the way forward.  So do these, are they saying things that are different enough to spark that debate?

HARRIET HARMAN: Well let’s see when we have these televised hustings in front of a TV audience of people who voted for other parties as well as people who didn’t vote, as well as people who voted Labour, let’s see what these candidates can do and can show how they can reach out.  The other thing about the leadership election is that we’ve got two jobs, we’ve got a job to actually get a new leader but we’ve also got a job, and to understand where we went wrong, but we’re also the official opposition and we’ve got a task to be explaining and showing up where the government are getting things wrong.  So we are not off-duty on our job as being the official opposition and I want the leadership candidates to show that they can expose the government when the government is getting it wrong and they can hold the government to account.  They are not on leave from their opposition duties.  

DM: The problem is though is the policy mix, we don’t quite know … okay, we had your manifesto, that was rejected by the electorate and you said some things as acting leader which may be entirely changed by whoever becomes the new leaders so on what basis do you oppose the Conservative party?  There are things you have started agreeing with that you previously disagreed with, benefits caps and things like that.

HARRIET HARMAN:  Ah, very easily.  For example they have made some promises on the National Health Service, they must keep those promises, people need to see their GP, they need to be treated promptly in A&E, what’s happening on mental health, what’s happening on waiting lists.  That’s what matters in people’s lives and the government have got their feet held to the fire, we’re not a one party state, we’ve got a government but we’ve also got an opposition and are those apprenticeships coming through, are they decent apprenticeships which actually lead to proper skills?  So we have got a real job to do as opposition.

DM: So has Ed Miliband left you a positive legacy?

HARRIET HARMAN: Well you know, Ed worked incredibly hard and was somebody who was passionately committed to the Labour party and we didn’t win the election, we lost badly and in a way which we didn’t expect so that’s part of our understanding the lessons, we’ve got to look at all the different things that were in the mix and then we can answer that question more broadly.

DM: How often have you spoken to him since the election?

HARRIET HARMAN: I have spoken to him and been in contact with him before he went on holiday and when he came back but obviously he is having a bit of time before the House gets back.  

DM: So he is hands off, completely hands off in terms of expressing anything to you about process or selecting the new leader?

HARRIET HARMAN: Well I have talked to him about a number of things but obviously the responsibility is now down to me, the Chief Whip Rosie Winterton and the Shadow Cabinet team to take things forward, to learn the lessons, to select a new leader, to be prepared to looking at all the uncomfortable truths but also to keep the party together and that’s what my task is.

DM: And what about that idea, because we saw during the course of Mr Miliband’s leadership several, well not quite attempts but several close shaves in terms of him continuing as leader at certain times, if you put in a new leader and say right, three years and then we’ll confirm you for a general election, is that an idea you could look at?

HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think what we’re doing is we’re doing the way we elect the leader differently because as I said previously we chose who we felt comfortable with but actually …

DM: But what about reviewing it in three years?

HARRIET HARMAN: Really what you want is to make sure that you’ve got a leader who can really reach out to the public but we’re front loading that into our selection process as to who we choose for our leader so we make sure that they are people who can reach out to the public and we’re doing that at the outset and the rule is there is a possibility of challenging a leader which is if 20% of the parliamentary Labour party want there to be a new leadership election, then that’s what can happen and that’s the existing rule.  

DM: Okay, lastly your thoughts about FIFA, of course you used to shadow the DCMS brief, what can be done about FIFA, what can the UK do about FIFA and Sepp Blatter?

HARRIET HARMAN: I think we can do a lot actually.  We should certainly not just be saying this is all awful and wringing our hands and this is really important.  I think what the Prime Minister should do now, and obviously we would back him on a cross-party basis on this, is that he should call in the sponsors and he should call in the broadcasters because that’s where FIFA get their money from and if the broadcasters, instead of one being played off against the other by FIFA, took a common position about the changes that need to be made so that the organisation was cleaned up, if the sponsors were called in and they took a common position, I think very soon we could get change in FIFA but we can’t just be commentators on the sideline saying this looks dodgy, this looks terrible.  We’ve got to ask our Financial Conduct Authority were any British banks involved in any of these deals, what could they look into?  So there are things that the government could be doing on this and we will back them on it but it’s not good enough just to be saying it’s all awful.  The government has the power to pull people together and actually really get a grip on this.

DM: Some practical advice there, thank you very much indeed.  Acting leader of the Labour party, Harriet Harman, very good to see you.