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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has tried to calm escalating tensions within the Labour party saying he is ready to reach out to his opponents but the Labour leader has warned he will stand as a candidate in any leadership challenge to him.  In the last seven days almost all of his front bench team have quit with growing calls for him to stand down.  Well the former Shadow Health Secretary, Heidi Alexander, was the first to leave of her own accord this time last week, she’s with me now.  It seems a long time ago, a very good morning you.  On this issue of reaching out, have you seen any evidence of that?  Have you had any contact since you left with Mr Corbyn and his office?

HEIDI ALEXANDER: I did speak to Jeremy last Sunday but what I think has happened this week is that we’ve seen that there is widespread and deep dissatisfaction with Jeremy’s leadership both within the parliamentary Labour party and I believe that sense of dissatisfaction is also growing within the Labour party as a whole.  It was a very difficult decision for me last week to step down from my role, it was a job that I had grown to love and when I took on that role I was determined to try and make it work but I guess for me the question was that I had started to really ask myself some fundamental questions about Jeremy’s capacity to reach out and to appeal to a broad section of the British electorate, about his capacity to develop the answers that the country needs and …

DM: He isn’t reaching out to his own MPs.  I mean it is extraordinary what we are hearing, maybe you can tell us more about it, that he is almost a prisoner of his inner circle, that they are somehow keeping him from meeting even with his Deputy, Tom Watson and that Tom Watson allegedly jabbed his finger in his face.  Do you get a sense, and did you see that while you were in your position, that there is a coterie, there is a clique around him who obviously want to keep him there and he’s the guy who allows them to express their political views?

HEIDI ALEXANDER: Well on that, I saw those reports as well about his private office trying to keep the Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, away from meeting him on a one to one basis.  I have always seen a very good working relationship between Tom and Jeremy and I think we really need to reflect upon what this says about the situation.  Jeremy Corbyn is currently leader of the Labour party, he presumably aspires to be the Prime Minister, how can it possibly be right that people in his private office are saying we don’t trust him to have a private meeting with his Deputy when there has been a very good relationship there?  So I do think there were problems in the way that the operation worked.  We have good people in the Leader’s office leave quite quickly, I often found Jeremy often deferred to John McDonnell in terms of decisions which stymied decision making.  Some of the time they couldn’t organise the basics and it left me feeling, well how would you organise an election campaign and how would you run a country?  I had a choice last week, Dermot, I either continued to live a lie and pretend that I was happy about all of these things or I said what I thought and I was honest.

DM: But while you were in post didn’t they cut you out of key meetings?  Key meetings of the NHS?   

HEIDI ALEXANDER: Yes, I did have one experience certainly where John McDonnell organised a meeting with NHS campaigners and the only reason that I found out about that meeting was because one of the attendees said to me, oh are you coming next week?  And I knew nothing about it.  His office then asked that group to establish an advisory group and again that wasn’t copied in to me and I just don’t think that is the right way to run an opposition.   

DM: But you must have been thinking this and people are perhaps not explicitly saying it but if they are running a party within a party, the bigger side of it – and we saw it in that vote of no confidence of 170 plus MPs, can’t you just walk away from Jeremy Corbyn now?  You’ve got plenty of MPs there who can form Progressive Labour or whatever you want to call yourselves.

HEIDI ALEXANDER: We need somebody now who can unite the party and take us forward to being in government and that person is not Jeremy Corbyn.  I would urge him to do the right thing for his party, for his legacy and for the people that we are meant to represent and the right thing is to resign.

DM: How close are you, how strained is it, how close are you to splitting?  

HEIDI ALEXANDER: Well I think we’re not there at the moment by any stretch of the imagination.  The right thing for Jeremy to do is to step down with dignity and honour.  I think Jeremy over the last nine months has done some really important things for the Labour party, he’s galvanised a new generation of young members, he’s changed the terms of the debate about public spending and cuts pointing out that short term cuts today have long term consequences but I think his legacy is at risk if he continues to cling on to a leadership which is clearly untenable and  is damaging the party and will be damaging for the country.

DM: And you would obviously tell him not to stand again as well if he did stand down?

HEIDI ALEXANDER: Well I think that Jeremy needs to reflect upon his position and think very carefully himself about the widespread dissatisfaction that there is both within the Parliamentary Labour party but also out there amongst members who are concerned about his ability to lead us going forward.  

DM: Heidi Alexander, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you.