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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has warned today that Labour must be a big tent which appeals to everyone and not just its activists.  Mr Khan’s victory in London was a high point in an otherwise pretty poor showing for Labour last week, not least in Scotland as we’ve just been discussing.  I am joined now by the Shadow Housing Secretary, Labour’s John Healey, a very good morning to you Mr Healey.  I know you sat there listening to Mr Robertson, I couldn’t see out  of the corner of my eye if you were nodding along or not but he said he feels that the SNP has to step into the void left by Labour in the House of Commons sometimes because he says Jeremy Corbyn is pretty useless.

JOHN HEALEY: Well I think the SNP need to concentrate on running Scotland and they have been making some serious mistakes north of the border and part of the task for the new Labour group in the Scottish parliament is to be an effective opposition to put them on the spot.  A lot of the opposition that’s led at the moment in parliament in Westminster is being led by us, it’s on schools, it’s on tax credits, it’s on disability benefits, it’s on the crisis in housing.  So Labour is doing our job now in opposition, in parliament and we have got a huge task ahead …

DM: But as Mr Robertson, and I don’t want to revisit that interview but as he pointed out, it is others within the Labour party making the headway, the leader is not leading.  

JOHN HEALEY: Well he was very interesting when you asked him about Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minsters Questions, he said that Corbyn doesn’t ask the question of the day or the question of the week and in a sense what Jeremy Corbyn does ask are the things that are mattering to ordinary people – what’s happening to the schools, what’s happening to the NHS, what’s happening to housing, what’s happening to jobs and wages.  It is one of the things I think he brought to the Labour leadership election which was that sense of bringing people interested in politics for the first time and a bit of fresh thinking.  Now the task for him and for all of us is to translate that now beyond the Labour party so that we can win back first of all a hearing and then support from the millions of people that left us at the last election 12 months ago.

DM: Is Mr Corbyn the man to do that?  

JOHN HEALEY: Well he’s certainly got a chance and every party leader, every new party leader has to prove themselves.  It is only eight months since he was elected but for my money that mandate to lead must also be a mission to win and it is that single minded job now, our sole purpose must be to win back a hearing and then the support of the millions of people in Scotland and across swathes of southern and middle England and Wales that deserted us and weren’t convinced by us in 2015.

DM: You agree with Sadiq Khan then, he was talking about the big tent and he was saying we need to talk to people who might have voted Conservative and in particular convince them that the economy is safe in our hands again.  Now you couldn’t even do that under Ed Miliband.

JOHN HEALEY: Well Sadiq Khan is right, it’s what I’ve been doing in leading the opposition to the government’s plans for housing and the Housing Bill.  I’ve been talking to Tory council leaders, to house builders, to Tory MPs and peers and it’s that coalition of wider interest beyond the Labour party that’s told against the government and Sadiq Khan shows us the way in London.  He built a broad coalition of support beyond the Labour base, he gave people some hope that things can change on the things that matter most to them.  So in London, as in many other parts, housing, cost of transport, backing business so they create jobs for Londoners, local policing, air pollution – these are the things that matter.

DM: He sounds like your kind of leader then.  Four years in the job as London Mayor, Labour loses the next election and there you have it, a leader who has all the right policies.  

JOHN HEALEY: He is absolutely my type of leader for London and the really important significance is not just that Sadiq Khan saw off a shameful campaign from the Tories, London shunned that divisive politics.  No, the really important thing is that he has a big majority, a big mandate and a big job to show what Labour in power can do that is different from the Tory government.  

DM: Okay but he has distanced himself almost instantly from Jeremy Corbyn and Jeremy Corbyn went off to Bristol while Sadiq Khan had his service at Southwark Cathedral.  

JOHN HEALEY: Do you know, I really don’t care about that choreography of news management, I care that we now have a London Labour Mayor who …

DM: But the significance of that …

JOHN HEALEY: No, the real significance of this last week has been Sadiq Khan elected as a mayor for all Londoners and he will show what it means to tackle the housing crisis in London, when the government won’t be doing that.  He will show what it means to try and keep fares low for people who …  

DM: But will Jeremy Corbyn and his team watch what he does and copy that at a national level?  

JOHN HEALEY: Absolutely right, broaden the base beyond our Labour supporters, we have to do that, you win in that way and you do that as Sadiq Khan has shown by talking about the things that really matter and …

DM: But that’s the tail wagging the dog isn’t it?  He has to learn from his apprentice.  Jeremy Corbyn is the leader.  

JOHN HEALEY: This is a Labour politician with a personal mandate of more than a million voters in London leading the biggest capital city in Europe.  This is a really important opportunity …  

DM: But if Jeremy Corbyn and his team don’t learn those lessons what should happen?

JOHN HEALEY: Well we will learn the lessons, we have to learn the lessons because that’s the only way we can tackle the huge task ahead of us and where Sadiq Khan and the other three Labour Mayors that we won overwhelmingly last week and the other Labour led councils really matter, often in seats and areas where we don’t have a Labour MP for 50 or a hundred miles, now these Labour led councils are really important, holding those last week.  They helped to give people a Labour voice when there are no Labour MPs as I say for 50 or 100 miles and they also can help to show what Labour can do in power.  

DM: But are you likely to get Labour MPs within 50 miles of those seats?  Jeremy Corbyn and his team are left wing, they are socialists, they make no bones about it and look what happened to left-wing policies in Scotland, Kezia Dugdale went to the electorate to the left of the SNP it’s said and the result was disaster.  

JOHN HEALEY: I think what people want most is some sense and hope that things can change and then a belief that the politicians making those arguments are capable of delivering that change so on housing for instance, that’s why I’ve shown that we could be building 100,000 new council and housing association homes each year, more than three times what the government is doing.  It’s why I have commissioned the first independent report on home ownership by the Chief Executive of Taylor Wimpey to try and deal with the freefall of home ownership that is there under the Conservatives for young people and it’s why tomorrow in the House of Commons we are going to try to argue on the Housing Bill to get the government to build a broad range of new low cost homes for home ownership and not just their totally unaffordable new starter homes.

DM: But just on this issue of where the bulk of seats come from for the UK parliament from England, you’ve seen the statistics haven’t you?  As it stands now Labour has to get a 13% swing, a 13% lead in England to win a general election.  It’s not possible is it at the moment with the current leader and the current policies?

JOHN HEALEY: It is possible but it’s a huge task.  I’ve done that analysis as well, we do, without a resurgence of Labour in Scotland we will have to win a swing of more than 10% from the Conservatives and we’ll have to take back, from the Tories largely, seats across swathes of middle England, southern England, Wales and I hope Scotland as well and that includes seats that we haven’t held and won for some time.  Places like Harlow, like Stevenage, even like Canterbury, Northampton, Nuneaton, Loughborough and that’s why …

DM: And we know who your leader was then and who the Prime Minister was.  Does Jeremy Corbyn look like a Tony Blair, does he sound like one?  

JOHN HEALEY: In a sense this is not just a job for Jeremy Corbyn, this is a task for the whole party.  We are in this together, we have to be in this together and that’s got to be our single minded focus over the next four years and it’s our local government base that will be the base on which we build our political recovery and that’s the significance of the results in the elections this last week.

DM: Just one last question, and briefly if you will Mr Healey, on this issue of housing and second homes, St Ives is looking like it might ban, in effect ban second home ownership.  Do you think this is something that could happen in other areas of the country?

JOHN HEALEY: Well they won’t be able to ban second home ownership but if they want to make sure that second home owners pay towards the services and replacement of new homes in that area that should be a strong local decision they are able to take.  

DM: Okay Mr Healey, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed.  The Shadow Housing Minister there.