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SOPHY RIDGE: The death of Fidel Castro has sparked a variety of responses from across the world.  The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, called him a huge figure and praised his heroism whilst President Elect Donald Trump condemned his legacy as one of firing squads and unimaginable suffering.  The Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said that he counts Lenin and Trotsky as amongst his heroes and he joins me now from West London, hello to you.  Jeremy Corbyn described Castro as a huge figure with many achievements, is it appropriate to describe a man in those terms when we know that he didn’t allow free and fair elections, that he locked up gay men and that he imprisoned his political opponents?

JOHN McDONNELL: Yes, there are very many flaws in the Cuban regime and many criticisms that many people made including ourselves but for my generation, if you look back on the immense achievement of the Cuban revolution, this was a country that was controlled by effectively a kleptocrat, where there were extremes of wealth and poverty, no education, no health service and the land controlled by landlords whilst peasants literally starved and so a revolution took place and redistributed wealth and the land, introduced an education service and a health service which was second to none in the world in some instances and it also supported freedom struggles in South Africa, supported the ANC against apartheid and other struggles in Latin America so it was a beacon of hope for many people but yes, of course there were flaws and you cannot but criticise those but again in the face of the blockades and opposition from the US, the achievements of the Cuban revolution have to be admired, particularly with regard to education, health and redistribution of wealth.  

SR: You talk about the achievements in education and it may be true that the regime helped people to read but then it told people what they were and weren’t allowed to read.  If it was as great as you say, why didn’t they hold free elections, it would have been a landslide wouldn’t it?

JOHN McDONNELL: I think what’s interesting, with the blockade lifted and Obama, his new relationship with Cuba as well, I think there is, you can see a path towards elections, you can see a path towards a greater liberalisation in terms of literally other basic freedoms and you can see how the foundations of the revolution can actually be built upon.  I think looking back overall, history will judge that this was a force for good but yes, you’ve got to be honest about the criticisms of the regime as well.

SR: Are you effectively giving Fidel Castro a free pass because he is left wing?  If a right wing politician had acted in this way particularly with respect to people like homosexuals, you would have been first out of the blocks to criticise them.

JOHN McDONNELL: Well we were, we were.  Of course we are not giving a free pass on issues like that, of course not but you have to judge overall and you have got to praise where there are, well as I say immense breakthroughs particularly in regard to have they redistributed wealth and the land, the education system, the health system, that was inspirational but of course there are flaws and of course that has to be criticised but as I say, I think looking at it overall, overall I think history will judge it was a force for good.

SR: Your views are coming across very strongly there, Mr McDonnell.  Let’s move on and talk about the autumn statement, it was a bit of an open goal for you wasn’t it?  Borrowing ballooning, another missed deficit target and yet you couldn’t even get your own MPs to listen to you, they were buried in their mobile phones.  What went wrong?

JOHN McDONNELL: Yes, I know, I’ve made this comment elsewhere.  Within the House of Commons chamber now, and the Speaker has raised this too, during debates what you will see happening increasingly is MPs from all political parties, on their mobile phones either receiving messages or updating themselves on the commentary that’s going on outside or Tweeting out themselves.  So I don’t make any judgement on that, I think the general public will have to make their judgement on that but it seems to be a new, well a new practice over the last couple of years that’s happened in parliament.  It’s interesting you know, it isn’t just parliament, it’s other walks of life as well where that new technology is used to have almost a continuous dialogue yourself with people outside of the main debating chamber or even the meeting that you’re in.  As I say, I think it’s up to the public to decide but interestingly enough on the autumn statement I think we did get our messages across very clearly, in fact you’ve just quoted them back to us.  We said that the government on its own metrics had failed on every target, on debt and deficit and the welfare cap and on all the other metrics about how the economy was going in terms of wages growth and growth and business investment, it was failing on those as well and I think that message has come across loud and clear.  Also I think there is a real disillusionment with what happened on Wednesday as well, all those promises from the government about helping the just about managing, well all those promises were basically broken.  We are finding out that people could lose up to a couple of thousand pounds a year now, even the so-called living wage increase was not what was promised and people are losing money as a result of that. So I think we did get the message across on all the government’s metrics and I think increasingly now what we’re finding is that the government’s autumn statement proposals are being exposed and promises being broken. You’ve raised one as well, which was hidden in the commentary around the autumn statement, which was about the triple lock on pensions.  Pensioners now who has a result, I believe as a result of the Labour government that was in place, actually have been lifted largely out of poverty, many of them still struggle but we’ve improved the lot of pensioners in our society dramatically, particularly under a Labour government but now the triple lock is threatened and as a result of that what we are seeing is pensioners fearful about their futures.

SR: You talk about public being of the opinion that matters to you but actually if you look at some of the polls, things are pretty gloomy on your own ratings.  Sky Data say that 36% of people trust Philip Hammond to run the economy compared to just 7% saying you, 7%, that’s pretty low.

JOHN McDONNELL: Yes, it is but look back on the poll, the continuing poll since 2007/08 and literally that’s been the case all the way through and that’s because, I think it was because Labour was in power during the period of the crash.  They didn’t cause the crash – that’s the narrative that was developed and it was wrong.  The deficit before the crash didn’t cause the crash, it was the crash that caused the deficit.  So all the way through there has been that polling lead on economic credibility for the Conservatives who took over after us in 2010 but again, even back to 1997 before Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were elected, again they still weren’t ahead of the Tories in terms of economic credibility and that’s unfortunately the position of opposition parties.  I think actually though people don’t trust polls much these days but I think underneath all of this is an increasing disillusionment with the promises of this government and increasingly a growing demand for change.

SR: I’m not sure you can put it all down to historical issues, 20% of Labour voters who voted for Labour 2015 still say that they trust you but that’s quite a large number who don’t say that they trust you with managing the economy.  What are you going to do to try and sort out that trust?  What are the really difficult decisions that you are prepared to take?

JOHN McDONNELL: Well what we’re trying to do now is to raise the whole level of economic debate beyond what it’s been up till now and get  to the real truth of the matter.  The reason that we’ve got problems at the moment facing Brexit, and it came in the figures that were revealed last week, there’s £120 billion deficit that we are facing at this rate, what does that come from?  First of all less than half is coming from threat of Brexit, the rest is coming from the mismanagement of the economy since 2010.  How has that been mismanaged?  Well first of all an unfair taxation system where there have been tax cuts for the wealthy and unfortunately cuts in terms of benefits and public services for the rest of us.  In addition to that I think really a failure to tackle tax evasion and tax avoidance so a key issue for us is that first of all you get a fair taxation system.  Second, once you’ve got a fair taxation system you can start investing in your economy.  Now last Wednesday we heard from the Chancellor that there will be some investment but nothing on the scale that’s needed and we’ve had six wasted years, that’s why we’re so unprepared for Brexit and ill-equipped.  What we need is a fair taxation system, then use those resources to actually grow the economy by investment and as a result of growing the economy you can then afford the public services that you need.

SR: Let’s talk very specifically about policy because you’ve been very clear that Labour needs to be a government in waiting with policies ready to be taken off the shelf in the event of a general election, which there is a chance of course next year that there could be a general election.  So what exactly is Labour’s policy on the biggest issue of all, on Brexit?  Are you in favour of staying in the single market, being in the customs union or being outside so that you can strike free trade deals on your own?

JOHN McDONNELL: Okay, well we set out red lines, I did a speech a week after the referendum so we were very clear then.  The red lines are these, let me run through them with you.  First of all, access to the single market, that’s what we want.

SR: You want to be in the single market, is that right?  Are you saying you want to be in the single market?

JOHN McDONNELL: We want access to the single market.  Ideally we’d like membership but I don't think we can go that far in terms of what political support there is so access to the single market as a minimum.  We want also to ensure that we get access to our financial services because they are a key sector for our economy.  We want also to preserve the rights of UK citizens in the EU as well as EU citizens here, we also want to protect the regulations that we have now from Europe both in terms of employment and environmental protection and then finally, I want to secure our continuing involvement in the European Investment Bank because we get a good deal at the European Investment Bank particularly in terms of investment in our regions.  Now they are the red lines we set out within a week of the referendum and we are saying to the government on a number of these issues, we can work – in the interests of our country we can work in a bipartisan way, putting country above party, but we need to know where they’re going.  What is their objective, what is their strategy and that hasn’t been forthcoming.  

SR: Do you think that Donald Trump’s election is good news for Jeremy Corbyn because it shows that people want to go for anti-establishment candidates or is it actually bad news because even when people don’t go for business as usual, it indicates that they are going for candidates on the right rather than those on the left?

JOHN McDONNELL: It’s interesting, I think the Trump election does demonstrate that people are absolutely frustrated with the existing system and do want change but the type of change that Trump has put forward in his campaign statements is certainly not the route that any, well that any progressive or modern country would want to go down that path and I think what we need to do in this country is recognise that actually people don’t feel they are getting a fair deal, they don’t believe the government is acting in their interests at the moment, that they do feel that there is an elite establishment particularly in Westminster that is completely ignoring them and what they want now is a radically fairer and more democratic and more equal society and I think Jeremy Corbyn offers that hope.  

SR: John McDonnell, thank you.