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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, even Jeremy Corbyn’s staunchest supporters would admit that this week has been a challenging one.  He’s faced criticism from within his own party on his line on things like shoot to kill and terrorists and Syrian air strikes and then there was that very public spat between the UK Chair of Labour’s defence review and the Shadow Defence Minister, Kevan Jones.  Well that man is of course Ken Livingstone who joins me now along with the Times columnist Jenni Russell and from Barrow in Furness I am also joined by the Labour MP, John Woodcock, a very good morning to you all.  I have got to start with you, Ken Livingstone, as one of Mr Corbyn’s staunchest supporters and as I said in my introduction there, even you can’t say it’s been a good week for Mr Corbyn has it?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: It’s not been a good week but since Jeremy became leader we’ve had unremitting media hostility and a lot of backbench MPs undermining him but what’s remarkable is our poll rating is actually slightly up on the election.  You would have assumed by now it would have collapsed.  When I was leader of the GLC and I had exactly this sort of attack, my poll rating went down to 18%.  

DM: Well we’ll leave the polls aside but one of his problems is you, putting you in charge of that defence review and particularly the Trident and nuclear aspects of it, it’s been like putting the fox in charge of the hen coop.  

KEN LIVINGSTONE: I’m not in charge, I’m jointly Chairing, she’s pro and I’m anti but we’ve got to look at the facts.  Here we’ve got a government that is about to make 20 billion of cuts over the next five years, that’s exactly the cost of these new nuclear submarines so if you say to the British people do you want a few more nuclear submarines or do you want to keep 22,000 police on our streets, I think that’s much safer.  If we are going to stop terrorist attacks like they’ve seen in Paris you need increased police numbers, increased activity at home.  They are not going to be deterred by nuclear submarines.  

DM: John Woodcock, what do you think about Mr Corbyn, how much trouble is he in and how much is Ken Livingstone part of those problems?  

JOHN WOODCOCK: Well I think we need to find a calmer and more sensible way to discuss things because this is a really important time for the country.  We’ve got as the Chancellor made clear this morning, we are going to have a vote on extending military intervention, we’ve got the strategic defence and security review coming up tomorrow, on Wednesday we have the comprehensive spending review and it is really important that across the party we can discuss those issues and there will be differences of views.  Jeremy of course understands that because he is a an MP who really prided himself on having a different view from the leadership over 30 years as a back bencher but it is really important that within our party we can discuss those views without bandying around accusations of undermining and of attempted plots or whatever it is people are saying because that isn’t the case at all.  We just want to be able to talk about this as a serious and a sensible opposition and in that there will be a broad range of views and I think it is right that they are heard.  

DM: Well we’ll hear more of your broad range of views in a moment or two but that is an important point isn’t it, Ken Livingstone, being shouted down – not necessarily face to face but on social media, the attacks on anyone within the party which is meant to be a broad church, the attacks on anyone within the part who seems to question the Corbyn orthodoxy.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: This is where I think there is a problem.  A lot of MPs were so devastated, they couldn’t come to terms with the fact that the party decisively rejected the old New Labour Blair agenda and no one anticipated that when we started the leadership election and they’ve got to come to terms with that.  The party membership are not going to remove Jeremy Corbyn and there isn’t going to be another leadership election, Jeremy will take us into the next election.  We can win that by actually having a coherent economic strategy and that I think is crucial.  That’s why we didn’t win the one this year.  

DM: What about what Mr Woodcock was talking about there, any criticism or any disagreement with Jeremy Corbyn is seen as an attack, I mean your spat with Kevan Jones, wasn’t that an example of you being one of Mr Corbyn’s attack dogs?  We all know the history, Kevan Jones has some history of mental issues and you referred to him in a most derogatory way.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: I had no idea he had mental issues.  

DM: Have you apologised to him?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: You saw the apology I gave.

DM: Personally, face to face?

KEN LIVINGSTON: I’ve never met him and that’s what I found so annoying. I’d woken up that morning with heart pain, chest pain and I was trying to sort out whether to go to A&E or if I went to my GP and in the middle of that I get this phone call from journalists saying this Labour MP says you’re not fit to do this job and I blew up, I overreacted.  

DM: A lot of sympathy I’m sure for your health issues there but the fact is that you react in the same way, you are cut from the same political cloth and you go studs up, if you are attacked, you go studs up.  You didn’t think it through, you didn’t know about his history of mental issues, you just went straight in didn’t you?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: But what annoyed me was here was a Labour MP who didn’t bother to pick up the phone to ask did I have any background in military issues and I would have pointed out that for five years as leader of the GLC we were in charge of civil defence, in the event of nuclear war, we had to manage and prepare for that and from the moment we had 9/11 I spent the next four years preparing for the terrorist attack that was to come so I do actually have some understanding of these issues and I think it was completely wrong of him to come out and slag off Jeremy Corbyn for appointing me.  … I completely over-reacted, I was under a bit of pressure at the time in the end it turned out that I wasn’t having a heart problem so we can all get over that now.  

DM: I want to ask John Woodcock that, is that the point that Ken Livingstone, we know his background, he has made no secret of it over many, many decades but that is what you get, the knee-jerk response, you criticise me and we attack you?

JOHN WOODCOCK: Well look, the appointment of Ken Livingstone to co-chair a defence review which is looking at the nuclear deterrent is not the act of a leader that is probably wanting to reach out and unify his party but that’s Jeremy’s choice and if he wants to do that then of course ultimately we are going to have to accept that and work with it but the way in which we will work with it is to make the case for the Labour party’s policy on the nuclear deterrent which was first of all set by Clement Atlee in the 1945 government and was maintained by successive governments and was most recently voted, endorsed again at the Labour party conference in September.  If we are going to have a robust debate about it, okay let’s have it but please let’s not get to a situation where everything which is said in support of Jeremy’s position is a valiant defence of him.  Sometimes when people that have not always show that steadfast loyalty to the Labour party over the last 20 years, anyone putting a different view is in some way undermining him or the enemy within, that is just not how to be a serious opposition and I don't think the public looking, it’s not what the public looking in on us want to see.  

DM: Just a quick point on that John Woodcock, given what you’ve just said, are you prepared for the criticism you are no doubt going to face from some quarters now from within your own party? I don't know what the situation is within your own constituency Labour party but there must be those there that say hey, button your lip.

JOHN WOODCOCK: Well sure and I think if you check social media after this you will see lots of those people but we have a diverse party and we are not an elected dictatorship, it doesn’t mean because someone has won a mandate as leader than all other views are silenced in the party, that’s never been the way in our hundred years as a political party and more than that as a Labour movement, that’s never been the way that we’ve operated and I think Jeremy himself understands that.  I think when he talked about a new politics and a kinder politics I don't think he was envisaging that all different points of view would be rounded upon in quite an aggressive way.  If that is the way then that is what we will put up with but we’re not actually going to stop putting a different point of view just because of the aggressive social media and comments in the press like this.  

DM: Okay Ken, have you hijacked the party?  First of all give me your take  on shoot to kill, where do you stand on the shoot to kill policy, terrorists on the streets of London should be shot dead if they have got guns?

KEN LIVINGSTONE:  I was Mayor of London when we had the tragic shooting of John-Charles de Menezes but apart from that one incident we responded perfectly and were able to capture the second wave of terrorists a fortnight after the bombings and without any loss of life and we don’t have a shoot to kill policy.  The Commissioner of Police came out earlier this week and said we have never had a shoot to kill policy, what we have got is 2000 well trained officers who make a decision, their decision as they face this and that’s what we need.  We don’t want some politicians having a shoot to kill policy, it’s up to the police to make that decision and that’s what Jeremy has always supported.  

DM: I’m sorry we are running out of time but this issue that you’ve hijacked the party, okay maybe a large proportion of Labour members and supporters voted for Jeremy Corbyn but nothing as compared to the number of people who voted for Labour in the general election.  

KEN LIVINGSTONE: We lost the last election, we got it wrong, we didn’t have a coherent economic strategy and that was absolutely undermining and this is what is so depressing about these trivial issues that are popping up as a diversion, we need to focus on the economy, we need to show that we can get an economy which our children have the chance of a decent job and an affordable home.  

DM: Out of time, Ken Livingstone thank you very much indeed and in Barrow in Furness to John Woodcock there and Jenni Russell from the Times, very good to see you all, thank you.