ANY QUOTES MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So Labour’s bruising defeat last week has left the party reeling, it’s been all but wiped out in Scotland with UKIP biting at its heels in seats across England and just days into the leadership race one of the favourites to win has already pulled out so where did it and is it all going wrong and where does the party go from here?  I’m joined now by the Labour Peer and Shadow Infrastructure Minister, Lord Adonis, a very good morning to you.  You lost your leader, your Shadow Chancellor, your Shadow Foreign Secretary, your leader in Scotland, one of the front runners for the leadership campaign – it couldn’t get much worse than this.  

LORD ADONIS:  Well we need an open debate in the party now about where we move forward because it was clearly a very serious defeat last Thursday.  I think it would have been a good idea to have had an open primary, to have allowed all the people to vote on the leadership candidates.  

DM: All the people or just Labour members?

LORD ADONIS:  No, no, no, the public at large as happened in France when the French socialists chose their leader.  It’s very important in this leadership election that we speak to the public, the people who didn’t vote for us and not just to ourselves who of course are the true believers.  We only polled six votes for every seven that the Conservatives polled so there is a big issue in southern England as my colleague Dan Jarvis has put it, in southern England outside London there are more people who have walked on the moon than there are Labour MPs.  We have got to be very open and honest about the fact that we have got a big, big problem in large parts of southern England, we’ve got a crisis in Scotland and we need an open debate and in particular we need a leader who can appeal to those very large parts of the electorate which clearly were turned off by us last week.

DM: Interesting, you are using that word, that crisis word and John Cruddas has been in the papers today saying it openly, you accept that?  He’s saying it, the party, the biggest crisis for its entire history.  

LORD ADONIS:  Well every election defeat is a crisis for a party because of course you have obviously failed to achieve your objective and we have four or five year terms in this country so it’s a long time before we have the opportunity to come back.  There will be contests that matter, we’ve got the Scottish elections next year so it’s very important we get the leadership sorted out there.  We’ve also got the London Mayoral election next May.  Now the Mayor of London is the public official voted by more voters in Western Europe than anyone besides the President of France so that is a really important election, it’s been Conservative for the last two terms, it was Labour before that.  We are highly competitive, we actually did well in the general election in London and we need to be really geared up for that so whilst it’s important that we have a big internal debate, we mustn’t take our eyes off the fact that there are some early elections which will be vital in their own right but also important for building the party nationally.

DM: Your prescription for primaries would of course deal outright with the issue of people saying there is still too much influence or potential influence by the unions in their Labour leadership and indeed its policies.  You must have listened to Jim Murphy, the former Scottish leader or continuing Scottish leader for the time being of Labour, his resignation, of Len McClusky of Unite.  He said if he was trying to pick the winner in a one horse race he couldn’t do it.

LORD ADONIS:  We are only going to come back if we are the popular choice and not the choice of small groups of people who control votes and block votes inside the party.  

DM: The unions?

LORD ADONIS: We’ve got to be the popular choice and that’s what Jim was saying and it is completely right.  That’s why I think an open primary with everyone able to vote would have been the right thing and although the National Executive Committee has taken a decision just to limit the electorate, I think it is worth thinking about an open primary still and it is very important that the candidates behave as if there was one because let’s be frank, unless we can appeal to the country it doesn’t matter how many Labour party members are converted to the cause of the new leader, we’ll go down to defeat the next time too.  

DM: But it’s on the front page today, the unions could still have a major influence on the current system, unless it is changed, the current system of electing the next Labour leader through the one man, one vote, how they sign up their members and there are scores of Labour MPs, newly elected and those returning, who are paid for and helped with their funding by the unions.

LORD ADONIS: It’s great that individual union members are becoming members of the party or registered supporters, that’s great and so they will make up their own mind as to how they vote, not at the behest of their leaders.  We want as large an electorate as possible determining the next leader of the Labour party and the next leader in Scotland, the more the better and the more open the debate the better but when you are in a critical situation as we are at the moment, you can’t deal with it by half measures, we need bold measures and we are going to need bold reforms in terms of our policies in due course to make ourselves much more open to the aspirations of the middle classes in particular in England and across the United Kingdom.   But also when it comes to choosing our leader I think we need to be as open as we possibly can so that the largest number of supporters of the party, so that isn’t seen as being a narrow choice at Westminster or by those in control, those inside the party, but is seen as the popular choice.  
DM: Okay Lord Adonis, will you stay with us because I want to ask you a couple more questions but we have got Tim Farron coming to us from Kendal.  

I want to return to Lord Adonis now who is with me in the studio discussing the Labour leadership issue and there are questions I was putting there to Tim Farron which of course apply in a different form though to the Labour party, particularly when it comes to Labour voters that went to UKP and then as you identified, you’ve got the problems in Scotland, England and Wales.  

LORD ADONIS:  There is no question that the voters thought that we’d got it wrong, they made a judgement and we need now to listen to them and pitch our tent in a position that’s much better for them and that in the north there were big losses to UKIP, of course the biggest in Scotland and in the south where we haemorrhaged votes.  

DM: In this day and age it is about getting the leader right and who can speak with many voices to all the people in the United Kingdom.

LORD ADONIS: I think it’s partly that but also let’s be clear what the polls were showing before.  Where we were all misled was that the headline polls showed that the two parties were neck and neck but we were not trusted with the economy, let’s be absolutely clear about that, polls consistently showed that people weren’t prepared to trust us with their money when it came to tax and spend and the critical issue of the stewardship of the national finances we weren’t trusted there and that clearly has been a big problem for us since we left office in 2010.    

DM: So you think the next leader has to address that and quash it and deal with it head on?  

LORD ADONIS:  Absolutely, it needs to be absolutely clear that we did get it wrong when we were last in office, of course there was a global financial crisis but we weren’t well enough prepared for it because we had let spending rise too high and we’ve got to gain the public’s trust that this won’t happen again on our watch.  

DM: Well I haven’t heard any of the current crop say that so presumably none of them will get your vote.  

LORD ADONIS: There are big challenges in this leadership election and as I say it is very important we speak to the public at large.  Too much of our campaign was focused on narrow groups, housing is a massive issue for people but the biggest issue facing the public on housing is how the next generation can become buyers, how you get first time buyers back on the property ladder again not just because there are large numbers who want to buy now, young people, couples setting up families and so on but because of course all families want to see their children get on the property ladder …

DM: We need to build lots of houses and bring the prices down so they can afford them.  

LORD ADONIS:  We do need to do that and that needs to be the policy that we need to be addressing but we also need to be making it easier for first time buyers when it comes to mortgages.  At the end we had a stamp duty rebate which we announced very late in the campaign for first time buyers, that should have been up front.  It’s a good example of getting the public’s priorities at the centre of our programme.  We spent a lot of time talking about mansion taxes and bedroom taxes which affect small numbers at the top and at the bottom and it’s very important that we have a policy that’s fair but our main message needs to be to the mainstream majority and their concerns and that’s going to be the big challenge for …

DM: I mentioned the current candidates and they look like being, well the front runners are there with Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham and Chuka Umunna having pulled out, I mean Andy Burnham has been on the television screens today saying he is the change candidate.  Well he was there when all that spending was going on that you describe.  

LORD ADONIS: Look, the election was only a week ago, we need a period where the candidates set out their stall, start addressing the reasons why they think we lost and what they are going to do be able to do to see that we win next time for Labour voters but also for the public at large because I think the opinion polls are going to be quite important in this.  Whilst Labour members and supporters …

DM: We might not be able to believe them.  

LORD ADONIS: Well let’s hope they have a bit more scientific techniques this time but whilst it’s Labour members and supporters who will take the decision, they need to be very mindful of what the public at large is saying and that’s why I am glad we’ve got a longer campaign, we’re not going to actually vote until August and announce the result until September so there are a few months.  

DM: So would you like to see other candidates emerge or some of the lesser known ones develop?

LORD ADONIS: I’m glad that there are a wide range of candidates who are coming forward and that’s great.  We now need a period for them to set out their stall and set it out, as I say, not just to Labour party members but to the public and I think Labour party members need to be very mindful of what public attitudes are.

DM: Does the public have to remember the legacy and what it owes Tony Blair?

LORD ADONIS: Tony Blair was the most successful leader in our history and what Tony said, which I am very mindful of is when you have a traditional left wing campaign and a traditional right wing campaign, you get the traditional result and that’s what happened last time and we can’t allow it to happen again.

DM: Lord Adonis, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you.