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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the former Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has apparently been holding talks with pro-EU Conservatives to try to force Theresa May to allow a House of Commons vote on any move to try to exit the European Single Market.  Now it could be the first manoeuvre of many from the party’s former front bench which is rumoured to be creating some form of shadow-Shadow Cabinet it’s been called.  Well it will be of interest to the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a supporter of course of Jeremy Corbyn, Rebecca Long-Bailey, who joins me now and a very good morning to you.  So the reshuffle, it didn’t really come across as conciliatory within the party.  You’ll be aware of course of the comments from the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, John Cryer, how do you read what Mr Corbyn has done?

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well we have to organise an effective opposition.  Parliament starts on Monday and we need to make sure we are in the best position possible to organise against the Conservative party and hold them to account effectively and that’s why we’ve reorganised and shuffled the Cabinet.  Now in terms of the Shadow Cabinet elections, those talks are ongoing to my knowledge and they will continue next week so that’s not off the table, it is certainly something that is being considered by the PLP and the leadership and it will be discussed properly in due course.

DM: Okay, so that might happen.  What about this idea of some form of shadow-Shadow Cabinet taking place with senior figures in the party who aren’t on the front bench taking different policy decisions and tabling different motions without running them past the leader?

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well I haven’t had any confirmation that that’s actually occurring and we’ll find out more on Monday but I’d be surprised, most of the MP that I’ve been speaking to from across the board just want to get on with things now.  Their communities are suffering, everybody is really uncertain about the effect of Brexit especially in those communities that feel left behind that you’ve discussed earlier in the programme and we need certainty and to do that we have to organise and rally around the leader of the party who was elected by a large mandate of the Labour party membership only a few weeks ago.  

DM: But the leader is important isn’t it?  I listened with a great deal of interest, what was it, ten days’ or so ago, to your speech to the Labour party conference and you admitted within it that the party at the moment has got dire opinion poll ratings and part of that is down to Jeremy Corbyn isn’t it?  He’s got dire ratings and Alan Johnson the former Chancellor said just the other day Jeremy Corbyn is not up to the job.

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: I don’t think I ever mentioned in my speech about dire opinion poll ratings, my speech was about rebuilding our economy and investing in our future.  

DM: You’d better check the transcript then, that’s what I read.  

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well certainly I spoke about the disadvantage in deprived communities that felt left behind and that was displayed in the EU referendum vote where people were angry, they were angry there were areas that had been under-invested in, areas like mine in Salford which has suffered from decades of industrial decline and they felt that subsequent governments hadn’t invested in their future and had left them behind so we need to have a radical and bold strategy for the economy to rebuild these communities and provide industry and well paid jobs there.

DM: So tell me what you want, what the Labour party want – let’s get this clear – from Brexit.  First of all you accept that it’s going to happen, that there can be no second referendum?

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: I think the people of Britain have spoken and we have to respect their decision.  We now have to forge ahead and try and get the best deal possible out of this and make sure that we rebuild our economy in whatever the future holds for us so that we’re a world leader.

DM: Do we need to stay, does the UK need to stay in the single market?

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: That’s certainly one of our red lines. I think Theresa May has cast a lot of ambiguity over that in her speech to the Conservative party conference and I call on her to provide more certainty.  We need to know what her red lines are, what she’s going to be negotiating for and we need to know what her Plan B is if she doesn’t get these markets and the banking system and firms across the country are having terrible uncertainty, they don’t know what’s going to happen next.  They need to plan for the future, they won’t make investments in our communities up and down the country unless they know what’s going to happen in the next five to ten years so they need to know what the Plan A is and what the Plan B is.

DM: Right, so that’s a red line, the single market.  What about controls then on migration from within the European Union?  Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t really seem to think that that is an issue.

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: I think you … He doesn’t think it’s not an issue, I think you need to take a pragmatic approach to immigration.  What I do worry about is that the Conservative party in taking their stance on immigration in the recent party conference are simply fanning the flames of xenophobia when they should be looking at the issues that are caused by immigration such as the undercutting of wages for people working in Britain and making sure that unscrupulous employees are dealt with effectively.

DM: But you wouldn’t put any formal controls on it, it is this immigration mitigation fund that Jeremy Corbyn was talking about, helping out those communities that are affected.

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Certainly you need to look at the different types of immigration.  You’ve got economic immigration where people come to work in British industry and I’m sure some points will be raised by the Chamber of Commerce when we speak to them next but firms are currently quite concerned about the list of foreign workers initiative that Theresa May put forward last week because there are a lot of firms that rely on foreign labour, completely sensible and decent employers who pay decent wages, that can’t get British workers to do the jobs, so that needs to be looked at quite carefully.  We also need to look at unscrupulous employers that are undercutting British workers and then thirdly, we need to look at our approach in relation to asylum seekers and refugees and understand that areas that do see an influx of people from asylum regions receive adequate funding because the Migration Impact Fund has been cut, that’s why Jeremy has been talking about bringing it back so areas that are affected, that do have pressure on their public services, get the funds to match.

DM: Okay, let me ask you then about parliamentary sovereignty and the move towards Brexit and you’ve described in part the kind of Brexit the Labour party would like to see.  You’re not in government and you certainly won’t be until Brexit takes place, unless something else happens, so you need alliances with other parties including perhaps parts of the Conservative party.  Do you think that strategy that your former leader, Ed Miliband, seems to have been exploring of talking to remain Tories is the right one?

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: I think the whole Brexit issue is a cross-party issue and I think we find a lot of common ground with people from all parties in the House of Commons and we need to unify in the House of Commons essentially to get the best deal for the people of Britain.  We can’t take partisan approaches on this, we simply have to get the best deal.

DM: And lastly I wanted to ask you about another thing that I hope was in your conference speech, I’m sure I heard it, you want to crack down on tax avoidance of course. Can I ask you, do you think that the England and Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney is sending out the right signals being involved in a film scheme that seems to have been doing that kind of thing?

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: I think the problem that we’ve got with tax avoidance and this was illustrated in a review that the Labour party currently carried out into HMRC is that there’s a lot of tax avoidance practices that take place that aren’t illegal, they are deemed to be normal practices and what we need to do is to have a clampdown on tax avoidance laws overall so that we do have legal teeth to crack down on them.  People know when they are crossing the red lines, what’s right and what isn’t wrong but at the core of all this, and this was part of John McDonnell’s speech as well, is that the most patriotic thing British companies and the people of Britain can do is to pay your taxes.  We all have to pay our fair share and we all want to pull together and make the best future for our country and we can only do that when we’re all paying what we should be paying.

DM: So do you think Mr Rooney, and many others it must be said, have crossed that red line you describe?

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well I’m sure Mr Rooney has received advice from his tax advisors and accountants and that’s one issue of the tax avoidance industry.  There’s a whole industry geared up to try and find ways around paying certain taxes in terms of providing offshore bank accounts, complicated tax avoidance structure and as I said, none of them are illegal, they are loopholes which need to be closed …

DM: Okay, we’re out of time, thank you very much, very good to talk to you.

REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: … and that’s why as I said …Okay, thank you.

DM: Shadow Chief Secretary there.