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SOPHY RIDGE: A self-proclaimed government in waiting is in opposition with 262 seats and almost 13 million votes. Jeremy Corbyn has been praised for his reaction to the Grenfell Tower fire, pictured comforting victims in volunteer shelters. Well, could his leadership of the Labour party finally end seven years of the Conservative’s grip on Downing Street? His second in command, the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell joins us now in the studio, hello, thanks for being with us. It feels like we need to talk of course first about the appalling disaster that struck in Grenfell Tower, families trapped, stuck in those flats, it’s pretty clear that they’ve been failed. How do you rate the government’s response?

JOHN McDONNELL: We need to keep party politics out of this so trying to come at this objectively, I was the secretary of the Fire Brigades Union parliamentary group, I set it up actually about 15 years ago and I have been listening to what the fire fighters have been saying, what the FBU have been saying and the response has been poor to say the least, both in terms of the overall organisation – I don't think the government recognised the scale of this disaster, usually when you have a disaster on this scale you put a government team in immediately to make sure everything is organised effectively and very quickly as well, you make sure you are listening to the residents on the ground and you are empathising with them of course but listening to them and you make sure as well that the overall system that’s in place is dealing with some of the immediate measures and one of those immediate measures is obviously the rehousing of the people. It just looks at times from what we’ve seen a catastrophic failure but it’s important that we learn the lessons from that now.

SR: You of course have high rises in your own constituency, how are people feeling?

JOHN McDONNELL: I think most MPs who have got individual tower blocks, I’ve got half a dozen in my constituency, have been contacting their local authorities and checking them out. Now I did that after the south London fire and we were given a whole range of reassurances. I’m still on the issue of sprinklers though, I raised the issue of sprinklers in parliament on behalf of the FBU actually way back in 2004 and we have consistently so what I said yesterday and appealed to Philip Hammond really to say look, whatever it costs we need to get them installed, whatever measures that need to be undertaken let the local authorities now lift the constraints that they’re under of their borrowing powers, to enable that work to happen. I don't think people feel reassured at the moment, they want much more reassurance that the professional advice has been listened and do you know the best professional advice? FBU members, the firefighters who have to deal with these crises.

SR: I’m interested to talk now about Labour’s reaction to it because Jeremy Corbyn has called for properties in Kensington and Chelsea to be requisitioned. What we are talking about here are some of the most expensive properties in London, this would cost hundreds of millions of pounds so I put it to you that you’re not making serious policy proposals here, you are playing to the crowd.

JOHN McDONNELL: No, what’s happened is – and we’ve been saying this for a long period of time and organisations like Shelter as well, we are trying to point out the obscenity of the housing crisis that we’ve got, the overcrowding, the poor housing that we’ve got particularly in our capital city and at the same time as that you’ve got property standing empty for long periods of time. In addition to that, in London we’re blighted by the fact that we have overseas developers buying properties up and actually leaving them empty on many occasions.

SR: But these are different issues here, you are talking about the wider housing issues, you are not talking about what Jeremy Corbyn called for which is the immediate requisitioning of properties.

JOHN McDONNELL: Sophy, the are linked, they are linked. People would not be living in high rise blocks, unsafe conditions and some of them very poor quality, if we didn’t have the housing crisis and part of that housing crisis is as a result of allowing housing particularly in London for use for speculative gain rather than for housing need. Now what Jeremy said is if we’ve got a crisis like that, we need urgent measures and if there are empty properties nearby they should be used and councils have the power to do that already.

SR: Through compulsory purchase but that would take weeks, it wouldn’t help would it because it would be too late.

JOHN McDONNELL: Well you can use the existing law extremely fast but it does point to the …

SR: By law the owners must be notified, given 21 days to raise objections, then there are another 14 days after that …

JOHN McDONNELL: Any court in emergency measures, as we saw in wartime periods as well, you can requisition properties. You will need powers to do it, we’ve got those powers. If necessary I would have convened parliament immediately to if necessary push new legislation through within 24 hours if that was necessary. We cannot be in a situation where you have people who have lost their homes and are struggling to find alternative accommodation …

SR: No one would disagree with that but the question is …

JOHN McDONNELL: … and then you have properties standing empty.

SR: No one would disagree of course with the need to rehouse people as quickly as possible but my point is more about whether requisitioning property is the best way to do it when for example hotel rooms could be cheaper, perhaps not as popular but cheaper.

JOHN McDONNELL: Yes, but if you look at what happened in some of the hotel rooms as well, people didn’t feel comfortable in those. We saw one example of the council moving one gentlemen into accommodation for older people which was completely in appropriate and unsuitable for him. I’ll tell you, I would have done whatever necessary, whatever necessary to house those families what they’d been through and if that needed requisitioning of local properties, yes if necessary because they have suffered so much.

SR: Okay, now you are very keen of course as a party to criticise Theresa May for not doing enough. This week there has been criticism of Theresa May for not getting out quickly enough to meet the victims so I am wondering if you could help me out on something else. The local MP for Kensington, Emma Dent Coad the Labour MP, I’ve been trying to speak to her all week, unsuccessfully. Perhaps it’s something personal, who knows, but what the cynics would perhaps suggest is that she doesn’t want to do so much media because we understand that she was a member of the council’s Housing Scrutiny Committee when it was looking at the redevelopment of Grenfell Tower.

JOHN McDONNELL: My understanding is as a local councillor she has an excellent record of raising these housing issues repeatedly and over this last week, what has she been doing? She has been working on the ground with local residents and also liaising with the local emergency services, doing the job you’d expect of a local MP and I’m sorry if she hasn’t found time to be interviewed by yourself but I think she has just been getting on with the job.

SR: So you are not worried at all about the fact that she has been named in a report saying that she did scrutinise that redevelopment work on Grenfell Tower?

JOHN McDONNELL: I understand what she has done as a local councillor is raise issues on behalf of her local constituents repeatedly and ensured that they try to be again addressed by the local council. Remember this is a Conservative council that’s in control here, there will be an exploration of their role which I have to say over the last week has not been particularly successful.

SR: Perhaps some people would think that was a slight understatement. Now moving to …

JOHN McDONNELL: I’m trying to keep party politics out of this. We need to explore what has happened over the last week but there are some genuine criticisms, not coming from me but from the residents themselves. The most important thing now is to tackle their needs but also as you alluded to earlier, making sure that all those other people who live in tower blocks are assured that they are safe and that measures are put in place immediately to enable them to be safe. I’ll tell you one of the things which I’ve been banging on about now for over a decade is the sprinkler system, just listen to the firefighters.

SR: Before each show I ask people on social media for their own questions that they would like to put to any of our guests, their response to you as usual was quite high, quite overwhelming. I’ll just read out a couple of questions because they all seem to along a similar theme: ask John McDonnell why he is asking for mass demonstrations to overthrow a democratically elected government; why does John McDonnell want people to march against a democratic result; ask John McDonnell why he is asking for people to rise up against the government, he’s a disgrace and you shouldn’t give him air time. What’s your response?

JOHN McDONNELL: Okay, well I’m glad you’ve given me air time. This arises from a debate at the Bakers Union Conference last Monday at which a resolution came forward calling upon the TUC to organise a demonstration in the normal way opposing the government’s policies and actually opposing this government. Now I supported this resolution and I said let’s get as many people out there as possible, let’s get a million people out there because I am opposed to this government’s policies and opposed to what looks like a secret deal with the DUP but more importantly I am opposed to the role out of further austerity measures. Now we have in this country, thank goodness, a long tradition of peaceful democratic protest and demonstrations, that’s what the unions were calling for and I wholeheartedly support it. Now I think people have the right to exercise that democratic right to protest and to demonstrate, to tell the government where they think it’s going wrong. It has to be peaceful, it’s not about rising up or anything like that. Only a few weeks ago, I think it was about eight weeks ago, I was on a demonstration in central London on the NHS and I was surrounded by who? Nurses, doctors and others. I think we put the NHS at the centre of a general election debate and I think we may have even pushed other parties back from further cuts and privatisation.

SR: Let’s specifically look at what you did say because I’m quite keen to talk about the specific thing that you called for rather than protest in general. You said we need people doing everything they can ensure the election comes as early as possible, what we need now is every union mobilised, get out on the streets, we want a million on the streets of London and that is to call for another election. Now most people, some people would look at that and say you are not accepting a democratic election result.

JOHN McDONNELL: Well let’s listen to that election result. The result was that no party won, no party won. The Conservatives got the largest number of seats and they are trying to do a deal with the DUP. I oppose that deal and I believe it would be better to have another general election. Now that might come sooner rather than later.

SR: Even though Brexit talks are supposed to be starting on Monday, tomorrow?

JOHN McDONNELL: Well I’m afraid the problem with the Brexit talks is that we have a government in disarray. I do not know which particular line of approach is being made by the government because they are in complete division so I think actually removing this government and allowing a Labour government, if necessary a minority government to come into place and would give us clear direction on all of this.

SR: Do you think Jeremy Corbyn could be Prime Minister by the end of the year then?

JOHN McDONNELL: I think at the moment the way the current government is so unstable – in the newspapers today I am told that some Tory MPs, quite a large number of them, have told Theresa May she’s got ten days. Mr Johnson is out there on manoeuvres we’re told in terms of his challenge for the leadership. They are just in absolute disarray and would be better, I think it would be better them standing down and letting Labour take their place.

SR: Now finally I do want to talk to you about Brexit because these talks are kicking off tomorrow, we’ve heard from your Shadow Brexit Secretary earlier on this morning. I’m still not quite clear on Labour’s position. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, has been clear this morning to say that under the Conservative government they want to see the UK out of the single market and the customs union so what is Labour’s position on the single market.

JOHN McDONNELL: It’s interesting, I listened to Philip Hammond alongside you and what he was also saying is that he wants to have the access to the single market and he seems to want as well the same relationship with regards to the customs union …

SR: But what I’m trying to get to is do you want to be a member of the single market or is that off the table for Labour?

JOHN McDONNELL: Okay, the situation is this, Kier Starmer explained it very clearly this morning, once you leave the EU formally you are outside the single market, that’s the reality of it but what we are trying to get is tariff-free access to the single market.

SR: So that’s not membership, membership is off the table is it?

JOHN McDONNELL: What we’re saying, and I don’t care how we get it in terms of a structure as long as 1) we get access to the single market tariff-free and that means also we are not constrained by the existing rules of the single market and that’s obviously freedom of movement. Now again the structures become immaterial to achieve the objectives.

SR: So just trying to read between the lines of what you’re saying, you’re saying you don’t want to be restrained by free movement so that means no membership of the single market under a Labour government?

JOHN McDONNELL: Again it means whatever mechanism it takes to get tariff-free access to a single market, unconstrained by some of the existing rules, that’s the structure we will go for. Now …

SR: It’s been pretty clear that you can’t have no free movement of people and membership of the single market.

JOHN McDONNELL: We’ll see what comes out of the negotiations, that’s why it is important I think that we have clarity in the negotiations and I don't think we are getting that from government because actually what Philip Hammond is saying seems to be somewhat different from what Mr Johnson is saying and somewhat different from what Mr Davis is saying and that seems to change not by the day but by the hour.

SR: Okay, some would say Labour’s position is slightly foggy as well but we’ll leave that at that point.

JOHN McDONNELL: Well interesting enough isn’t it because we’ve argued consistently that what is the priority in these negotiations? Economy and jobs. Actually we are even shifting that agenda now where some of the Conservatives are having to address that agenda.

SR: Okay, John McDonnell, thank you very much for coming on the show.

JOHN McDONNELL: Thanks a lot.