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SOPHY RIDGE: First we start with the Labour party who let’s be honest will be keen to put 2016 behind them – failed leadership challenges, votes of no confidence and the worst opinion polls the party has suffered in opposition since modern polling began.  Well last year the Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, tried to broker a deal that would lead to Jeremy Corbyn stepping down but when I went to meet him in his West Bromwich East constituency, he struck a rather different tone.
The Deputy Leader of the Labour party, Shadow Culture Secretary and, apart from Jeremy Corbyn, the man with the biggest mandate from Labour members, Tom Watson took me to his favourite West Bromwich caff where he goes for breakfast before constituency surgeries.  He’s under no illusion 2017 could be a difficult year.

TOM WATSON: There’s a golden rule in politics that no matter how bad it gets, do not be under the illusion that it can’t get any worse.  There’s also a golden rule for politicians who are tempted to make predictions – they’re always wrong.  Who would have said at the start of 2016 that David Cameron would have to stand down as Prime Minister, the Britain would be leaving the European Union and Theresa May would be Prime Minister, dare I say that Jeremy Corbyn  would also be facing a second leadership election?  So we face uncertain times and I think what requires here is for political parties to show strong leadership, to give direction to the country and be very honest about the problems they face as a political group to try and deal with some of the terrible global problems that are facing the British people.  

SR: Is the challenge thing for Labour, we were talking about strong leadership, Len McCluskey has given Jeremy Corbyn until 2019 to start improving things in the polls, Diane Abbott has given him until next year, what’s your timetable?


TOM WATSON: I think it’s absolutely wrong to try and put a timetable on Jeremy’s leadership, particularly as he is now got a second mandate from the members. I’m very clear that I gave a [??] account on when Jeremy was challenged in a no-confidence vote, I thought it would be very difficult for him to lead our political party after that vote but he thought different.  He went to the membership who gave him a second mandate and it’s now for all MPs to respect that mandate.  He will lead us into a general election, it will be his manifesto and whether you are Len McCluskey or Diane Abbott, they should respect that and make sure he leaves the party unencumbered by those kind of false tests.

SR: So it sounds as though you are pretty clear that Jeremy Corbyn will lead the party into the 2020 general election.

TOM WATSON: I’m very clear about it.

SR: There was an interesting report out recently from the Fabian Society that’s saying that Labour is on course to win fewer than 200 seats, the worst performance since the 1930s.  Is it time now to consider doing a deal with some other left-wing parties?

TOM WATSON: I think that is a council of despair if we do that.  Effectively what you are saying if you go down that route is you are saying we accept that the policies we’ve got are not acceptable to the electorate so we are trying to build a wider coalition.  It’s not ambitious enough and never works.  What we’ve actually got to do is make sure we’ve got an exciting manifesto, that we try and capture the future, try and capture people’s imagination about what Britain could be like post-Brexit, how we can make that country fair again and make sure it is not just this sort of limited view of benefit from economic growth and that requires a strong Labour party so I don’t buy into this strategy at all that we do a deal with the SNP and the Greens.  

SR: Do you think those conversations are going on then?

TOM WATSON: They go on all the time, actually they went on with Tony Blair, they went on with Gordon Brown and on the left of the Labour party that debate is taking place. I’m not going to have anything to do with that, I just think it’s a ridiculous notion.

SR: The polls of course are pretty problematic for Labour, some of them have you as many as 14 points behind the Conservatives, now is the time for you all to be in the trenches together.  When was the last time you spoke to Jeremy Corbyn?

TOM WATSON: By text, yesterday.  We talked about the death of the art critic John Berger and then just before Christmas I wished him happy Christmas and he texted me to wish me happy New Year but we actually talk on the phone and text nearly every day and I see him at the Shadow Cabinet on a Tuesday, I see him at PMQs on a Wednesday.

SR: So you do feel listened to because that wasn’t the case with many Shadow Cabinet members previously said that they didn’t feel that they were being listened to by the Leader’s Office.

TOM WATSON: Well I’m in a unique position that when I think my voice should be heard I’ve got ways of getting it out there.  There were teething problems with the way Jeremy’s team work and I don’t have a great relationship with some of his team members, that’s probably on record but with Jeremy himself we enjoy a very strong relationship.  One of my responsibilities is to represent the tradition in the Labour party, it is not his natural tradition, to make sure that their voices are heard and I’ll be doing that in 2017.  

SR: There are some wider issues with Labour that aren’t to do with Jeremy Corbyn because sometimes I think it’s quite easy to blame Jeremy Corbyn for some of the issues but actually if you look at the centrist MPs there’s been a bit of a vacuum of ideas hasn’t there?  What’s the big vision?  No one seems excited by what Jeremy Corbyn is proposing.

TOM WATSON: I think in the latter years of Labour in government politicians always say how do you renew, how do you renew in government and we found that very difficult and what I realised was is what it actually usually means is that the politicians are usually so exhausted after being in government for so long they’ve not read enough, they’ve not engaged enough, they’ve not listened to their voters enough and actually we’ve now had six years to do that and what I see in the parliamentary Labour party is a cauldron of ideas.  If you look at some of the new people who came in in 2015, Steve Reed who has got an organisation called Labour Together which is looking at what the centre left in politics has to do to win again, when you look at Rachel Reeves who is carrying on the mantle that Jo Cox left, she’s about to launch a loneliness commission – there are a million and a half people in this country who are over 70 and say that they either live in total loneliness or mainly loneliness.

SR: All this sounds very good but they are quite small aren’t they?  When you consider the existential crisis that Labour is in now which is nothing to do with the leadership, it’s because voters in places like West Bromwich want very different things to voters in Islington, what’s the solution to that?  Is the broad church of Labour over?

TOM WATSON: Well look, a political party is the sum of the parts and what I see in my parliamentary party are very talented people sparking new ideas all the time.  Now obviously it’s for the leadership to condense that into messages that can be used on the doorstep and to me it is about how do we make sure people are economically secure, their jobs give them a future and are reliable and they can afford to live in their own homes or rent their own homes and their kids can have a brighter future.  Now there are too many people in West Bromwich and in Islington actually who can no longer get on the housing ladder because they are priced out of owning their own home, they can lay roots in the community, feel that they are maybe qualified in low paid jobs, don’t know how many hours they are going to work the following week because they are on zero hours contracts and don’t have any permanence in trying to build their families and live their lives.  It’s for all of us to address that, that’s the challenge that Theresa May has got and Jeremy Corbyn has got and I think the political parties that can find remedies to those problems are the ones that are going to be successful at the next election.

SR: Immigration of course is one of the big fault lines dividing the country, also dividing Labour supporters and voters.  What is your party’s policy on immigration because I’ll be honest, I’m not actually clear, members of the Shadow Cabinet seems to be saying quite different things?

TOM WATSON: I think you’ve got a fair point on that and it centres around this debate around the free movement of labour which is one of the treaties we’re signed up to currently in the EU and in my view, if you talk to people in West Bromwich high street they will tell you that is the reason they voted to leave the European Union in very large numbers in this area and I think for the Labour party, what we can’t support is the status quo.

SR: So what’s the policy then?

TOM WATSON: Well so for me what part of the settlement that has to come out of Brexit is …

SR: Not just for you, I’m trying to get to grips of what is Labour’s policy on immigration.

TOM WATSON: Well Labour is looking at, we don’t know what is going to come out of the Brexit settlement so the key issue of free movement of Labour …

SR: So you don’t really know what the policy on immigration is at the moment?

TOM WATSON: We don’t know what the government’s position is.

SR: She said that immigration is a red line to be fair, Theresa May.

TOM WATSON: Yes, we know we’re going to come out of the free movement of labour treaty and that will form a basis of our negotiations on Brexit but what the future looks like after that Theresa May won’t be able to tell you.  Now I want to be able to say that this country will have control over its own borders, that we’ll be able to count the number of people in and count the number of people out, make sure that people have convincing fair solutions so people’s genuine concerns about immigration are addressed, that is one of the challenges that Labour will have in its manifesto whenever that election comes and if we don’t address that issue then Labour won’t win that election, I’m very clear about that.  But let Theresa May tell us what’s going to come after Brexit so that we can try and work out the future is.

SR: So I’m clear what your view is on immigration, I’m still not clear on the party’s position.

TOM WATSON: Look, that’s the party’s position, let’s be clear we want a fair immigration system.  It’s unfair of you to ask me what Labour’s notional position is when we don’t even know what Theresa May’s negotiating position is, that’s on free movement.  The future is very uncertain as we said at the start of the interview, let’s see what Theresa May comes up with.

SR: Talking about Theresa May, what do you make of her Brexit negotiation strategy so far?

TOM WATSON: Well firstly I had a degree of sympathy with her when that civil servant resigned this week, I thought a civil servant who writes his own policy manifesto when writing his resignation letter clearly wasn’t acting as a proper civil servant but what he did highlight was the fact that they really don’t have a negotiating plan.  It seems to me that we’re going back, we’re creating more uncertainty for businesses, more uncertainty for workers and unless you rapidly reassure the country that she actually knows what she’s doing in this area then I think we’re in for a very difficult 2017.

SR: Do you think she does know what she’s doing?

TOM WATSON: I think she’s troubled and I think she has … I don’t think she actually knows what a negotiating plan is, I think she has difficulty recognising the differences between Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox and until she can solve their internal disputes she is never going to be able to convince the country she’s got a plan and that is very, very bad for the future of jobs in this country.