Labour leadership: Long-Bailey accuses Starmer of lacking policy during Andrew Neil interviews - as it happened

And here are the main points from the Rebecca Long-Bailey interview.

• Rebecca Long-Bailey accused Keir Starmer of not having clear policies. Asked about the policy differences between her and him, she replied:

I don’t know what Keir’s policy ideas are, if I’m honest. I know he says he wants to adopt the same values that the Labour party currently has, but what does that mean in practice?

Asked if she trusted him to stick to Jermey Corbyn’s legacy, she replied:

I think we need to see more detail, we need to see more meat on the bone in terms of what Keir believes in.

• She said that in principle she thought it would be a good idea for the Labour membership to have the chance to reconfirm her as leader in another ballot before the general election. But it might not be practical, she said. Asked if she supported mandatory reselection for party leaders, she said:

I don’t think that’s a bad idea. I think it would be quite disruptive potentially to do that in the months before a general election. But I certainly like your way of thinking.

• She accepted that, if she lost the next general election as leader, there would be another leadership contest. She said:

When we have the general election, after that if we don’t win the general election, then we’ll have another leadership election.

There was no leadership election after Corbyn lost the 2017 general election (although he had been challenged the year before.)

• She said it was wrong to describe her as continuity Corbynism, because there was no such thing as Corbynism. She said:

There’s no such thing as Corbynism and this is one of the things that always irks me. There is socialism and there are principles in the Labour party. And if I continue them, then I’m proud to do that. But I’m certainly not a continuation of Jeremy Corbyn or indeed any other member of the shadow cabinet or previous leader.

• She said, when she gave Corbyn 10 out of 10 in an interview, she was passing judgment on him as a person, not as a leader. She refused to give him marks out of 10 as a leader.

• She insisted she did have what it took to be prime minister. When this was put to her, she said:

I think there’s two elements to a leader. The first is being electable and resonating with communities and speaking the language of aspiration. The second is actually having the policies to improve their lives. And you need to have those two things, one doesn’t come without the other.

• She rejected claims that at a meeting of Labour’s national executive committee in July 2018 she sided with those opposed to the party adopting in full the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance definition of antisemitism. She was in favour of that, and assumed it would be adopted, she said. When Andrew Neil told her that “people who were in the room have told us that you stayed silent and you went along with those who opposed it”, she said that there was no vote taken at the meeting and that she could not remember if she spoke on the subject. But she said she fully supported adoption of the definition.

That’s all from me for tonight.

Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s story about the two interviews.

Thanks for the comments.

Here are the main points from the Keir Starmer interview.

• Starmer said that the £100,000 donation to his campaign from the lawyer Robert Latham, that was declared yesterday, was the largest single donation he has received. His opponents have been suggesting that he has been concealing his wealthy backers because he has not yet disclosed all the people who have given money. Asked why he was not willing to name all his donors now, Starmer said he was following the procedure proposed by the party, and that donations had to be vetted before they were disclosed to the parliamentary authorities and published.

• Starmer implicitly accepted that he was not an extrovert, charismatic leader, but he claimed he could be effective and inspiring. When Andrew Neil put it to him that Labour needed someone “with fire in their belly” as leader, Starmer replied:

It needs someone who can unite our party and bring it together, it needs someone who can effectively take on Boris Johnson at the despatch box, and it needs someone unrelentingly focused on winning that general election.

And there are different ways to inspire people. You can inspire people so they want to sit at your feet, listening to your next word; that’s not me. Or you can inspire people by building a team of people who want to come with you on a journey and change their party and their country ... That’s the way I want to inspire people.

• Starmer did not deny a claim that he privately thought Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was awful. A recent BuzzFeed profile quoted the Labour peer Charlie Falconer as saying:

I think [Starmer’s] been appalled by the awfulness of the current leadership — not so much on policy but on the nastiness and the way they did things.

Starmer accepted that he knew Falconer well. He said he challenged Corbyn in shadow cabinet. When he was asked directly if he was appalled by the awfulness of Corbyn, he replied:

We obviously got it very wrong in that general election.

• He defended his decision not to criticise Corbyn in the leadership campaign, saying he wanted to unite the party and be positive. When it was put to him that he was frightened of saying anything negative about Corbyn, he denied it. He went on:

I’ve been running a very positive campaign, actually not just not criticising Jeremy, but not criticising the other candidates, because I profoundly believe that if our party can’t pull together and unify, then we’re going to carry on losing.

• He accepted that he had not said anything in the campaign unacceptable to the Corbynite left. When this was put to him, he said:

Well, I’m not particularly interested in finding things that they find palatable or unpalatable. I’m setting out my positive case, I’m saying, we need to unite the party, we need to be a very effective opposition against Boris Johnson, and we need to unrelentingly focus on winning that next general election.

• He confirmed that his pledges to renationalise water, energy, rail and the Royal Mail would be in Labour’s next manifesto - but he also described them as indicating the “direction of travel”, implying a degree of flexibility. They were “baseline indicators of where we’re going”, he said. He went on:

Lots of things are going to change between now and 2024. It’s not unlikely that we’ll be leaving the EU without a deal. We don’t know what the state of the economy will be. Manufacturing could well may take a hit, so we’re going to have to craft that 2024 manifesto looking forward. My pledges are an indication to our members as to what I think is important, the direction of travel and what we will build on.

• He suggested voters in the “red wall” northern seats that Labour lost were not as opposed to EU free movement as people assumed. Describing conversations with voters in those seats, he said:

We got to the nitty-gritty of it, which is, should people in this country be able to go and work in Europe, should those in Europe be able to come to work here; most people thought that was a good idea. When we got to, should families be able to live together, broadly speaking, most people agreed with that.

People in those communities were more interested in infrastructure, jobs and decentralisation, he said.

• He defended his decision to give more credibility to people making sexual abuse allegations when he was director of public prosecutions. He said:

Let me then explain how those guidelines came about. We were actually dealing with some of the grooming gangs up in the North West, and it came to my attention that some of those that we were now going to charge with very serious offences had previously been arrested but not charged. So I asked to see the file, because the question was, well if there’s offences this serious, why weren’t they charged.

When I looked into the file I saw that we were dealing there with girls, 13, 14, 15, who had been passed around between men in the most appalling circumstances. I looked into the file and what I saw was good faith decisions made by the police and prosecutors, using assumptions about credibility. So they were asking themselves, did this person go straight to the police and tell them what had happened; and the reality was, none of these victims had ...

So the assumptions that were being made in the criminal justice system were assumptions that were there for the model victim that doesn’t [exist] … So it absolutely needed to be changing.

When it was put to him that Paul Gambaccini had accused him of ruining lives, by approving sexual abuse prosecutions that resulted in acquittals, Starmer said the Gambaccini case never crossed his desk.

I will post a summary of the Long-Bailey interview next.

Q: You believe in open selections. Do you support that for the party leader?

Long-Bailey says she does not know how practical it would be for the party to have a leadership election just before a general election. But she says in principle she can see advantages to the idea.

Q: What would be different about you?

Long-Bailey says they need to understand why Labour lost. The first was Brexit. The manifesto should have been fine-tuned. Antisemitism was a problem. Disunity was a problem. And Labour did not have a message that could compete with “get Brexit done”.

And that’s it. The interviews are over.

I’ll post reaction and a summary soon.

Q: For Labour to meet its carbon targets, it would need to replace every gas biler in six years. How much would that cost?

Long-Bailey says the party would be starting now.

Q: Do you know how much that would cost?

Long-Bailey says the manifesto commitment was to cut most carbon emissions by 2030. She says gas is more complicated.

Q: You have not costed it.

We have, says Long-Bailey. She says Neil can read the costings tonight if he wants.

Q: It is a menu without prices.

It is not, she says. But she says it is hard to know what the situation would be for 2024.

Q: You did not call out antisemitism when someone made an antisemitic comment at a recent meeting.

Neil is referring to this.

Long-Bailey says she thought she had addressed this in her answer.

Q: You did not call it out.

Long-Bailey accepts that she should have done.

Q: Should someone like that be allowed in the party?

Long-Bailey says someone like that needs to go through education.

Q: Starmer and Emily Thornberry have said you did not speak up against the party’s handling of antisemitism at shadow cabinet.

Long-Bailey says that is not correct. She did speak up.

Q: We have been told that you did not call for the party to adopt the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance definition of antisemitism when the national executive committee discussed it.

Long-Bailey says she did support that, and that it was assumed it would go through.

Q: What policy differences are there between you and Keir Starmer?

Long-Bailey says she is not sure. She says:

I don’t know what Keir’s policy ideas are, if I’m honest. I know he says he wants to adopt the same values that the Labour party currently has, but what does that mean in practice?

She says she knows about his principles, but not about his policies. She says people need to see “more meat on the bone” from Starmer.

• Long-Bailey says Starmer needs to show more ‘meat on the bone’ on policy because she does not know what he stands for.

Q: You said when you were a candidate that you worked for the NHS as a lawyer. But you didn’t.

Long-Bailey says she was working for a firm that was working for the NHS.

Q: Did you work on PFI contracts?

Long-Bailey says her firm worked on those. She says such was the nature of the NHS, that could not be avoided. The firm worked on property.

She says what she learnt about PFI made her realise how wrong it was.

Q: But you said that your work at the time was defending the NHS?

She says as an MP she has been trying to stop PFI contracts.

Q: Michael Ashcroft is a Tory peer, but he is a respected pollster. He has been polling on what people think of Labour. He found 55% of people would be more likely to vote for it if it were centrist, but only 8% of people wanted it to be more leftwing.

Long-Bailey repeats the point about Labour’s policies being popular.

Q: What is the evidence that if Labour moved to the centre, it would never win again?

Long-Bailey says the Tories are trying to set a trap for Labour.

Q: But you won elections from the centre.

And the vote share declines, says Long-Bailey.

Q: That always happens after a government has been in power.

Long-Bailey says Labour lost touch with its voters.

Q: You are continuity Corbynism.

Long-Bailey says there is no such thing as Corbynism. There is socialism.

Q: You want the same policies.

Long-Bailey says many of the policies were popular.

Too many were put through at once.

There were days when the election when there were three or four a day.

Q: So you are talking about just having a better wrapper, and not changing policy.

Long-Bailey says the principles don’t change.

Neil says he is talking about policy, not principles.

Q: You gave Jeremy Corbyn 10 out of 10 for his leadership. What would you have given him if he won?

Long-Bailey says that was a cheeky interview. She was commenting on Corbyn as a person.

Q: What would you give him for leadership?

Long-Bailey says she won’t give him marks It’s “not Top Trumps”, she says.

Neil says she did give him marks in the 10 out of 10 interview.

Rebecca Long-Bailey is being interviewed now.

Q: The UK is facing a crisis. What is the biggest crisis you have handled?

Long-Bailey says she drew up Labour’s policies to address climate change.

Neil says that was making policy, not handling a crisis. He tries the question again. But Long-Bailey sticks to the same answer.

The programme is now showing an extract from the Lisa Nandy interview in January (written up by the Guardian here).

Q: Labour has never recovered from a defeat this big. Doesn’t Labour need a leader with charisma, with fire in their belly, who can inspire people. That is not you, is it?

Starmer says there are different ways of inspiring people. He is not a leader who will say ‘sit at my feet’. But he will unite people behind a vision that can lead to victory.

And that’s it. The interview is over.