Corbyn v Smith - Leadership Debate - 9pm 14.09.16

CORBYN V SMITH – SKY NEWS – 21.00 – 14.09.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS

FAISAL ISLAM: Good evening and welcome to Corbyn v Smith: The Battle for Labour.  For the next hour we’ll be debating the future of the Labour party with the two men who want to lead it.  Mr Corbyn arrived a short time ago here at Sky’s London headquarters, if the polls are to be believed he holds a commanding lead in his leadership campaign.  His challenger, Owen Smith, is here too and this will be their last official televised Labour hustings with the poll closing a week from today.  Let’s introduce our studio audience, made up of Labour members and voters, supporters of Mr Corbyn, Mr Smith and people who haven’t decided in equal numbers, so let’s give a warm welcome to both the candidates, Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith.  
So just to get the debate underway, let’s put some context around it. This is a battle for the Labour leadership and it is a time of massive constitutional change following the vote to leave the European Union and a snap election is possible so before the audience begin asking their questions, the candidates have a minute each to make their case as to why they’d make the best Prime Minister.  Up first, Mr Corbyn.
JEREMY CORBYN: A year ago I was elected as leader of this party and we’ve wrung some quite important concessions from the government by our campaigning.  We’ve also won by-elections, mayoral and parliamentary by-elections. We’ve grown the Labour party membership turning it into a campaigning organisation for the whole country, our membership is now well over half a million.  During this leadership campaign I’ve been keen to set out a number of our priorities: investment in a growing economy that leaves no one and no community and no one behind; securing high skilled jobs for the next generation; securing our National Health Service and adult social care system; building an education system that works for all; securing our environment; cutting income and wealth inequality; a foreign policy based on peace and justice and human rights.  Now after this leadership election we need to come back together and unite to hold the government to account.  Today we held them to account on their disastrous policies of bringing back the 11+ and increasing division within this country.  I want our party to continue to grow, to hold the government to account but above all, to unite around the idea that we bring all of our communities together so that no one and no community is ever left behind again.  
FAISAL ISLAM:  Thank you Mr Corbyn.  So same point Mr Smith, snap election, could you be Prime Minister?
OWEN SMITH: This is the most important democratic moment we’ve faced in our movement, arguably in the 116 years since we were created by the trade unions and I want to speak in particular tonight to those trade union affiliates, the 200,000 or so of whom will be critical in deciding what happens a week from today.  I’ve been touring the country and talking to them, ordinary working people in workplaces and in homes over the last eight weeks and what they are telling me is that they want a proper Labour party once more.  They want one that is united and they want one that is focused on the bread and butter issues that matter to them: decent quality jobs in the private and the public sectors; proper wages in this country; investment in our public services; a Labour party that understands it has to defend our economy and our society and defend our country.  My message to all of those trade unionists is not enough of you voted last time, not enough of you stepped up and took part in this process.  If you want a Labour party that is back focused on the things that matter to you and your family then you need to get involved and you need to give me your vote because I’m convinced I am the only person on this stage tonight who can unite this party and lead us back to power and deliver what you need for your family and your community.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Thank you Mr Smith.  So we go to our first questioner, Mr Shiraz Khan, where are you?  There we go, thank you.
SHIRAZ KHAN: If you were to be Prime Minister tomorrow would you enact Article 50?
FAISAL ISLAM: The question was if you were to be Prime Minister tomorrow would you enact Article 50?  Owen Smith.
OWEN SMITH: No, I would want to make sure that we had clarity about the terms of the Brexit deal because Theresa May says Brexit mean Brexit, the reality is we don’t know what it means, we don’t know if it means that we have less security for those workers I was talking about a minute ago, we don’t know if it means we will have less money for our public services. I fear that it will mean that, I fear that we were lied to about those extra resources.  I fear that there isn’t a simple answer in terms of our trade deals with Australia and America and with Europe so I want to get to the bottom of what all that looks like before we get into the final stages of leaving the European Union.  I’ve said that we need to make sure that we know what Brexit really means before we take that final step and depart the European Union and that may mean that we need to retest the will of the British people in an extra democratic moment either at a second referendum or at a general election where Labour might be arguing that we should remain within the European Union.  
JEREMY CORBYN: I would first of all build the best possible relations with colleagues in socialist parties and trade unions all across Europe which is what I’m doing at the moment.  Secondly, set down the basic provisions that we want to protect – workers’ rights, working time directive, maternity and paternity leave. Access to European markets is absolutely essential for British industry and the jobs that are dependent on that as is access to the European Investment Bank and also make preparations for the kind of trade deals we want for the future, not the bargain basement of the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership but trade agreements based on a fair deal obviously but also based on human rights and environmental protection.  But we also have to recognise, regrettable as it is, there is a referendum decision that has required parliament to work upon it, therefore I want the best possible close relationship, trading relationship with Europe but recognise the decision of that referendum and work on that as strongly and quickly as we can, in concert with our colleagues across the whole continent.
FAISAL ISLAM: Just to clarify something Mr Corbyn, in the hours after the referendum decision, the real test of your leadership, you declared the following: “The British people have made their decision, we must respect the result and Article 50 has to be invoked now”.  Why did you say that because the process would already be three months done by now if you’d have had your way.
JEREMY CORBYN: Well I said that it has to be invoked, whether that meant now that moment or whether it meant we had to recognise we had to go into Article 50, that is what I said and what I’ve set out is what my ideas are, that we set out the negotiating position that we want with the European Union and with colleague governments and that we negotiate as strongly as we can on that.  We have to recognise the result of the referendum, regrettable as it is, not the one that I wanted.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Just to be clear, Owen Smith, what part of a mandate which is 52/48 on a 72% turnout do you think is unclear?
OWEN SMITH: Well let me first just address briefly, if I may, what Jeremy just said because Jeremy says he wants straight talking honest politics.  Jeremy, I watched that interview, you did say let’s trigger Article 50 now and I think the country saw you say it.  It’s unfortunate that you should now seek to row back on that.  In terms of the mandate, look Britain has voted to leave the European Union, narrowly but that’s clearly the case but the simple point I am making to the British people and on behalf of the British people, is that we voted I think without being in full knowledge of what the facts were. We were told that there was an extra £350 million quid a week for the NHS, that isn’t true. We were told that there was going to a points based system for immigration, we now know that isn’t true either. So let’s get the government to be honest, let’s do what the Labour party is supposed to do, Faisal, and hold them to account.  Make sure Theresa May tells us the truth about what Brexit is going to mean, not pass it off with a slogan that Brexit means Brexit and when we know the truth that Labour, if we are a proper opposition, a loyal opposition, we could put it back to the British people – here’s what the real deal is, do you want to accept it or do you want to reject it.
FAISAL ISLAM: Let’s take a similar question from Cherry.
CHERRY: How many times do you think an election should be re-run if you don’t like the result?
OWEN SMITH: If it is the re-election of a Tory government, every single time is my simple answer, every single time.  We’d run the next election tomorrow if we could in order to make sure we get rid of this awful Tory government we’ve had for the last six years.  I think we need to be clear, we didn’t know what the deal was.  We now face the prospect of potentially ten more years of the Tories and their austerity budgets and the honest thing for the Labour party to do is to really get into the weeds of understanding what Brexit is going to mean and if it means worse terms and conditions, if it means Britain is poorer, if it means your children have a less good outcome than they would have done otherwise, then surely the right thing for Labour to do is to argue to improve people’s livelihoods and if that means staying in the European Union that’s what we should argue.
JEREMY CORBYN: A referendum took place, a decision was delivered, parliament must work with that decision and try and get the best deal we can.
FAISAL ISLAM: From your party, from both of you, we’ve had criticism of the government, of the Conservatives, of Boris Johnson over lack of Brexit planning.  Your plan is to try to avoid Brexit or to persuade the country to think again, Mr Corbyn what’s your Brexit plan?  Do you have an idea on whether we should be in or out of the customs union?
JEREMY CORBYN: I think we have to be part of the market in Europe, in other words access to that market for British manufacturing …
FAISAL ISLAM: In the single market or with access to it?  It’s a different thing.
JEREMY CORBYN: Either the single market or European Economic Area, I would prefer it if it is access to the single market, I think that is the best way of doing things and that is something we should aspire to.
FAISAL ISLAM: The Norway model?
JEREMY CORBYN: We are indeed meeting the Norwegian parties and government next week, Emily Thornberry is travelling to Norway on behalf of the Labour party to represent us in discussions with them as to the arrangements they have and what advice and support they can give us.  We have to build that relationship, we also have to protect the good regulations we’ve achieved through Europe such as working time directive which I mentioned as well as environmental and consumer protection regulations.  What we also have to recognise is that trade in the future will be very different.  At the moment it’s 40 years since Britain negotiated a trade treaty with anybody because it’s always been part of the European Union’s responsibility.  Are we to go into trade treaties with the European Union or separately, these are important issues.
FAISAL ISLAM: You want freedom of movement to be maintained and the perfect trade deal as well, which Jean-Claude Juncker just said no to.
OWEN SMITH: I think the crucial thing at the heart of all this Faisal, is we need to be certain about what all of this is going to look like because you’ve just talked about one of the crucial things, freedom of movement. Theresa May says she wants to see some further constraints on freedom of movement but we don’t know what that’s going to look like so the British public is right now being asked to sleepwalk towards the exit on Europe.  I still believe that the 48 odd percent had the right idea, that we were better off within the European Union.  Now by the time we get either Jeremy or I, to be Prime Minister for Labour, it might be too late, we may well have left the European Union by then but right now, at the point at which we’re debating this, there is a big difference between us which is I fundamentally have always been a pro-European, I’m an internationalist, I’m a collaborator, a co-operator, I’m a socialist and believe we should want socialism for all of the people across Europe. Jeremy, by contrast, is someone who has always wanted not to be in the European Union which is why he was so sanguine about leaving and why he said let’s trigger Article 50 now. That’s a big difference between us and it is at the heart of not just the crisis the Labour party faces right now but the crisis our country faces.
FAISAL ISLAM: There is something very specific that has happened, we’ve had lots of vagueness around Brexit and planning but the Japanese for example issued a 15 page memo talking about their problems with the single market.  What would you say to a Japanese business in the car industry, in pharmaceuticals, what would you say to them?
JEREMY CORBYN: It is obviously crucial to them, particularly if you take the car plants in the north-east and other car plants that trade very heavily with the European Union, they have to have that access to the European market therefore one of the bases of the European negotiations has to be retaining that access, not just for that industry but for many other industries, also retaining the travel arrangements is quite important.  I don’t particularly want us to go down the road of us having to have a hard border between Britain and Europe for people who wish to travel for holidays, for work or anything else and recognise also that two million British people have made their homes in other parts of Europe.  We need to maintain that free movement.
OWEN SMITH: You highlight why this is so important.  Nissan on Sunderland are warning that they may not invest in future, Ford in South Wales have already said they aren’t investing.  I’m touring the country tomorrow, going to Scotland, to Wales, to South Wales talking to steel, defence and energy workers, all of those jobs – potentially half a million jobs or more – are at risk right now and we the Labour party should be speaking to that, we the Labour party should be taking the Tories to task and not doing what we’ve been doing recently which is not talk about it. Jeremy hasn’t mentioned it in the House of Commons in the last three weeks.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Let’s not shout out just yet, thank you very much.  Jane Vernon on the front row has a question, Jane.
JANE VERNON: In June’s referendum many traditional Labour areas voted to leave the EU whilst more supporters within the Greater London area voted to remain.  If elected leader how would you seek to heal this divide and convince people outside the M25 that the party is listening to them?
JEREMY CORBYN: I think that is a very good point if I may say so. The majority of Labour party members voted to remain, the majority of Labour voters across the whole of the UK voted to remain but within that there were massive differences.  My own constituency for example voted over 70% to remain, other constituencies voted the mirror opposite and the vote is a serious one but nevertheless it shows something about areas of Britain that have been totally left behind.  Former mining communities in the Midlands and Yorkshire which have had hardly any investment ever since the end of the miners’ strike and the closing of the coal mines.  Areas that have had the biggest cuts in local authority expenditure, areas that have the lowest wages.  Shirebrook, once a collier, now a Sport Direct warehouse.  The Labour party has got to reach out to every area and every community and I’ve been doing that in this leadership campaign, pointing out the way we want to be, about a decent living wage for everyone across the country; the way we want to invest in infrastructure evenly and fairly across the country; the way we want to invest in housing evenly and fairly across the country so that nobody and no communities are left behind.  We have to reach out to all of those people and say there is no future if we divide, there is no future if all we are doing is blaming minorities and migrants for the problems in our communities.  It is the problem and failure of central government to invest in the poorest and most vulnerable parts of this country that must be addressed and will be addressed by a Labour government.
FAISAL ISLAM: Owen Smith, what’s your response to this idea that Labour was only talking within the M25?
OWEN SMITH: Well I don't think it’s true, the reality is of course that Liverpool, Manchester, Scotland – traditional Labour voting areas – voted to remain within the European Union.  Many parts of this country voted to remain, it was finely balanced, it was 50/50 give or take.  Where Jeremy is right is that one of the underpinning reasons many of those traditional heartland ex-industrial areas voted out is they have felt a sense of loss and decline and lack of investment and a sense of progress and opportunities were being enjoyed in other communities elsewhere and the answer to that, the antidote is a Labour government in order to invest in those communities. That is why I’ve said we need a British New Deal, £200 billion worth of borrowing in order to invest in those parts of Britain that have been languishing for far too long but the biggest message that Jeremy needs to hear is those communities won’t have hope unless they have the expectation of a Labour government and that is why we’re not coming back in Scotland, it’s why under Jeremy we’ve gone from second to third behind the Tories and it’s why two million people across this country who voted Labour at the last election are now contemplating voting Tory at the next general election.  That’s how grave the crisis we’ve got in the country and in Labour and for us to give hope to those communities we have to look once more like a credible competent government able to serve all of those communities and truth is, Jeremy, straightforwardly and honestly, is they are not looking at you and they are not looking at us collectively as Labour right now, as united against the Conservative government.
FAISAL ISLAM: Let’s move on from Europe to a related question from Brian Dayle, Brian.
BRIAN DAYLE: The image of the Labour party, what it stands for and its socialist narrative has been severely damaged over the past year.  What can you say to non-Labour voters to persuade them that you can win the next general election?
OWEN SMITH: Well first of all I would say we will do what is needed in this country which is invest in the public services that we need investment in right across Britain because if you were in a Tory voting shire or a Labour voting industrial heartland you are just as worried about the fact that class sizes are booming, the fact that waiting lists are growing in your local hospital, the fact that so many services have been cut, you are just as worried that you can’t get to see your doctor other than three weeks on Thursday if you hang on the phone for half an hour.  So investment is critical. The other thing is we have got to I think seize back from the Tories those words ambition, aspiration.  How have we ended up as a Labour party with the Tories taking from us those central tenets of Labour?  We’re the ambitious party for Britain, we’re the party that wants every child, every family to be raised up, we’re the party that is aspirational for every community in this country so we need to say that much more clearly and not just be seen as a party only defending the most vulnerable.  Of course we’ll always do that but we need to be ambitious for the entirety of Britain.  Another crucial thing is we have got to get away from the notion that we are somehow anti-business – we are in favour of investment in our businesses, we are in favour of an industrial strategy to build opportunities and jobs in every corner of Britain. Those aren’t dirty words for Labour, they are what we need in order to generate the wealth, to redistribute more equitably across Britain.
FAISAL ISLAM: Your case seems to be that you are more electable than Jeremy Corbyn, what is your evidence for that?
OWEN SMITH: Well the polls for a start.  On all of the polls that we’ve had so far I am consistently viewed as being more likely to be elected a Labour Prime Minister than Jeremy is so that’s one piece of evidence. I think the other thing is that I am someone who has consistently taken on the Tories, on tax credits we won that victory under my leadership, on the WASPI campaign we took it to the Tories, on PIP we took it to the Tories and the other thing is I think I am someone who unlike Jeremy hasn’t just been someone sat on the back benches in parliament all my career. I came in to politics aged 40 having done three big jobs previously, public and private sector, including working for some big pharmaceutical companies in this country and I think that will be of benefit for a Labour Prime Minister to be able to speak to both the private and public sector and give people a sense of their understanding of modern Britain and our modern economy.
FAISAL ISLAM: Jeremy Corbyn, just answering Brian’s question about what you could say to non-Labour voters to persuade them that you could win the next election?
JEREMY CORBYN: We’ve had six years of the political choice of austerity in Britain, cuts made by central government to local government, health expenditure and reducing the life chances of children.  We’ve had university fees raised, we’ve had the end of maintenance grants, we’ve had the loss of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, we are living in a housing crisis with increasing numbers of people sleeping on the streets of this country and all that this government can offer is greater inequality, greater tax cuts for the top end, greater tax breaks for big corporations and less and less available for vital public services or investment in the infrastructure that we so desperately need. So what I am suggesting is this: that we reach out to people, we reach out through an industrial investment programme, we reach out through investment in education and crucially, in housing, council housing with lifetime tenancies and I say to those families who might think they are doing okay, they’re all right – are you really happy going past people sleeping on the street when you go home at night?  Are you really happy that your children can’t afford to buy anywhere to live or get a council house? Are you happy that our National Health Service is being systematically underfunded, privatised through the Health and Social Care Act and in danger of becoming a health service of last resort rather than first port of call.  So I say to people, if you want a society that genuinely cares for all, then it’s the Labour party that can  offer that, can offer that inclusive society.  If we have another Tory government after this one we’ll be even more divided, even more unequal. We cannot afford the levels of grotesque inequality in Britain and provide for the needs of all our children.
OWEN SMITH: If that’s the case why are your poll ratings the worst of any opposition Labour leader a year on that we’ve seen in history?
JEREMY CORBYN: We’re putting the message out in the best way that we can.
OWEN SMITH: People just aren’t hearing it.
JEREMY CORBYN: We’re putting it out through the media as best as we can, we’re putting it out through the social media as best as we can and I’ll tell you this, when this leadership campaign is over and the party comes together to defeat the Tories on the 11+ as we did, we did defeat them on working tax credits and other things, people will see what the alternative is.  
OWEN SMITH: Of course Jeremy and I entirely agree that Britain is grossly unequal and we need to even things up, that’s why we’re in the Labour party and not in the Tory party but the crucial question … I thought Jeremy was worried about this audience being biased in his favour, he’s done a good job in that sense.  The crucial question Jeremy is, do you really think that we are on course to win back power because I don't think you’re serious about it.  I don't think for example you know how many seats we need to win in order to beat the Tories, I suspect you don’t know what percentage of seats or what percentage of the vote we need to form a Labour government.
JEREMY CORBYN: Why did you resign? Why did you resign?  
OWEN SMITH: I’m asking you a question, Jeremy.
JEREMY CORBYN: And I’m asking you why you walked away.  
OWEN SMITH: I’ll answer my question, you answer mine first of all, right?  How many seats that we need to win to beat the Tories.
JEREMY CORBYN: You know as well as I do that we need to win at least 90.
OWEN SMITH: No we don’t, we need to win 106 Jeremy, 106, not 90.
JEREMY CORBYN: It depends on the new boundaries.  
OWEN SMITH: You see I worry that the leader of the Labour party doesn’t know how many seats we need to win from the Tories.  I think he ought to know that, I think it ought to be tattooed on his chest.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Can we be serious about the political issues facing the country?
OWEN SMITH: And the reason I resigned Jeremy, is precisely because I don’t think you are serious about winning power for Labour and precisely because I don't think there is any prospect of us being able to address those gross inequalities that you talked about unless we’ve got a leader of the Labour party who knows that it’s 106 seats and 40% of the vote we’ve got to win, who knows where those seats are and what he would do to win them back from the Tories, not someone who says frankly a lot of platitudes about all sorts of things we’d all like to see.  We’re all in favour of motherhood and apple pie, Jeremy, but politics is a tough business of winning votes from the Tories and you unfortunately I don't think are serious about that.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Do you want to come back on that, Mr Corbyn, just quickly?
JEREMY CORBYN: I think it is slightly regrettable if the whole thing reduces to a personal view of each other.  Can we not look at the issues? Our party was created by brave people in order to bring about a fairer and much more just society and we’ve made great achievements.  We at the moment are faced with a Tory government that is creating, deliberately and specifically, gross inequality in Britain. The party has to come together to oppose austerity and not offer at the next election some kind of austerity-lite. We have to stand up for the welfare state and the principles behind that and when we do things together as a party we can achieve a great deal so I regret the fact that some colleagues, including Owen, decided to resign from the Shadow Cabinet, hence we’re having this leadership contest. I simply say to them, once this leadership contest is over, let’s come together, let’s come together and campaign on all those issues.
OWEN SMITH: I agree we need to come back together Jeremy, whoever wins this, but you talk about trying to unite the party.  I find that quite hard to reconcile with something your campaign did just this evening which was publish a list, a deselection list if you like, of the 13 MPs including the deputy leader of our party, Tom Watson, who your campaign think has transgressed against you in criticising you.  Now that isn’t unifying, that is deeply divisive and frankly it is where you began the contest by talking about deselection in your opening speech. Now if that is what you are intending to do if you win this contest, to deselect all of our MPs, then we will be in even greater trouble than we’re in right now.  I resigned because I don’t think you are serious about uniting us, I don’t think you made any effort that I saw to unite the party and I worry that we will be even more divided and even further behind the Tories and even less able to do the things that you want and I want to make Britain a more equal place.  It is about power and you are not going to win it.
FAISAL ISLAM: This did happen today didn’t it, mentioning the 13 MPs from your campaign, Mr Corbyn?
JEREMY CORBYN: There was information put out there which is statements that colleagues made on the record and it is all stuff out there in the public domain.
FAISAL ISLAM: Including Tom Watson calling Momentum a rabble, I mean it’s a bit playground stuff.
JEREMY CORBYN: But he actually said it.
FAISAL ISLAM: I know, but come on, if you can’t take the rough and tumble of politics!  
JEREMY CORBYN: I’d rather he hadn’t said it and he probably wishes he hadn’t said it but it was said.
OWEN SMITH: But why did you publish their names, Jeremy? It does feel like sicking Momentum onto them to try and get them deselected after this conference.
JEREMY CORBYN: No, it’s not that.
OWEN SMITH: Well that’s how it will be seen by them I’m afraid.
JEREMY CORBYN: Owen, why don’t we try and discuss how we can make sure that the party policies are effective and that we win the next election, after this election unifying and coming together around the issues that we do agree on – on the need to oppose austerity because we’ve changed policies on that since a year ago, the need to support our National Health Service, the need to end PFIs and the need for an investment strategy across the whole of this country.
FAISAL ISLAM: Let’s take a question from Chris Harris, Chris.
CHRIS HARRIS: In the last 40 years Labour has achieved its greatest electoral success as a centrist party.  Why do you think a move away from the centre is the best way forward?
JEREMY CORBYN: The levels of inequality in Britain are unacceptable and getting worse. The direction in which this government is taking us makes that even worse.  I think we need some strong alternatives, an alternative where we have a national investment bank that invests in industry as well as in infrastructure, housing, education and all the things that are so necessary.  We also need to have a government that isn’t afraid to invest if necessary in private industry or take it over where it’s failing such as a contribution if not control of the steel industry, things like that.  That means there has to be a strong presence of the socialist ideals that brought this party about in the first place.  If you call it left wing to say that we think that nobody should be homeless, if you think it’s left wing to say that we don’t want selective education we want inclusive comprehensive education, then that is allowing somebody else to set our agenda. How about we set the agenda of saying we want to create an inclusive society with equality of opportunity for all and not be ashamed of saying there is a role, a huge role, for the public, for the state in provision of housing, health and education. This government is systematically handing all of our public services over to the private sector.  If you want one simple lesson on this, why on earth do we invest all this money in railway infrastructure in order to allow private train operating companies to make a great deal of money out of the investment that we’ve made?  Make it public and get that investment back.
FAISAL ISLAM: Mr Smith, you don’t disagree with much of that do you?
OWEN SMITH: Well I’m a centre left politician, that’s where I think the Labour party fights elections and wins.  I agree with much of what Jeremy says but the country does too, the country wants us to renationalise the railways, the country wants us to invest in our NHS, the country wants not to see cuts to libraries and other local services, I don't think that’s left or right, I think that is just right for Britain.  But I do worry that some people around Jeremy and Jeremy of course with his history, are more associated with the hard left of the Labour party and of our politics, they just are, that’s a fact of the last 40 years of Jeremy’s politics in Westminster and what that means is unfortunately we run the risk of being seen as on the hard left, not in the centre ground of British politics and the further risk is of course that the Tories will seek to fill that space for us. We saw Theresa May give a speech just a few weeks ago, many of the themes of which you could have heard in the mouth of a Labour Prime Minister, there is a very clear and present danger that Labour could become irrelevant and frankly usurped by the Tories unless we are much clearer about what we believe in, about how we oppose the Tories, about being united and worry less about deselecting our colleague MPs, worry less about holding Momentum rallies alongside Labour’s conference, worry more about contesting the space with the Tories, being a good opposition and looking like a credible government in waiting, that’s what I want to achieve and I’m afraid Jeremy isn’t achieving that for us right now.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Okay let’s move on to another issue, Anne Smith.  
ANNE SMITH: Good evening. I teach in East London and I have voted Labour all my life.  I also attended a grammar school between 1972 and 1977.  I don’t want to know whether you believe in grammar schools, I think Mr Corbyn has already explained that but I want to hear what you think are the benefits of grammar schools within our education system.
JEREMY CORBYN: The benefits of a grammar school education.
ANNE SMITH: Did you attend a grammar school?
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes, I did attend a grammar school and a grammar school education does provide a lot of support for the pupils, does provide a great deal of pressure put upon them in order to achieve the best they can for themselves.  My problem with grammar schools is that you have selection at the age of 11 and the majority of children will not be selected to go to a grammar school, the majority will go to something else.  They used to be called secondary moderns, they’ll be called something different but I think that the idea that you impose a test on all our 11 year olds which has a life affecting time for them, it is a life affecting decision for them whether they pass that exam or not and they get to go to a school where they are told they are special and the rest get to go to a school where they are told they are not so special. I want all our children to go to well-funded, good quality schools for all our children, no selection at the age of 11, bring our children up together understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses, all the problems that we all have in growing up but above all do it together, don’t select at 11, don’t divide our communities at 11, bring our communities together.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Isn’t the point though, the ban on selecting you are trying to continue was passed on 1998 by Tony Blair when he was in government, so do you not need to be in government to pass these sorts of policies.
JEREMY CORBYN: I’ve got a feeling that the Conservatives have put out this Green Paper which is about bringing back grammar schools and it has got a lot of rather strange claims within that Green Paper.  I’ve got more than half a feeling that as the weeks roll on, maybe even quicker than that, they are going to rapidly retreat from that and probably drop the whole thing as being completely unworkable.
OWEN SMITH: I went to two comprehensive schools in the part of South Wales where I live and represent right now and my wife is a school teacher in South Wales today and I’m a great believer in comprehensive education, I’m a great believer in that principle of educating all of our children together, raising everybody up, giving everybody a sense of the diversity of humanity, not dividing children at 11 between those who have been deemed to succeed or been deemed to fail.  In my own family my dad did pass the 11+ and went to a grammar school and then went on to university but he was the first person to go to university and many of his friends ended up in secondary moderns in the Rhondda and were deemed to have failed. We cannot return to that, it would be completely retrograde for Britain to step backwards in that fashion but the point that Faisal made is a crucial one, it was that reforming Blair government in 1998 that banned grammar schools for the first time and it is a great measure of how progressive we can be when we win, when we’re in power and other than that we simply complain about it when we’re in opposition. My worry with Jeremy is he is too satisfied with being in opposition and not hungry enough to be in power to change things.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Hang on, a few people booed and hissed there, it seems to be a feature of some of these things, who was booing?  I want you to explain why you were booing.  Madam, why do you boo at events like this?
WOMAN: Because I am just so angry.  I can talk loud enough I don’t need your microphone.  I am just so angry at what the rest of the Labour party are doing to Jeremy Corbyn.  I think they are tired old Blairites, everybody hates Tony Blair.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Tony Blair did pass the grammar school ban that you back.
WOMAN: Yes, that’s one thing that he did, what about all the rest of the things he did?  They sold the Labour party out, the centrist Labour party are rubbish, we don’t want them, they’re no good for our country.
OWEN SMITH: Can I respond to that?  All I would say is herein lies part of the problem that we’ve got in the party right now that we’ve become so deeply divided.  I don’t agree with you that everybody hates Tony Blair and I don’t agree with you that Tony Blair didn’t do much for this country.  I think the reality is a minimum wage, trebling spending on the NHS, introducing Sure Start, paternity rights, maternity rights, making sure that we had an Equalities Act, a Human Rights Act in this country.  These were massive steps forward for Britain, getting rid of grammar schools was a big step forward for this country.  I wasn’t even in parliament when Tony Blair was the leader of this party, I’ve never described myself as a Blairite because to be honest I think I’m slightly to the left of Tony Blair on quite a lot of issues but the truth is, unless we get beyond this sort of Punch and Judy where everybody is in favour of one individual or not.  We’re a movement, we’re not a man, we’re a Labour movement, we’re not one person, he’s not the only arbiter of what’s right and what’s wrong in the Labour party, he’s just one man. I’m just one man.  We need to be united once more as a movement, that’s the crucial thing.  
WOMAN: Why don’t you get behind your leader?
OWEN SMITH: He never got behind any of the ones we had previously …
JEREMY CORBYN: I was actually in parliament during the whole of the period from 1997, all the things you just mentioned I voted for – I voted for the Human Rights Act, for the Equalities Act, Sure Start, the minimum wage, I voted for all those things but where I disagreed with that government was on what I thought was its illiberal approach on anti-terrorism law, where I disagreed with that government was on the Private Finance Initiative which has been such a millstone around hospitals and schools necks and where I disagreed very profoundly with that government was on the war in Iraq and the following of US foreign policy.
FAISAL ISLAM: We are going to come on to foreign policy but just in terms of the conduct of this campaign, this leadership campaign, when people say they hate the former Labour Prime Minister and all this booing and hissing, you said you wanted a kinder politics.  
JEREMY CORBYN: I don’t do hate, I don’t do booing and hissing.
FAISAL ISLAM: Well some of your supporters clearly do.
JEREMY CORBYN: Well I ask people to be kind and in some cases it takes longer than others.  
OWEN SMITH: You see Jeremy laughs it off again and he said earlier he laughs it off …
JEREMY CORBYN: Owen, you’ve done plenty of it.
OWEN SMITH: I haven’t, Jeremy, that’s not true.  The reality is in this contest we’ve had successive hustings in which Harriet Harman has been booed, Kezia Dugdale has been booed, Tony Blair has been booed, Tom Watson has been booed, I’ve been booed at all of these things.  Now the reason that is going on is we have become deeply divided around one individual and one individual is not the Labour movement, that’s the simple message.  We need to get back to speaking about … Jeremy used to say that he wanted a contest for the Labour leadership every year, he gave an interview a couple of years ago in which he said he didn’t want to be the leader because he wanted to be able to disagree with his party so the truth is that Jeremy is somebody who has always wanted to have dispute and debate within the Labour party and I’m very clear that this is a contest.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Let’s take a couple of points from the audience, it’s getting quite lively out here.  The gentleman just here.  
MAN: Going back to the EU referendum and the working class, it was a class based vote that voted against the free movement of labour and you are just denying that.  You are behind the curve but the working class in Europe is against free movement of labour, when are Labour going to address this?  It’s like you don’t want to understand the working class and their issues, you want them to believe this metropolitan elite view of the country, you’re so out of touch.  It’s finished Labour, you’re finished if you don’t accept this.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Do you think there is an issue of workers being very badly exploited, brought in from one country to another on some kind of spurious contract?  Look at what happened at Sports Direct and other places, don’t you think there is a need for some kind of international action to prevent the exploitation of migrant workers and put the blame where it belongs, on the big companies who are doing very nicely thank you out that and have a degree of solidarity to bring about that justice.
MAN: But what about the labour that comes from countries like Poland and Bulgaria?  It’s not the working class of these countries, it’s not the poor that are coming, it’s the middle class that are coming here being under employed, paying a minimum wage, why don’t we think about those countries?  It’s almost like a new cronyism.
FAISAL ISLAM: The lady just in front of you with the red top.
WOMAN: Me?  Owen, you are saying you want unity and you talk about Jeremy’s supporters doing things while there was a Progress Labour First meeting on Monday, committee room 12 and I’ve heard some people who said all sorts of very nasty, very divisive tweets were coming out of that meeting.  How can you get unity if people like that, Wes Streeting and other people, were sending tweets like that?
OWEN SMITH: Well I am not a member of either Progress or Labour First and I don’t know anything about the meeting you’re talking about but I do think it is generally true and this audience tonight bears it out I suppose, that a lot of people who are very supportive of Jeremy and who see Jeremy as the only guardian at the moment of Labour values are very aggressively engaged in this contest, this campaign and emotionally engaged in it.  I understand people wanting to be emotional and feeling deeply about the future of the Labour party but I do think we all need to calm down a little bit.  
WOMAN: I’d like to ask Jeremy a question about anti-Semitism.  I know he has condemned it but he sometimes gives the impression it is all about white skinheads with swastika tattoos.  Could he please acknowledge that the truth is more complicated and say how the Labour party should respond to more prevalent kinds of anti-Semitism?  I’d be most grateful if he didn’t use the phrase ‘other forms of racism’.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Anti-Semitism is obviously totally wrong under any circumstances and you’re right when you say it is not just someone with something like BNP or something like that tattooed on them that make anti-Semitic remarks, it can go much higher, much wider and much deeper than that and it’s not new.  If you read what George Orwell wrote about anti-Semitism in the 1920s and 1930s, if you think of the Dreyfuss Affair and what went on there, anti-Semitism was rife throughout very large sections of society in many parts of Europe, it is utterly and totally wrong in any circumstances.  It’s wrong therefore for anyone in our party or anywhere in our movement to use any anti-Semitic language or anti-Semitic words against Jewish people and I am determined that it will stop totally and altogether.  
MAN: … not welcome in your party anymore.
JEREMY CORBYN: Well I hope you are welcome in our party because I welcome you into the party and I want the party to be welcoming to all people of all faiths and all groups because that is what a political party is stronger if it has people from all communities and all faiths as part of it. We live in a very diverse society, a multi-faith society therefore one would want all faiths to be involved in our party.
OWEN SMITH: I am pleased of course that Jeremy condemns anti-Semitism, we must always condemn anti-Semitism in every form and in every fora but it is very worrying that, as you say sir, many in the Jewish community do not feel welcomed in the Labour movement right now.  I think we have traditionally been the home for British members of the Jewish community, the party that they felt most associated with and it is worrying that presently about 8% of that community are voting Labour and we should we worried about that, not because of the votes but because of what it says about us.  It says right now that that community doesn’t feel we are welcoming, it says that people worrying that there is a correlation on the hard left between criticism of America, Israel and then shading into anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic abuse and that is deeply worrying for us. I think Jeremy hasn’t been quick enough to recognise that and to take it on and I think if he were a stronger leader he would have acted sooner and stamped on it.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Can we be very serious and very responsible about this?
OWEN SMITH: Entirely serous.
JEREMY CORBYN: Can I finish please, can we be very serious and very responsible about this.  There are some people who have made anti-Semitic statements and remarks who have been suspended from party membership, some of those, most of them actually pre-date my leadership.  As you know, I received reports, I was concerned and I asked Shami Chakrabarti to undertake an inquiry into this which she did, she has proposed a series of rule changes as well as an information and education programme within the party which will help and I propose that we bring those things through this year and that we review the whole process next year to make sure that we are getting rid of any vestige whatsoever of anti-Semitism within our party and I am sure you will agree with me on that.
OWEN SMITH: I think the words, Jeremy, are absolutely fine but the deeds are think are more problematic.
JEREMY CORBYN: What deeds have I done that are so wrong?
OWEN SMITH: Will you let me finish, Jeremy?
JEREMY CORBYN: Do not patronise me please.
OWEN SMITH: Because on the programme that preceded this programme we saw one of our MPs, my friend Ruth Smeeth, who is currently under police protection for the abuse she has been receiving, who is a Jewish MP and who says she doesn’t feel safe in the Labour party right now.  What we saw was Ruth speaking at an event in which she felt she was being abused because of her faith by an individual who you were then clapping on the back two minutes later so that’s one of those instances where people haven’t felt you’ve taken this seriously enough and haven’t engaged in stamping it out quickly enough.
FAISAL ISLAM: Okay, we’ve got time for one more question, Jo Weir.
JO WEIR: If Trump is elected in the US would Britain maintain their special relationship with America?
OWEN SMITH: Yes, is the short answer to that because we must maintain a special relationship with America, it is one of the most important economies in the world, it’s one with which we’ve a long standing relationship in trade, in security, in defence so it is essential that we should be grown-up and deal with whoever is the President of America.  I can’t say I am a big fan of Donald Trump to be perfectly honest, I do worry that he might win but I am absolutely certain that whoever wins we must deal properly and crucially the Labour party, if we are to be taken seriously as a prospective party of government, can’t answer anything other than of course we would work with Donald Trump were he the President of the United States.
JEREMY CORBYN: We are meant to have a relationship with every country and Donald Trump’s ludicrous ideas such as trying to force Mexico to pay for a wall to be built between itself and Mexico, his deeply racist comments towards the Muslim community in the United States and his attitude towards women I find an absolute anathema to everything I think, want and believe in society and I hope the American people see through it as well.  
FAISAL ISLAM: There are a couple of things where you’d be able to break bread with him though aren’t there?  You don’t believe, you have got issues with NATO, with TTIP, he’s got the same, you’d be able to have a conversation with Donald Trump about some of those things.
JEREMY CORBYN: I can have a conversation with anybody about anything.
FAISAL ISLAM: We are coming nearly to the end of this show and so it is time now for your closing statements, the closing statements of all of the hustings, you have got about a minute and a half each.  Mr Smith, would you like to go first.
OWEN SMITH: Well someone, I think it was Jeremy Corbyn, once said that we needed a bit more straight talking honest politics in the Labour party and I completely agree with Jeremy so here goes. We are six years into a Tory government, a radical right wing Tory government.  In the last week alone we have seen an announcement that a million British workers are on zero hours contracts, a million more people are waiting to have vital surgery in our NHS and crucially we are reintroducing second class secondary modern education for millions of our children.  At the same time the Labour party has been revealed to be at the lowest ebb in the polls than we’ve ever been, further from power than we’ve been for generations so the straight honest reality Jeremy and everybody, is that this can’t go on.  We cannot continue being a Labour opposition that isn’t taking on the Tories and isn’t looking like a government in waiting so my message to all of the 600,000 people who have just one more week to vote in this contest is think about the choice.  It is not between two men, it is between two paths for Labour – continuing opposition perhaps for another generation or Labour back in power able to introduce the things we all believe in.  That’s what I want to deliver, that’s why I want to be Labour Prime Minister not just the leader of our opposition and with your votes, with your support that’s what I think I can do for our party and our country.
JEREMY CORBYN: We live in a country where there is a government with ideologically driven obsessions with destroying our health service, privatising so many of our other public services, underfunding our local authorities and now returning to an appalling form of selection in our education system.  It is an ideology that I am totally opposed to.  I was elected the leader of this party a year ago in order to take us in a slightly different direction, one where we opposed austerity and didn’t offer an austerity-lite package at the ballot box, one where we stood up for the principle of a welfare state and didn’t apologise for it, where we’re proud of our roots and proud of the principles that unites our party.  During the past year when the parliamentary party and the party in the country has been working together, we forced this government into over 20 U-turns and retreats in parliament and other ways.  We have won the mayoral contests, we’ve won the parliamentary by-elections and we have gained a very large number of new members to the party, now we are the largest socialist party anywhere in Europe.  After this leadership contest is over, the party has to come together, come together to offer something different, a society that is environmentally sustainable, that provides full employment for all, that invests not detracts from our economy and above all, a society that works for the good of all, so we reduce and remove the levels of grotesque inequality in Britain, so we invest in all those places that desperately need it and as a party we bring communities together in strength to bring about that decent fair society that works for all, so that no one, no community and no part of Britain is ever left behind again in the way that this Tory government is doing and treating them.  
FAISAL ISLAM: Thank you Mr Corbyn, thank you Mr Smith and thank you to our audience here at Sky Centre.  We’ve heard from Jeremy Corbyn telling Labour members that to win power the party needs to reach out to every area and every community but Mr Smith said Mr Corbyn is not serious about uniting the power and they clashed over the record of Tony Blair’s Labour governments and with members of the audience too.  Voting in this contest ends next Wednesday with the result announced the following Saturday, watch it on Sky News of course.   Thank you and goodnight from Sky Centre.  
END