Murnaghan Interview with Charles Clarke, MP, former Home Secretary, 20.09.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, it was just a week ago, believe it or not that Jeremy Corbyn made history with his landslide election as leader of the Labour party but it’s hardly been plain sailing since.  The Shadow Cabinet is now a markedly different one with a host of key players reluctant to serve, a new poll shows support for the party has gone up by just one point although the Conservatives still have a very clear lead.  Joining me now is Charles Clarke, the former Labour Home Secretary who has written a series of books looking at Britain’s political leaders and a very good morning to you, Mr Clarke.  I see the latest tome is about ex-Labour leaders.  How long do you give it before we have to include Jeremy Corbyn, a couple of months, a couple of years or longer?

CHARLES CLARKE: I think it will be longer than that.  I think it is a question of whether he will get so far as the 2020 general election but I think the party will be very keen to give him a chance and be working of course on its own proposals to try and ensure that we can contest the Tories effectively at the next election.  At the end of the day it is very much in Jeremy Corbyn’s own hands as to how long he lasts.

DM: How do you think he has handled it so far?  As I say, it seems an awful long time ago since Saturday week when his election was announced, what do you make of the week he’s been through?

CHARLES CLARKE: It has obviously been a very bad week for him.  In credit to him he has been able to get his office together and organise finally but lack of organisation showed for a long time.  He obviously hadn’t thought through some of the aspects of being leader of the opposition in our constitution which I was rather surprised, you do have to think those things through both as an individual member of parliament and certainly as leader of the opposition and his policy areas, he has indicated a whole string of areas where he’s not carrying through what he said he would in the way that he said he would but being pressured out of that by views within the parliamentary party.  Now how long that will actually last I don't know but obviously there will be tensions in the whole situation.

DM: Well as one policy issue, let’s discuss that directly, that he stuck to and that he mentioned before his election and mentioned it a lot and it is very popular in the country, of rail nationalisation, as the franchises come up taking them back into public control, that chimes.

CHARLES CLARKE: I think that’s an intelligent way of doing it but the key issue is, what’s going to happen to the service, what’s the quality of the service, what’s the nature of the investment, how good is the management?  I don’t particularly remember British Rail with particularly rosy views but there is no doubt that the north-east line franchise which was in public ownership recently worked well and I think one has to look at the practicalities and not make it a great issue of principle, so it’s not an issue of principle for me and if it were to be done the kind of approach he’s followed seems to me quite feasible.  

DM: Presumably you’d want to see, because this was also mentioned, whether a Corbynite Labour party would want to revisit Clause Four and talk about, they have talked about, renationalising a lot of other industries.

CHARLES CLARKE: I think that relates back to our earlier discussion.  For me nationalisation or denationalisation is not an issue in principle, it is an issue in practice – what is the quality of the service that is being provided, how does the consumer get properly dealt with, how do you get investment in the industries, what’s the prices of the services to be offered?  I think there are a lot of questions to be discussed there.  What I am against is the, as it were, principled approach that says public ownership is always better and that was what Clause Four said so I would certainly be strongly against Clause Four being put back in the Labour Party’s constitution.  I think you need a very practical, very pragmatic look at the way in which a particular service is delivered and that’s the best way to operate.

DM: And Mr Clarke, what about your knowledge of those inside the party who are part of the ABC movement, the Anyone But Corbyn movement. They were loud and voluble before the election, it has happened, they’ve now gone quiet.  Is their attitude to give them a chance or are some of them, as the Lib Dems seem to be saying, thinking about jumping ship, perhaps joining the Lib Dems?

CHARLES CLARKE: I think there is absolutely no chance of defections, I think Tim Farron is making mischief, I think George Osborne’s making mischief.  I don't know anybody who is even remotely thinking of leaving the Labour party, they see the Labour party as the future.  There are certainly people who thought that other candidates other than Jeremy Corbyn would be the most effective leader of the party, I was in that group myself, but there is not a question of defections of the type that Tim Farron is trying to promote today.

DM: I am just trying to gather the mood, is there a sense amongst some of the Blairites, for want of a better term, that Jeremy Corbyn just might do it?

CHARLES CLARKE: I don't think I feel that sense at all, I think the general sense is exactly the opposite, that he is not qualified, capable of being an effective Prime Ministerial candidate and in fact all the history in those books you mentioned is that that it goes wrong unless you have people who are capable of doing that but that he has to make his own mistakes, he has to be able to show what he can or can’t do but meanwhile we have to work as hard as we possibly can to develop the kind of alternative to the Conservatives which is necessary.  We failed to do that over the last nearly ten years, as a result the party has been in decline and we have to work much harder at it now.

DM: So their attitude must be to stay with naval terms, they are not going to rock the boat, they’re not going to jump ship but they want to give him enough rope and let him hang himself?

CHARLES CLARKE: Well you’ll  have to see whether he does hang himself in any way, as I say so far the signs for Jeremy Corbyn aren’t particularly good but I think the attitude of many people will be to say our first task is to develop the kind of policy and strategic approach which is necessary to enable Labour to win the election and we’ll try and set about doing that with or without the current leadership of the party.

DM: But if it does come to replacing him and however that may happen, how can that happen given that he has got – and it is an irrefutable argument isn’t it – the support of the vast number of people who voted in that election?

CHARLES CLARKE: He has, that’s why I don't think replacing him is an issue in the way that you’re suggesting. I don't think there are plots around, I don't think there are ideas of trying to defenestrate him, I don't think there is any ambition to say let’s get rid of Jeremy Corbyn, I just don’t think it’s there.  I think the ambition is to form the kind of policy alternative within Labour which we need …

DM: Well we were close to the end of that interview with Charles Clarke but our technology has decided to end it right there, our thanks if he can still hear us to Charles Clarke there with his thoughts on where Labour goes from here.