Murnaghan Interview with Chris Leslie, Labour MP, 10.05.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the economy was a key part of the election campaign of course for all the parties but the Conservatives clearly won that argument so will Labour ever again regain economic credibility?  Well Chris Leslie is Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a job he’s done since October 2013 and he joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Leslie and of course you’re now the senior Treasury spokesman with Ed Balls gone, that’s a big loss for your party isn’t it?  

CHRIS LESLIE:  Of course it is and as is Douglas Alexander and of course Ed Miliband as well and I think they’ve served the party incredibly well over recent years and it is a blow to lose those big individuals who have done such important things for the party.  

DM: So does that make you the Shadow Chancellor or I suppose there is no one in charge yet to make those decisions but we’ve got to then put these economic questions to you, it’s at the core of your campaign and let’s relate it to what Lord Mandelson has just been saying.  He says the impression you gave was that you hated the rich, you wanted to tax their salaries, tax their houses, tax their pensions and they felt they were not included in the big – or was it a big – Labour tent?

CHRIS LESLIE:  Well look, it has been a very bruising 48 hours for us in the Labour party and you are right to say that we need to focus on the reasons why we lost.  I think that there were a lot of people that wanted to support the Labour party but that when it came to the ballot box and the ballot paper they just felt that they couldn’t and we’ve got to understand why they were hesitant, why they were fearful.  Now I think there were a number of factors in that …

DM: But wasn’t that aspirational message there that if you get rich then we don’t really stand for you?

CHRIS LESLIE: I think there was, it was too easy for the Conservatives to peddle the misperception that somehow we were anti-business and somehow we were not standing up for that centre ground, for that middle income group of people in this country who I think were important in the entrepreneurial way of generating wealth and creating wealth …

DM: But Lord Mandelson was talking about people at the very top.  

CHRIS LESLIE: Well look, we want a fairer society and we want social justice, the Labour party will always want that but we’ve got to make sure that we get that trust back on the economy and I am actually quite focused for this particular period on the fact that the Chancellor, the Prime Minister, now that they have this majority they are not going to wait around for the Labour party, they are going to be getting on with their agenda and we know that there are some massive, massive cuts to come to public services, to social security and they haven’t really explained where from and of course the manifesto they were elected on was predicated very much on unfunded commitments.  Now put those two things together and you’ve got an enormous black hole and I am not going to let George Osborne or David Cameron get away without explaining who is going to be paying the price for that.  

DM: So who would you like to see, when Labour does get its act together, campaigning, from what part of the political spectrum?  Lord Mandelson has been laying out his stall, his vision, very clearly, Tony Blair writing today in the paper saying you cannot abandon the centre ground but there are others saying no, no, no, the example we have to take comes from Scotland.  The SNP stood to the left of us on those social and economic questions, that’s what we need to do.  What’s your view?

CHRIS LESLIE:  Well there is a job to rebuild in Scotland but I am, and I’ve been saying this already is the lessons to learn from …

DM: But from almost the twin defeats.  

CHRIS LESLIE:  Let me explain, in England and Wales, as I was saying, there were a lot of people wanting to support Labour, you could even see it in those now slightly discredited opinion polls that they were wanting to be with us but those fears and anxieties, they are difficult to confront but we have to confront them.  Why did people pause, why were they hesitant?  Some of that I think partly was the question about could they trust us on the economy, I think the Conservatives were very successful in whipping up that fear that somehow Nicola Sturgeon and the Labour party would create that greater risk.  That also made people hesitate but look, we’ve got to get this right, we’ve got to focus on our new vision for the future and understand and analyse what happened but in the interim period we have also got to make sure we hold those Tories in check.  

DM: But now is the time, Mr Leslie, isn’t it, to level with the public.  We’re not in a general election campaign, we won’t be for nearly another five years and you make it sound that people just misinterpreted the policies you had going into that general election, do you feel they were just the wrong policies?  

CHRIS LESLIE: Look, there is certainly a lot of reviewing we have to do of the whole of our policies.  

DM: Were they the right policies with the wrong interpretation or just the wrong policies?

CHRIS LESLIE:  I am not the sort of character who goes back and trashes what we’ve just arguing for our legacy in the past, I am a proud member of a team in the Labour party and we all take a collective responsibility for this but of course it’s the perceptions of the public we’ve got to listen to.  If we say what we feel alone that’s not going to do it …

DM: But I can put it as a very straight question, from your point of view would you keep the mansion tax, would you keep the increase in the top rate of tax, would you keep the raids on big pension funds?  

CHRIS LESLIE:  We’ve just lost the election, those policies did not success, they have all got to be reviewed.  

DM: They didn’t work but were they the right policies or the wrong policies?

CHRIS LESLIE: Look, I’m not going to stand today 48 hours after arguing for these policies and say …

DM: Lord Mandelson thinks they are the wrong policies.  

CHRIS LESLIE: I agreed with the platform that we put out but the public didn’t and therefore the best thing to do …

DM: So the public were wrong?

CHRIS LESLIE: No, the public are of course correct in their judgement and we have to listen to what they were saying and in particular I want to listen to those views in England and Wales in particular because they were hesitant about us on that and that’s why I think we have to make sure we have a broad appeal, draw people together in the party but listen to those things about wealth creation and not just about wealth distribution, important of course as it is.  

DM: All right but there is a fundamental question, it’s not about policy and it’s again flowing from Lord Mandelson, flowing from Tony Blair today was the big error made long before the campaign started when Ed Miliband said I’m not Tony Blair.  You junked that past, you lost that winning record, he denied all the successes of those Blair and Brown years.  

CHRIS LESLIE:  I understand the arguments that are being made but look, this can’t be about  going back and fighting those old battles of seven or twelve years ago.  

DM: They were not battles, they were successes, they were election victories …

CHRIS LESLIE: And I’m very proud of being a Minister in previous Labour governments but I think now we need to face the future.  The longer term question is how we of course create that longer term … it is an immediate test as well and I’m very concerned about that.  It is basically George Osborne and David Cameron, they will be rushing to get their agenda through and the Conservative party I suspect is going to fragment in a number of different ways, particularly on Europe but when it comes to the economy and it comes to public services, we’ve got to reform those public services but we’ve also got to make sure we pin them down on where those cuts are going to fall and who is going to pay the price for that and that is our immediate job.  

DM: But you know your problem is, those who are going to be making those arguments in Parliament who have got their act together, it’s Alex Salmond and that cohort of SNP MPs.  

CHRIS LESLIE: And I think we should have been very clear from earlier on that we had no truck with them.  We absolutely spelt out that we wouldn’t do deals with them and I think that was the right thing to do but we allowed the Conservative party to peddle that myth and of course that percolated into people’s anxieties about us and that in many ways is part of reason we have seen a Conservative majority.  

DM: Good to see you Mr Leslie, thank you very much indeed.  Chris Leslie there.