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- [00:00]
Adam
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- [01:39]
Adam
Welcome to the second episode of this old newscast where we are discussing how Jeremy Corbyn won the 2015 Labour leadership election. A few weeks ago we recorded these episodes with two journalists who followed the Labour leadership election of 2015 incredibly closely, Jane Merrick and Nick Watt. We started episode one on the morning after the 2015 general election when a defeated but maybe also slightly relieved Ed Miliband stood down as Labour leader, triggering an absolutely fascinating competition to replace him. If you've not listened to the first episode yet, go back and listen to that before coming back and listening to this one, we will pick up where we left off. The very left wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn has got the necessary 35 nominations from Labour MPs to just in the nick of time and is officially now a candidate for Labour leader. So let's return to the summer of 2015 and join Jeremy Corbyn on the campaign trail in this episode of old.
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Nick Watt
Newscast Newscast Newscast from the BBC.
- [02:40]
Jeremy Corbyn
I didn't set out in life with any overweening ambition to do anything. Those colleagues who nominated me, MPs who nominated me may not necessarily agree with me. This is the. I think I'm right in saying 83rd event.
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Nick Watt
We've done Jeremy Corby elected as leader of the Labour Party.
- [03:02]
Adam
Okay. And with us is Jane Merrick, who's policy editor of the I paper. But Jane, at the time, you were political editor of the Independent on Sunday.
- [03:08]
Jane Merrick
That's right. Hello.
- [03:09]
Adam
And Nick, of course you were political editor at Newsnight, but then you were working on the Guardian.
- [03:13]
Nick Watt
That's right. I had the very grand title of Chief Political Correspondent at the Guardian, which meant I was number two.
- [03:19]
Adam
Great job title, though. Now, before we dig into the Labour leadership contest of 2015, you actually bumped into Jeremy Corbyn just before we were recording this, didn't you?
- [03:28]
Nick Watt
I did, I.
- [03:29]
Adam
Can you reveal the conversation?
- [03:31]
Nick Watt
I can reveal the conversation. It was in the area of Westminster, where you would assume the conversation of what was called lobby terms, which means you can't quote the person, but if you seek their permission, the mp, then you can. And that's what I did. And what was India? I went up to Jeremy Corby and I said. It was during a vote. I said, oh, Jeremy, I got to talk about you this week. And what's that about?
- [03:48]
Adam
I said, because he is quite suspicious of the mainstream media, funnily enough.
- [03:52]
Nick Watt
Well. Well, I think he's had a difficult weekend with your party. I think it's more that. Anyway, so I said, I got to talk about you. I'm doing a PODC cast on your election in 2015. And his face lit up. Interesting. As I was saying, he's had a very difficult weekend with the divisions in his new party, your party. So much fonder memories of what happened in 2015. And what that showed is this is clearly, to him, probably the biggest moment in his life, in his political life, and obviously has very fond memories of it, but interestingly knew that. That he was taking over a party that was not wholly behind him.
- [04:29]
Adam
And does he have any memories of that kind of midday moment from when he made it onto the ballot, which had been touch and go?
- [04:35]
Nick Watt
Well, I don't want to steal our thunder, because the bit that he really talked about was the day that he actually became leader in September.
- [04:42]
Adam
So that was a few weeks later. Jane. The mood in the Labour party at 1 minute past 12 on the 15th of June, 2015 is actually. They're quite happy, they're quite pleased with themselves, that they've managed to work, organize a leadership contest that has lots of different bits of the party represented.
- [04:58]
Jane Merrick
Yeah. And I think this feeds into what you were saying in the previous episode about sort of. There was almost that complacency of the luxury of having this broad debate. Oh, we can have our broad debate and then we can get, you know, Andy Burnham or a Vet Cooper elected. And it's all fine because we've had the broad debate, we've let Jeremy Corbyn on the ballot almost. There was that sense of sort of a, you know, it's not going to be a stitch shop. And I think. And I think also it's important to say, actually, that even though many of these MPs have very different views on a lot of things, they're still all Labour. They're still basically tribally Labour for, you know, they want the Labour Party to succeed. And I think they wanted a healthy leadership contest that they could really thrash it out. The reasons why they'd lost the election, I mean, in hindsight, you know, they. They'd been in power for many years and then they'd, you know, been out of power for one term, so maybe they needed to have more, you know, discussions and. And have another term. But, yeah, they. I think they were happy to have that sort of. We're going to have a proper debate. It's going to be a real discussion about where the Labour Party goes next.
- [05:59]
Adam
And in the meantime, hundreds of thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of people are signing up to be registered supporters of the Labour Party, paying three pounds, taking advantage of this Miliband era innovation to, like, make the Labour Party more accessible to people. And so it feels like there's a buzz around. The Labour people are sort of flocking to it almost.
- [06:17]
Nick Watt
Yes. So that wasn't initially spotted. So as Jane was saying, initially it was, he's on the ballot, but of course he's not going to win. And the clue that he was going to do well was not the noticing of the Register supporters, it was the nominations coming in from the constituency Labour parties that were published. And the absolute breakthrough moment for me was, I think it was about 10 days or so after he got on the ballot. I was in Portcullis House, the atrium, which is the new bit. When I say new bit, it's been there for a quarter of a century. It was a summer's day, it was.
- [06:52]
Adam
Newer than the rest.
- [06:53]
Nick Watt
It was a summer's day, the sun was shining through. And I bumped into somebody who really knows the Labour Party and who is absolutely not in the socialist campaign group. And this person said to me, nick, I think you need to know that I think Jeremy Corbyn is going to be the next leader of the Labour Party. And I went, wow. Nobody else has told me that. Why? And he said to me, just look through at the nominations coming through from the constituency Labour Party. So that's individual Labour parties around the country. And he said, jeremy Corbyn is way ahead. I think that's going to happen. And for me, that was like, wow. And I almost immediately went to the Guardian and saw a very senior editorial figure. And I said, okay, up until now, we've been working on the assumption that this is going to be like another campaign group candidate. You know, he'll get an Owen Jones column in the Guardian, and that's it. I said, we now have to treat Jeremy Corbyn like all the other candidates. And this very senior editor instantly said to me, absolutely right, we're going to treat him like the others. Follow him around the country. The big Saturday interview, make sure we do that with him, Bump, he gets equal status. And that was a really, really sort of. That was the absolutely key moment for me in what was likely to happen and how we immediately changed our coverage.
- [08:19]
Adam
And, Jane, what signs were you see?
- [08:21]
Jane Merrick
Yeah, I mean, that's amazing, actually, an amazing moment. I mean, I think for me, the sort of. The pivotal Moment was the YouGov poll. It was the 22nd of July, so sort of about a month into the campaign, and we were basically still treating at the Independent on Sunday. We were sort of lining up interviews with all the candidates, obviously including Jeremy Corbyn, but still treating it as, you know, it's going to be Burnham or Cooper. But this YouGov poll came through and we were sort of also picking up the constituency party thing. But this YouGov poll came through and it was of Labour members and registered supporters, and it showed that he was going to win. He was going to beat andy Burnham by 17 points in the first round. And I think everyone in Westminster, the sort of the media consensus and the political establishment just went, oh, wow, okay. There was a slight sort of tinge of, well, can we really believe this poll? Because we just had a general election in which the polls had got it slightly wrong. But I think there was a recognition that this was no ordinary campaign, that there was a real. This was a real movement that was happening.
- [09:21]
Adam
Well, and you say the word movement, you could see that with your eyes, because Jeremy Corbyn had all these rallies all over the country and they just Got bigger and bigger and bigger.
- [09:30]
Nick Watt
Yeah. And I. Because we decided that we were going to give him absolute equal status, then I went to some of the rallies. I remember going to one in Norwich and it was absolutely rammed. I think that was. I think that was the one, if my memory serves me correctly, where you had to come out and address people who couldn't get in from the. From a fire engine. I think it was. I think there was one in London, because you remember it was warm, it was summer, the leaves on the trees and all that sort of stuff. I think he had to address it from an open.
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Adam
No one knew what Brexit was.
- [09:57]
Nick Watt
Yes, exactly. Had to address the meeting from an outside. The meeting from an open top bus. And interestingly, that Norwich rally that we went to, this was by August then, I think it was. It was rammed the enthusiasm. But you saw some really interesting things. Was that when they were handing out your leaflet to support Jeremy Corbyn, there was also the link to sign up as a registered supporter. So what was happening is people who weren't members of the party massively enthused by Jeremy Corbyn going there, getting the leaflet, signing up as a registered supporter and voting for the contest. Interestingly, the other thing about that rally is the stewards were provided by the Unite Union. So, yes, there was this incredible grassroots movement where Jeremy Corbyn was clearly tapping into this view on the broader Left for Change. But there was a machinery behind him as well.
- [10:50]
Adam
It wasn't a sort of. It wasn't just Jeremy Corbyn's band. He had the backing of the big people. Let's have a quick listen to what one of those campaign rallies actually sounded like. Here is Jeremy Corbyn addressing a crowd of people in Sheffield, just outside the Crucible Theater.
- [11:05]
Jeremy Corbyn
Thanks ever so much for coming along. It's absolutely brilliant. This is the. I think I'm right in saying, 83rd event we've done as part of this campaign.
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Nick Watt
And.
- [11:17]
Jeremy Corbyn
All over Britain, England, Wales, Scotland, everywhere, we're getting huge numbers of people coming. And I think the reason is because of. Well, there's a number of reasons. The first one is, ours is a campaign about ideas. It's about optimism, it's about hope, it's about inclusion and it's about recognizing that everybody in our society has some good ideas. Everybody in our society has a contribution to make. And I think we have also.
- [11:47]
Adam
He was very. His team were good at doing social media.
- [11:50]
Nick Watt
Yeah.
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Adam
That's really still quite a naive kind of thing at that point.
- [11:52]
Jane Merrick
Yeah. It's really interesting actually, and I think the 2015 election was the first general election that was basically social media driven and his team had picked up on that. So although sort of, Jeremy Corbyn is seen as a, you know, he's a long standing mp, a bit of a throwback to another era. His team were very on the ball. There was sort of jazz, we can hashtags, there were sort of bizarre hashtags of like Tories for Corbyn because they thought that they could, you know, sign up and be and become registered supporters. But on the whole there was a very, as Nick says, a real grassroots movement. I mean, I just found this quote from, from a column I wrote in July and I think it was sort of after going to one of these rallies and it, it was the way that he tapped into not just this left wing moment, but this, this anti politics moment that they were sort of slightly fed up with. You know, maybe it was the austerity, maybe it was sort of the many years of, of the Blair Brown era, the expensive scandal. We would go on to see this a year later with Brexit. But he was tapping into this kind of anti politics feeling. And I wrote, it is extraordinary that a man whose politics are so unfashionable inside Westminster is sprinkled with stardust outside it. But I guess that's the whole point.
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Nick Watt
Mm.
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Adam
And also I just remember he was so unslick compared to the other three. And again, another example from Daily Politics, when we did the hustings in the studio, there was a thing about. Jeremy Corbyn had suggested he wouldn't move into 10 Downing street if he became Prime Minister. And Andrew Neil said to him, would you move into 10 Downing Street? And Jeremy Corbyn said, no, I'm perfectly happy. And then he blurted out his home address to like the entire nation on television. That's how just sort of naive and unscripted and unslick he was.
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Nick Watt
Jeremy Corbyn, you said you want the Royal Family evicted from Buckingham palace to more modest dwellings, was your phrase. Would Prime Minister Corbyn be comfortable in the lavish surroundings of 10 Downing street in Chequers?
- [13:42]
Jeremy Corbyn
I think I'd be probably happier at road N7.
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Nick Watt
Very well, Jeremy Corbyn, thank you very much.
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Adam
And Nick, there's a great quote in one of your long reads from that period where Cat Smith, the Labour mp who had previously been his Parliamentary assistant, had said, oh, Jeremy, we're gonna have to go out and buy you a tie.
- [14:00]
Nick Watt
Yes. No, I think that was when he got the nomination, and. And Cat Smith, then an mp, but worked. Worked with him for six years. Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna have to smarten you up. But actually, no, it was because he hadn't had the media training. It's because he didn't have the. The slick suit that. That was what was appealing. I remember when I was following him around, I remember a meeting, I think he was launching his economic policy in Leeds, and I remember he got into a long conversation about trains. And it turns out that this great, you know, campaigner for the Palestinian cause and Irish nationalism is passionate about trains. And he did this big thing about the inequalities in the train network in gb, and basically what he says is, the further north you go, the older the rolling stock, and went into enormous detail about it. And actually, one of the things I was. When I was talking to Jeremy Corbyn the other day, I was saying to him, I was telling this story of what he'd done in Leeds. He said, oh, yes, no, no, no, absolutely. I remember he said. I remember he was on a visit in East Anglia and they asked him a question about a local railway line and he gave this incredibly long answer, going back to the Dr. Beeching closures about the 60s, about this particular line, because, you know, the dream of a correspondent in a particular area of the country is you can catch out a national leader. So he gave this incredibly detailed response and he remembers saying to the journalist, any more questions about the line? And the journalist went, no, that's fine.
- [15:24]
Adam
But what's interesting about that is, I mean, everyone was learning more about Jeremy Corbyn. Even he'd been around for ages. He'd not been around in this context, with this kind of scrutiny. But yet lots of things that would then emerge, like the video of him sort of suggesting that people who supported Hamas were friends. That didn't. That stuff wasn't coming out at this point, really, was it? It was all a bit kind of cuddlier and more enthusiastic.
- [15:48]
Jane Merrick
It was cuddly. I mean, there were some stories. There were some, you know, it was being reported that he'd had, you know, links and obviously support for Irish nationalism and the sort of links to Hezbollah, support for Hamas. But, yeah, it was. It was sort of. It wasn't mainstream, it wasn't sort of promoted. But I. I remember talking to some Labour MPs at the time who say, you know, we are concerned about sort of this, you know, this sense that. Not that he's anti Semitic necessarily, but his supporters are anti semitic. So it wasn't sort of, it wasn't dominating the conversation, but there were those concerns there. So, yeah, and that was sort of among some Labour MPs, and I just.
- [16:24]
Adam
Remember doing things like, you know, the early day motions, so where MPs can upload a motion to the Parliamentary website and then they can get their colleagues to sign it. And I just remember a regular thing to do that period was to search for Jeremy Corbyn's early day motions and you'd find one like, abolish NATO. And you'd be like, all right, we're about to potentially have the Leader of the Opposition. And here it is in black and white, him saying, abolish NATO. And you're like, all right, that's going to be a story one day if he, if he ends up being contesting to be Prime Minister.
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Jane Merrick
And actually I remember talking to a Labour mp, sort of one of his supporters, but not sort of a very left wing supporter, I guess. And I talked to him about that NATO issue and about Trident and I was saying, you know, what's going to happen if he becomes Prime Minister? What's going to happen to the nuclear deterrent? You know, is the Civil Service going to be concerned about it? And this Labor MP said, don't worry, don't worry. You know, it's going to be the status quo, you know, don't be concerned. And so that's interesting, actually, that there were shades of opinion within his own. Within his own supporters.
- [17:20]
Adam
And Nick, in terms of the other candidates, just sketch out what kind of campaigns they're doing and how exciting they are in comparison.
- [17:26]
Nick Watt
Well, yes, so. So working for the Guardian, you do these sort of. These Saturday interviews with them. And I remember doing a big Saturday interview with Liz Kendall with my Guardian colleague Patrick Winter. Liz Kendall, who of course went on to get 4.5% of the vote in the contest, but interestingly, sort of got quite a good personal rapport with Jeremy Corbyn. Liz Kendall, basically what she did was gave sort of pure late Blairism to the Labour Party, which the Labour Party didn't quite like, but interestingly, not the Blairism that Tony Blair offer when he became leader in 94, that was like stakeholder and Christian socialism, all that sort of stuff. This was sort of 2005. Here's some really nasty medicine, I'm gonna shove it down your neck. So the Labour Party was not quite ready for that at that stage. But interestingly, her campaign manager was somebody called Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister staff running Downing Street Right now, I went out and did the big Saturday interview with Andy Burnham. Interestingly, Andy Burnham had sort of been sort of of on the left in the Ed Miliband shadow cabinet, but clearly going into the leadership contest, thought, well, I think I might need to have a sort of a wider political canvas. So he then sort of moved a little bit to the center ground. He talked about how he. Do you remember he wouldn't take any money from the unions. And then he did a big launch at the headquarters of ey, lots of sort of shiny glass looking onto the city. I remember talking to one of his supporters there who went by the name of what's called it, Rachel Reeves. What's happened to her in the news. But interestingly so, he sort of moved himself more to the center. And after the welfare vote that we were talking about earlier, that then did leave him very exposed. Yvette Cooper did not exactly have a wildly scintillating start, was seen as a bit of a machine. She'd come from the Gordon Brown wing of the party. But when there was the migration crisis over the summer and there was that terrible, terrible story, do you remember the pict of that baby who was washed up, I think, on a Greek beach, which was just this horrendous moment. Yvette Cooper had such a human reaction to that, that that was the moment that brought her campaign alive. But it was. It was too late for her by then.
- [19:36]
Adam
And were the other three having to respond to Corbyn or did they just plow on with the campaigns that they'd always been planning?
- [19:42]
Jane Merrick
Yeah, it's really interesting, actually, that sort of late campaign. I did an interview with Liz Kendall. It would have been sort of mid August. And she was, I think, probably possibly under Morgan McSweeney's suggestion. Cause he is obviously a great campaign fighter. She started to pitch herself as an outsider candidate. They were trying to tap into this. This sense, albeit from the right of the party, but still, you know, Cooper and Burnham are very establishment. They've been cabinet ministers. I'm the outsider. I'm sort of, you know, here to kind of. To change things. So she pivoted. She did respond. And she was quite dynamic in that sense. And I think, even though, as Nick says, she only got 4.5% of the vote, she was kind of a bit of a really interesting candidate from that point. I mean, she did her first. She was the first to declare early on in May, she did the press gallery lunch in which she sort of paraphrased, can't by Saying that she wanted to promise people somewhere to live, something to hope for, someone to love. And the media were just like, oh, my God, she's amazing. And so she was always that sort of slightly distinctive character. And halfway through the campaign, she was getting these, like, this really personalised attack, basically from the other camps. Now, Burnham and Cooper would say that they had nothing to do with it, but her supporters were trying to portray her as, you know, who was she dating? She wasn't married, she didn't have any children. Yvette Cooper was talking about being a working mum and I think she was sort of slightly unfairly, you know, characterized. And it was really interesting, actually. We talked about Jeremy Corbyn being a human being. He refused to engage in any of this personal tactics, and it was really fascinating. And as Nick says, they did actually establish quite a rapport, even though they were from opposite ends of the party.
- [21:24]
Adam
And then was there a point where the establishment were like, oh, maybe some of you need to drop out so that you can beat Corbin when it became clear that he was going to win?
- [21:33]
Nick Watt
There was very much that going on. I think it was the poll that Jane referred to that just showed the, The. The extent of how far Jeremy Corbyn was ahead. There was. There was a big wobble, wasn't there? There was a big wobble, I think, in the long read about the discussions about whether candidates should drop out. But, I mean, it was. It turned out to be too late. Di was cast.
- [21:54]
Adam
And then in terms of moments in the campaign, there was a quite stark soundbite from Tony Blair, whose legacy was being kind of like, argued about quite vehemently at this point.
- [22:04]
Nick Watt
Yes. So Tony Blair, who'd been pretty troubled by Ed Miliband, who of course had campaigned as the non Tony Blair, the non New Labour candidate, was watching and just, you know, astonished. The part the New labor creation had sort of fallen apart on under Ed Miliband and was clearly going to be trashed to pieces under Jeremy Corbyn. And he famously said that anyone whose heart lay with Jeremy Corbyn's politics should, quote, get a transplant.
- [22:33]
Tony Blair
I've known Jeremy going back over many, many years. I think we both came into Parliament at the same time together. And it's not about. It's not about an individual, it's about a platform that, in the end, wouldn't work for the country. And I want to stress that it's not that it wouldn't win power. I personally think it's unlikely that we would win power. But even if you did it wouldn't be right because it wouldn't take the country forward, it would take it backwards. So that's why it's not the right thing to do. It's not the right thing to do because, you know, this is why when people say, you know, well, my heart says I should really be without politics, well, get a transplant, because that's just dark.
- [23:21]
Nick Watt
That was an absolute gift to Jeremy Corbyn because that was absolutely not the mood of where the party was. And to have an intervention from Tony Blair at a point where the view of the Labour Party was that the Iraq War had been a terrible mistake, literally was a total gift to the Corbyn campaign.
- [23:47]
Adam
So we get to September 12th, it's a Saturday, there's this special conference in London to unveil the result. And the result is Jeremy Corbyn wins 59.5% of the vote, which is 251,417 votes. What was that, that event like, Jane?
- [24:03]
Jane Merrick
Yeah, so I was there, obviously covering it for the Independent on Sunday. I was on the ground in the QE2 center and people were expecting. It was, you know, he was, of course he's going to win. But to win on the first round with 59.5%. Checking through the figures, actually he won 83 of those registered supporters. I mean, that was the sort of the. The, obviously the really influential, significant contribution to his victory. But he still won out of full Labour members as well.
- [24:31]
Adam
And I remember that's 57.6% of them.
- [24:33]
Jane Merrick
Yeah, extraordinary. So, yeah, on the first round as well. I mean, you know, and as we've been talking, Liz Kendall got 4.5%, and then the other two were sort of somewhere in the middle. I went outside and stood outside and we've talked about these rallies that Jeremy Corbyn attended. There were hundreds of people outside the QE2 center. There was a woman, she was brandishing this bunch of. Of M s red roses that she'd bought. They were slightly scruffy, but they were red roses. And it was very sort of, you know, this is Jeremy Corbyn. And I was talking to her and she was saying, this is what we want. This is. You know, I've been a Labour supporter, but I've always backed Jeremy Corbyn's brand of politics. I'm so happy. And they were all waiting after his speech inside, they were waiting for him to come out and address them and he didn't come out. And we were waiting and waiting. And I was sort of thinking, I've got to file my copy. And he'd left by a side exit to go to a pub called the Sanctuary, which is in Westminster, to basically because he didn't want to sort of have the scrum and he didn't want to face sort of the media outside. Cause it would have been a real scrum. And I'm not really sure sort of what the sense was there, but I guess he was showing that he was gonna be doing politics differently. He wasn't going to come, you know, because we were all waiting for him to come out. He wasn't going to do that. So, yeah, he just basically went to the pub.
- [25:50]
Nick Watt
When I was talking to Jeremy Corbyn the other day about that day, he recalled that, that pub, he told me that story about going to the pub and he went there and obviously there was great excitement and he said there were this couple who was sort of sitting there and they said to him, what. What on earth is this? What's going on? So he had to explain to some tourists from Boston what. What was going on. But what was interesting about talking to Jeremy Corbyn about this is he's got so many stories from that day.
- [26:15]
Jane Merrick
Yeah.
- [26:16]
Nick Watt
And he. And as I was saying, his face lit up and he remembers it so vividly. He's talking about how when he was in the room. So what happens is, before the announcement is on the stage, the candidates are brought into a room and they're told the result and they're allowed one person with them. So he had John McDonnell, his old mate, who was his campaign manager, and he said that the results were read out. And he said he literally did it like this. There was some lacklustre clapping from the other candidates. And then Ian McNicoll, who was the General Secretary of the Labour Party, then handed him a piece of paper and said, Jeremy Corbyn, you've got to sign this. You are now taking complete responsibility for the finances and the legal authority over the Labour Party. And that is a legal requirement under the Electoral Commission to do that. And he said, nobody had told me I had to do that.
- [27:03]
Adam
Sign your life away, literally. And then in terms of the actual moment where it's announced in front of the MPs and the other kind of party people who are there in the room. Does he have anything to say about that particular moment?
- [27:14]
Nick Watt
I mean, it was obviously.
- [27:15]
Adam
Or is it for him actually, that it's the moment before that is.
- [27:17]
Nick Watt
Well, he said to me the bit that he really remembered and he was. Was really looking forward to doing because he Knew this was going to really annoy his campaign team was as he was speaking, he said that he was going to say from the podium, and indeed he did. He said, and I'm going to go from here and I'm going to meet a refugee group. And he said as I was doing that, I wasn't looking at the wider royal news. He said, I was looking at my campaign team because they didn't want me to do that, because you're not meant to do that. And he said that is what he did. He went from that room and then he visited, obviously, after the pub, this refugee group.
- [27:54]
Adam
And let's listen to a little bit of Jeremy Corbyn's victory speech.
- [27:57]
Jeremy Corbyn
This election campaign is, as we see here, about shaping our future. Our party is going to, I hope, become more inclusive, more involved, more democratic, and we're going to shape the future of everyone in this country in a way that I think will be remembered as something that is good for everyone, that brings about the justice that we all crave. And that is what brought us into this wonderful party and this wonderful movement ourselves.
- [28:26]
Nick Watt
He made a sort of a wider point about the Labour Party, that he knew from that instant that he was going to have real trouble with the parliamentary Labour Party because he absolutely did not have their support. And he said that as he looked out across the audience, he said, on that day, it felt like, I've just landed on the beach, I. I've walked up the beach and I've looked back and I can't see any supporters. So he knew from that moment there would be trouble with the parliamentary Labour Party.
- [28:57]
Adam
And actually, it would ultimately be him and John McDonnell. He would be the only person he could really, really rely on right till the very end.
- [29:03]
Nick Watt
And Diane Abbott. And Diane Abbott and of course, the Parliamentary Labour Party next year challenged him.
- [29:07]
Adam
Yeah, all happened again with your candidates and the.
- [29:10]
Nick Watt
Yeah, we'll come back and do another one.
- [29:11]
Adam
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that. That was even weirder. And also just the party machinery and the structures weren't ready for him either.
- [29:19]
Jane Merrick
No, I mean, I remember that day that he won. His team were talking about he was only gonna do 1PMQs and 5. And we were going, sorry, what? I mean, it didn't happen in the end, but it was this real sort of, you know, you can, you know, Westminster, we're gonna do things differently. And it was. The media was sort of saying, we can't stand this, this is not normal. It's kind of really weird. But there was also. There was obviously Shadow Cabinet resignations that day, that week. I think Rachel Reeves was one of those who resigned. She was Shadow Work and Pension Secretary, I think. And they were talking about sort of, not those shadow Cabinet members, But the Labour MPs were talking about, we're going to mount a coup by Christmas. And in the end they didn't because, you know, they gave him a bit longer. But as we were saying, there was a sort of an attempted coup a year later because of basic, you know, concerns about the direction of travel. But it failed.
- [30:08]
Adam
I've got a terrible confession to make. While you two were busy writing and reporting on history being made, I was actually on holiday that weekend. And because I work, I didn't work weekends in my job. And I was in the west of Ireland, and at the point Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership contest, I think I was in the most westerly hot tub in Europe, in Dingle, in Ireland.
- [30:29]
Nick Watt
That means you've got the right priorities. I remember when Ian Duncan Smith fell over as Conservative leader, I was at the Guardian and my job was, you know, to report on the Conservative Party and it was obvious that he was in trouble, but I was due to go on the Trans Siberian. All the way across. Yeah, all the way across Russia. And I knew that. I knew this was going to happen. I knew. And I said to my office, I said, look, would you like me to cancel my. My sabbatical? They said, no, no, no, no, don't worry. And I thought, that's how much they value me. But anyway, I was on the transfer when I had done this.
- [31:03]
Adam
And I suppose just before we end, for newscasters who know how this all then pans out, might be listening to us and thinking that we all sound a little bit jolly about all of this, because it actually came with massive consequences for the Labour Party, for lots of people within the Labour Party, particularly Jewish people, and for politics in general. What. What should we say to those. Those newscasters about why we've been. We've sort of had this tone.
- [31:30]
Jane Merrick
It's a really interesting point, actually. I mean, I think. I think it was. It was a really fascinating contest and we all love politics here, so we just love covering politics. And even if you could have, you know, a person can be controversial. It was kind of democracy in action at the time. I mean, this was arguably the most democratic leadership contest that Labour have ever had. It was one member, one vote. There was no more Electoral College. And it was just a great story to follow. So even if you sort of, you know, after his election, there was all those controversies and obviously the anti Semitism scandal was terrible. The election itself was a fascinating piece of just basically a great story. And I think it, you know, in hindsight, it fed into, as I was saying earlier, that feeling of the people wanted change. You know, a year later, we had people voting for a Brexit referendum. So it was just a real moment, I think, in history and fascinating to cover.
- [32:25]
Nick Watt
Adam, I think you're absolutely right to say, wait a minute, there was a huge amount of controversy around this guy. Why are we saying, oh, he was very jolly and he talked about trains and most of the time that Jeremy Corbyn was leader. I was actually at Newsnight, and obviously when I was at the Guardian, at the BBC, I'm impartial, you don't take sides. But I will never forget standing in Parliament Square when there was a protest by members of Britain's Jewish community at the height of the row over antisemitism. Now, you don't take sides when there's a debate. But I just remembered thinking, how is it that there are members of Britain's Jewish community, including good friends of mine, right here, right now, protesting against the leader of the Labour Party? Now, it's not for me to say whether he was right or wrong, but big question marks about how these people who come from across the political spectrum felt so personally and deeply uncomfortable. And so, as Jane says, yeah, we're talking about him in the tone that we are, because it was an extraordinary moment, moment in British political history. It was, of course, a moment that wasn't meant to happen, because you'll remember that Peter Mandelson famously talked about how they'd created a sealed tomb, and the sealed tomb was meant to include the remains of the labor left, but couldn't get out because after the leadership of Neil Kinnick, it was very difficult for candidates of the left to be selected. Diane Abbott used to say, we're meant to be in a sealed tomb. So it was a very big moment that what was not meant to happen happened. And there was this leader who nobody had really taken seriously, had this incredible way of connecting. But you are absolutely right, Adam, to say, wait a minute, there was a lot of controversy there. Can we just consider that for a moment?
- [34:20]
Adam
Well, and I'm glad we have. That was a fascinating walk down memory lane, as you suggested, Nick, maybe the sequel to this should be the next Jeremy Corbyn leadership contest, which, yeah, was very weird, but he also won very convincingly. But it did prove, just like, what a mess the Labour Party was in in Parliament. Jane, thank you so thank you for having me. And Nick, thanks to you too.
- [34:39]
Nick Watt
Thank you for having me too.
- [34:42]
Adam
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Old Newscast. Our next festive installment will focus on another huge political moment. We will be revisiting how Donald Trump became the Republican Party's nominee for president in 2016. That episode will be landing in your feeds very soon.
- [34:59]
Tony Blair
Bye Bye.
- [35:00]
Nick Watt
Newscast Newscast from the BBC well, thank.
- [35:03]
Jeremy Corbyn
You for making it to the end of another Newscast. You clearly ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? And then, without having to do anything else, our meandering chat will miraculously make its way to your phone.
- [35:30]
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