Please note, the answers below are condensed to key points so they won’t be word for word what the candidates said. They are shortened responses and accurate interpretations.
QUESTION 1: How do we stop factionalism?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
Fine to have disagreements but they must be in private, not in pubic
Jess Phillips (JP):
I agree with RLB and we need a broad team
Emily Thornberry (ET)
I agree with RLB
Lisa Nandy (LN)
I agree with JP
Keir Starmer (KS)
I agree with JP and we need to model it from the top
QUESTION 2: How do we deal with Brexit division
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
The Brexit compromise didn’t work. We need a clear vision for the future & a democratic revolution
Jess Phillips (JP):
We look for common ground and we hold the Tories to their promises.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
We need to fight Boris.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
We need to stop the Tories from dividing us.
Keir Starmer (KS)
We can’t let Brexit tear us apart the way Europe tore the Tories apart for 40yrs.
QUESTION 3: What assurances do we have in a post Brexit world?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
Tories have worked to de-industrialise and manage the decline of our cities for years and we no longer have access to EU funds. We must democratise the economy and devolve power to regions and nations instead.
Jess Phillips (JP):
No assurances with Tories in charge & Johnson will try to bribe the north. We must call out his failures at every opportunity.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
We need to hold Johnson to account and fight for a deal that won’t damage the economy.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
Brexit was designed to give power to the Tories. We must give power to the people.
Keir Starmer (KS)
We must fight Johnson on Brexit, understand why people voted to leave and win the argument.
QUESTION 4: How will you beat Boris?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
We need an aspirational socialist government to empower our movement and our communities by driving through democratic reform that helps all the communities we represent.
Jess Phillips (JP):
Intellectual arguments are not enough. Johnson won the election on soundbites like “get Brexit done”. He avoids serious issues like the NHS by distracting us with a campaign for “Big Ben Bongs”. We need to do something bold!
Emily Thornberry (ET)
I’ve shadowed him for 2yrs and I know he’s clueless. He lies his way out of sticky situation and plays politics with people’s lives. We need to expose him!
Lisa Nandy (LN)
We’ll get no help from the media so we need to empower our movement and go out to the country.
Keir Starmer (KS)
We must unite the party and be an effective opposition.
QUESTION 5: How do you counter negative media?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
Don’t pander to the Mail, Sun or Telegraph, they want to destroy the Labour Party. Engage with journalists who will report facts & be more forceful in rebutting smears & lies. We must also fight the insidious Tory social media campaigns & invest more in Labour social media campaigns.
Jess Phillips (JP):
Agrees with RBL and calls for better regulation of social media advertising.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
The media are nasty and like to run smear campaigns. They’ll struggle to find anything on me but if a smear take root then I will resign so it doesn’t impact the party’s chances of winning an election.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
Press always give Labour leaders a hard time. We can’t back down from difficult interviews. We need to rise to the challenge and win the arguments.
Keir Starmer (KS)
We must take on the media but you won’t see me giving an interview to the Sun.
QUESTION 6: How would you rebuild the ‘red wall’?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
We need to get the message right – we’re empowering people by democratising the economy and moving power outside of West Minster. We’ll replace the House of Lords with an elected senate representing all our regions and nations.
Jess Phillips (JP):
We must inspire trust and offer optimism and we must address people’s concerns on the doorstep rather than just present broader intellectual arguments.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
People need to believe we can deliver on our promises and we must address regional concerns.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
We should talk to all parts of Britain. We should empower regional conferences to make their own policies. We can empower CLPs and give them resources to make changes in their communities and we can move Labour HQ out of London.
Keir Starmer (KS)
We need to understand all the reasons why we lost and nurture community spirit but we can’t just rely on the ‘red wall’ to win the next election.
QUESTION 7: Should the next Labour leader be from the North?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
It doesn’t matter if you’re from the North but it helps if you’ve grown up in a deprived area and can appreciate what it means to be disenfranchised and how that impacts a family and community.
Jess Phillips (JP):
People care that you can understand their concerns but they don’t care where you’re from – they wouldn’t have voted for Boris Johnson if they did. They just want more power, good local services and councils that can deliver what they need.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
Southerners understand poverty as well. I grew up on a council estate in Guildford.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
It helps if you can show you’ve got skin in the game but it’s also important that you’re able to talk to everyone and not just the working class.
Keir Starmer (KS)
I’m from London but I speak to people all over the country. They don’t care where you’re from, they care that you hear them when they tell you they need improved infrastructure, good jobs and more power locally.
QUESTION 8: Why did you decide to sign up to the 10 pledges from the Board of Deputies?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
We need the Jewish community to be able to trust us and I don’t have a problem with any of the pledges. We should have an independent process for dealing with claims of anti-Semitism, as well as other forms of discrimination and we need to educate the membership about what is anti-Semitism.
Jess Phillips (JP):
We need a leader prepared to speak out about anti-Semitism and I don’t believe all of the candidates here are prepared to do that as they haven’t done so before. If Jews are scared of the Labour Party winning an election then we need to sign up to pledges and we need independent scrutiny. We lost the moral high ground on fighting racism over our failure to handle anti-Semitism in the Labour party.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
Anti-Semitism is a societal problem but we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We can still be critical of Netanyahu’s far-right government but we can’t blame all Jews for that. We should kick out anti-Semites just like we kicked out Oswald Moseley in 1937.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
When Jewish MPs called for the party to adopt the IHRA rules, the response from the Labour leadership was to say ‘we know better than you’. As Chair of Labour friends of Palestine I know you can fight for the recognition of Palestine while also defending the right of Israel to exist. The collective failure of the leadership has let us all down. We need to get our house in order and we start by signing up to these pledges.
Keir Starmer (KS)
You can criticise Israeli policies without being anti-Semitic and anti-Semites don’t belong in our party. My tests for whether or not we’ve managed to deal with anti-Semitism is when people who left the party over anti-Semitism feel comfortable enough to re-join and when people are no longer put off from voting Labour over concerns about anti-Semitism.
QUESTION 9: What manifesto pledges would you keep and what was hardest to sell?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
I wrote many of the policies in that manifesto and yes it was a long term plan but clearly we were were unable to deliver the message on how we could improve people’s lives.
Jess Phillips (JP):
We didn’t have enough on crime & security. The Green Industrial Revolution was good. The broadband policy was the wrong priority.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
I didn’t disagree with any of the policies but we were overly ambitious with a 15yr plan and overwhelmed people by cramming too much into the manifesto. Best policy was on tackling the issues with social care.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
We failed to tackle social security. This would have given us an opportunity to immediately improve people’s lives by putting money back into their pockets.
Keir Starmer (KS)
Yes, the manifesto was overloaded and people couldn’t take it all in but don’t trash the current Labour leadership or the last 4yrs. It was Jeremy Corbyn who made us the anti-austerity party, stood up against cuts and talked about investing in public services and he was the one who gave us the party of the Green New Deal.
QUESTION 10: How would you deal with the current climate crisis?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
We pledged a green industrial revolution in our manifesto. It can be our NHS moment – something we can deliver to the world that can produce the industries of the future.
Jess Phillips (JP):
I like the Green New Deal. We can turn a crisis into an opportunity to create new jobs.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
We need to take the lead on an international Green New Deal
Lisa Nandy (LN)
We can provide tax breaks to encourage investment that allows young people to design the clean energy of the future. We need tougher environmental standards and we need to empower communities so they can tackle the climate crisis locally.
Keir Starmer (KS)
The world came together to work for peace after WWII and we can do it again now to fight the climate crisis. We can devise standards, binding requirements and have greater accountability and the UK can take the lead just as we did before.
QUESTION 11: What keeps you up at night?
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
Inequality and climate crisis, trying to find a way to convince people our policies are sensible and credible, can transform our economy and have already been adopted by other countries, who don’t see them as left wing or crazy but simply as what’s expected of a civilised society.
Jess Phillips (JP):
Some of the horrific, criminal, things I witnessed when I ran a refuge happened because of inequality in society that made it harder to see certain victims. We did what we could to fight the Tory welfare system and get them the help they needed but I still had a victim tell me she was going to vote for Boris Johnson. Clearly we’re not reaching people who desperately need our help.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
I see families in my constituency every day who are struggling with housing and other issues, just as my family did, and I can’t help them. We can’t help them until we can win an election.
Lisa Nandy (LN)
Rough sleeping, ambulances backed up at hospitals, collapsed public services, unemployment and I don’t want my kid to have to wait years before he sees the next Labour government.
Keir Starmer (KS)
The frustration of being in opposition because we can’t tackle any of the issues facing our communities while we’re not in government.
FINAL STATEMENTS:
Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB):
We can’t afford to be despondent. We’re facing a climate crisis, a crisis in underfunded public services, a broken economy and the resurgence of right wing populism. This demands a response! We urgently need to rebuild, empower our members and our regions and we need to campaign year round. I believe that the welfare of the people is the highest law!
Jess Phillips (JP):
Taking the easy option will keep us in opposition for another 10yrs. To win an election we need to offer an optimistic vision of the future that people can believe in. I want to us to celebrate immigration, to provide cradle to grave care for everyone and to not turn our back on Europe. I want us to be able to lead the world in tackling the climate crisis and I think it’s time we stopped playing it safe and spoke the truth.
Emily Thornberry (ET)
We should stop debating whether the party needs to move left or right and start talking about who can move us forward and take the fight to Boris. I’ve taken him on many times at the despatch box and I’ve exposed him as a reckless, lying, charlatan. I represented the miners in the 80’s, marched against the Iraq war and argued for justice for Palestine and Yemen. Now I want to be the woman who leads the fight back against Johnson!
Lisa Nandy (LN)
We need to stop doing what we’ve been doing for 15yrs because we’ve lost ground as a result. We need to stop picking sides and try to represent everyone. We must stop running away from fights and run towards them instead.
Keir Starmer (KS)
We need to be as ambitious as the Attlee government of the 40’s. We can fight for a better future by tackling injustice and inequality and, with your support, I think we can do that.
