 We were talking to some of our friends when we were on our way here and our friends have been in Rajava. And when we told them we were on our way to interview you, they wanted us to pass on a message which is that you have their full support over in Rajava. Is the feeling mutual? Of course. And thank you very much for that. And the Turkish incursion, well, invasion actually is called it what it is, is utterly appalling. And there has to be real pressure for an immediate ceasefire withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria but above all long-term protection for the Kurdish people. And I've been involved with Kurdish communities for decades. Kurdish people were badly treated at the end of the First World War and have been badly treated ever since in Iraq, in Iran, in Turkey and in Syria. And there has to be a recognition of the rights of Kurdish people to their own self-determination. One of the things to me which has been quite disappointing about the government's response, particularly from Dominic Robbs, that they keep talking about disappointment. They're disappointed that Turkey has pursued this course of action. I feel disappointed when I miss my bus. It seems to me that the government isn't interesting in applying the kind of pressure that Turkey has. How about using words like appalled? What's happened is the US, I think, gave the green light for Turkey to do this and that's why Turkey has now gone over the border and doing such awful things to the Kurdish people there. And as I said, there has to be a future for Syria which recognises the rights of all of the people of Syria. One of the things that I've always wanted to ask you is what was your politicisation like? What was the moment that switched you on and made you want to become politically active? There's never any one thing, I suppose. I was very angry about the Vietnam War when I was at school. This was the 60s. I left school in 1967 and I remember taking part in protests against the Vietnam War and we had things in my class at school debates about it and I was usually in a minority of one. Sometimes two, but it was not... I wasn't popular with my views on Vietnam War. They all bought the view that there was going to be an avalanche of communist conquests all over the world if Vietnam didn't stand up against the tide. Seriously, that was the narrative. And so that politicised me quite a lot. I also got involved with war on want at that time when I was at school and then I went to live in Jamaica as a volunteer and that taught me far more than I taught anybody else about the lives of people, the hopes, the aspiration. And I started an interest then in Caribbean and African history because it was a time of liberation in the sense of liberation of the mind of school children and others learning the history of the Caribbean, the history of the slave trade, the history of the abolition of the slave trade, the Morante Bay rising and all of that taught me a lot. And then I came back to Britain two years later, worked in various places and so on and then became active politically in North London in trade unions and anti-racist campaigning and dealing with issues of bad housing and poverty and then became a councillor. My big campaign to become a councillor was to oppose the demolition of three roads around Finsbury Park and we won and those roads are still there. Indeed, I cycled down them this morning. And it's kind of nice when you cycled down this road I think actually, we did something here. And it's a nice community and the idea was to demolish it and build a council housing estate. Now, obviously I want to build council housing but I wanted to refurbish what was there. The council owned all pretty well the houses anyway and we won on that case. My mum remembers you from when you were a Haringeyer councillor. Because you helped her book rooms for when she was doing anti-racist meetings and the like. Oh, in the Civic Centre and so on. So it was a huge anti-racist movement in North London and we organised a big demonstration against the National Front in 1977, St George's Day in 1977 on Duckett's Common Turnpike Lane. Bernie Grant and myself were the primary organisers of it with others but we did put the work in if you like. And I remember getting calls from the Labour Party head office in other places saying, can you call this demonstration off? It's going to cause a lot of trouble and so on and so on and so on. And so I said, no, it's going ahead. We're having the demonstration. The only way to deal with fascists is to stop them. And we did organise this demonstration. Thousands of people came. The National Front tried to squeeze through and then they tried the same thing in Lewisham a few weeks later. But it was the growth of a huge anti-racist movement which your mum was absolutely part of. And it was more than just a demonstration. It was uniting people from all sorts of different communities. So we had the what was then the Haringale-Abern movement, anti-racist, anti-fascist group which used to meet on Sunday nights. And it was actually coming together of all of the communities across the borough so it dealt with issues of stop and search. It dealt with issues of young black kids on Borough of Farmer State. All those issues came together. Yeah, so it's Dorie Kinnick's work and monitoring group at the time as well. Absolutely. And so it was fascinating the way we brought people together. And the political legacy of that, you keep meeting with us, oh yeah, I remember you from so and so, I remember so and so there. And so what happens is when people come together on a specific and limited campaign, you never know where it's going to lead to. Those connections that are made and achieving things together empowers people. I mean, this is something that I want to think about in relation to today's context because Labour talk a lot about the real division in this society being between the many and the few, those who live off wealth versus those who survive off work. But there is also this very deep conflict of political values. And sometimes that is expressed as a generational thing. So you've got very, very angry middle-aged men. Piers Morgan is their king. They hate Greta Thunberg. They hate the idea of transgender rights. They think my generation are a bunch of over-sensitive, closeted snowflakes. How do you plan on winning the culture war? Well, I'm not sure it's a cultural war. I think it's an issue about values you want and what you want in society. And so when I get people saying to me well, does your party speak for me or not? I said, well, actually, do you want your kids, they often have children, to get a university education or a good apprenticeship? Do you want your grandchildren to get a nursery? Do you want social housing for the future? Do you want a health service for the future? Or do you believe in the idea that somewhere or other, your brilliance as an individual is going to make it okay for you and the rest of your family? Because in any society, if you have everything competitive, there are losers as well as winners. And I think you can bring people together on those issues. And so having been involved in community action all my life, I'll give you another example. It was a proposal to build a grade-separated road, virtually motorway-standard road, through North London. I opposed that from the very beginning and I was chair of the Public Works Committee and the Planning Committee of Haringey and was very active in opposing it. I was, again, in a minority on this for a long time. I said, no, it's obvious. There's more cars, you've got to widen the road. I said, no, it's obvious. There's more cars because there's bad public transport, but you need these better public transport and cleaner air and you'll get that, not by widening roads, but by shifting the argument around. Immediately, the argument is a very difficult one to put through. After a while, it becomes a very strong and very obvious argument and so, yes, you have to meet people where they are and try and take them to a better place. But how do you have those difficult conversations? Maybe when you're out on the doorstep and you're face-to-face with someone who looks at you and sees your part of that social force which is taking this country to the docks, how do you deal with those real differences and political values as well as talking about material circumstances? Who's taking the country to the docks? A government that supports tax havens, supports tax evasion, allows Facebook to get away with paying more 28 million pounds in tax on a one and a half billion turnover. Hello? Math shows me they're not paying very much and do you really want a society which plans for the increasing numbers of rough sleeping homeless? Do you really want a society where your kids are gonna be 60K in debt because they've gone to university? And so you have to say to people there are also issues about how you spend public money and we're not gonna increase taxation for the vast, vast majority of people but we are gonna increase taxation for big corporations, we are gonna increase taxation for the very richest, yeah, we're gonna do that and it's the only way forward and then you go into the issues of public ownership. I remember when Thatcher was busy promoting privatization of everything, they'd said these themes that were used were setting the people free by privatizing these industries. Thomas Cook was privatized. A load of money was made by a small number of people out of Thomas Cook. Eventually an awful lot of people lost their jobs because of the collapse of Thomas Cook. The water industry was entirely privatized, what happened? Prices went up, leakage rates went up, properties were sold off, jobs were lost and a contract culture was introduced. What's happened as a result of that? Massive losses of water for an expensive water service. Well, this is the problem with neoliberalism, eventually run out of other people's assets. But the other argument I'd use is the levels of debt in our society are huge. If you look at savings levels, they're quite low compared to many other countries, personal savings, personal debt levels are very high and for middle-aged and older people, they're now getting more deeply into debt than ever before. Because their children can't get anywhere to live, either need a few thousand for a deposit on a private rented flat, if they can get one, or if they're trying to buy a place, they need massive support in order to get a deposit to buy somewhere. Or if they're going to uni, they need money for that because of the levels of fees and the costs of it. And then you have another problem, if you're sort of 50 to 60 year old, you've got children going through college or uni. You've often got older parents who need social care, which you've also got to pay for. So you've got this massive debt burden being imposed on a generation that thought they were moving towards retirement who would be relatively comfortable. Why? Because of the way, we've rolled back the public realm because the way in which we privatized so many services and cut them back. And so what would Labour do? Invest, yes, in jobs and so on for the future through the Green Industrial Revolution, but we'd also be properly funding social care and properly funding education. Being in opposition is one thing and governing is quite another. Do you think that there is a risk when you walk into number 10 of being co-opted by the very establishment you've spent your whole political life fighting against? There's going to be huge pressures. I fully understand that. There's going to be enormous pressures on our government because it will be a radical government. The way in which we campaign now and the way in which we'll conduct ourselves in the election will be about mobilizing people to achieve that change. I'm not into top-down decision-making. I'm much more into the power and strength of grassroots democracy. Is there going to be pressures on our government? Yeah, of course there's going to be enormous pressures. I fully understand that and expect to meet those. And we'll meet those, I hope, by maintaining and increasing the popular support for what we're trying to achieve. Because what happens to the movement? Because if I listen to the Daily Mail, I think that the movement is just a bunch of hard-left, thuggish, nutcases, I mean, wood that they were. And sometimes I wonder if actually we're more glorified door-knockers. How does the movement function when you're in power? Very good point. We have a very strong and big movement at the moment, which are obviously knocking on doors and campaigning and mobilizing people. But the whole point of community organizing in the Labour Party is not just about door-knocking. It's also about those collective conversations and debates in communities. It's also about empowering people, often at a very local level. I was at an event in Putney with a group of people in one block of flats. That block of flats is very badly managed by a particular housing association. The tenants had got together, formed a tenants association and were taking the landlord to task. But the interesting thing was they said, do you know what we feel empowered by doing this? And they were people who thought they had no voice and had no rights. And so it is about changing the culture of the way things happen in society. And so our strength in going into government will be that we want to build more housing, we'll want education and so on. I want those people to be involved in developing those education policies and national education service, water services, environmental impact and so on. And so this movement isn't going to go away. It's going to be stronger, more involved in delivering. So it won't be me or John or Diane or whatever that delivers everything. It'll be all of us. I've got some quickfire questions for you. Oh dear, this sounds complex. It won't be too taxing, I promise. Okay, I'll give it a go. You are rumoured to be a Republican and you are definitely a critic of the Murdoch-owned press. Where do you stand in the war between Prince Harry and the Red Tops? Good luck, Meghan and Harry. Good luck, we're having Meghan and Harry. That is no, no, it's no but... No, the point is that there's been an intrusion in lives and the Red Tops media have got to understand that we're going to legislate for Levison too. We're going to... This invasion of privacy of people, yes, there is a right to know in the sense of if somebody is up to no good and is in a public position. But there isn't a right to interfere and intrude into people's private lives. There isn't a right to phone tap on people's private conversations. And I've got actually a lot of sympathy with what Meghan said and the way she said it. I mean, speaking of salacious gossip, what is the best rumour you've ever read about yourself? Oh, it's got to be the one about me and the pogo stick as a kid. What? I didn't hear this about pogo stick. I thought you were going to say Czech spy. Well, the Czech spy was so... Exciting. Well, it was so ridiculous as well. What was the stuff about the pogo stick? The pogo stick, it's a shocking story, but it's a total fabrication invention. It is claimed that as a young person growing up in rural Shropshire, I was given a pogo stick for Christmas. Not true. I apparently used this non-existent pogo stick to go jumping down the road on Christmas day. As you would with your new Christmas present of your pogo stick. And there was a family across the road, apparently, where they had just got a baby rabbit, which had been a Christmas present for this little girl. And she was very proud of her Christmas rabbit, which again is unusual, slightly unlikely, but there you go. And apparently I came jumping down the road like this with my pogo stick. And I was so skilled with the pogo stick, I was able to jump on and sadly bring about the end of the rabbit's life. You murdered a rabbit with a pogo stick. It was alleged I murdered the rabbit with a pogo stick. I just have to say, it's absolutely untrue. There was no rabbit, no pogo stick. There was no rabbit, there was no pogo stick. And the comment from the paper was that this woman who had given the stories of paper and her sister said, my sister sometimes gets a bit odd with her memories. I mean... But it was front page. That's wild. Yeah, it was. In some ways I'm disappointed that it's not true. It would have been a sort of character... It'd be a bit cruel, wouldn't it? Come on, pogo stick killed a rabbit. I once had a... You can't do that. Have you done it? Did you have a pogo stick? I did not have a pogo stick, but when I was in the show... So no rabbit's got killed by you? No rabbit, but I did... The hamster was merely stunned. It wasn't killed, but I was a kid and a friend's hamster bit into my finger and wouldn't let go. And so I was a kid, so I panicked so I just went like that and it... The wall. I had a dog that did that once. I think a dog was getting short-sighted later in life. And so I would hold a stick up like this, you see. The dog would jump and it was quite fun, really. Grab the stick and then run off with the stick. Sometimes brought it back, sometimes didn't. That was fun. So I held this out. Anyway, the dog sort of misjudged the position and clamped its jaws on my hand instead. Oh, God. Did you need a rabies shot after that? Very clean dog. Oh, I mean, you've got more faith than I do. Final question. But the same dog got in trouble in a pond once and I had to strip off, dive in, and swim out to save it. So that was your Mr. Darcy moment? Epping forest. Oh, my God, that's cold. Well, it was New Year's Day, but the dog had to be saved. I'd have been like, you know what, Rover, you made your choice. I'll make mine. I'm dry. No, you wouldn't. Yeah, heartless. No, you wouldn't. You would have done the same as me. I would have maybe asked someone else to go swimming in a cold pond. But final question. Final question. What if there's nobody there to go swimming in a cold pond? You know, it's sad to lose a dog, but some things are all as well, you know. Why, what can you do? It's also the mulch between your toes going into a pond. That would freak me out. Didn't it freak you out? It was cold. So you can even feel what was between your toes. It was cold. No. It was cold, yeah, yeah. But final question. If you weren't the leader of Her Majesty's opposition, would you be on bail with the rest of Extinction Rebellion right now? I'd be with Extinction Rebellion whether I'm in arrest or not. I don't know, but I'd certainly be... I do support them. I support what they've done because they've actually woken people up, woken people up, and I think the community as a whole has begun to understand this, that what we're doing to this planet is destroying biodiversity, making the climate warmer, melting the ice caps, polluting so much. There isn't a solution. I'm running away. There's nowhere else to go. That sort of back to the land green movement of the 60s and 70s is simply not a tenable option. The only option is using the technology we've got to use less energy, to make our buildings more efficient, make our transport more efficient, and also look at our agriculture and the systems that go with it to increase biodiversity at the same time, ensure a food production. So I want to lead a government that will work for, with and enhance the Paris Climate Change Accords and have a trade policy that supports human rights and environmental protections all around the world. None of it's going to be easy. Everything's going to be very, very difficult. But the public awareness now of the climate emergency is so real. That day, in September, when there were hundreds, thousands of demonstrations all around the world, it's a wake-up call for all of us. So you're saying you might not be on bail because you might not have been arrested? I don't know what would happen, but... You're a quick mover. The cuffs wouldn't have gotten on you. I can get around if I have to. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure, as always. Pleasure to be here. Please don't nationalise us when you're in number 10. We like being in number 10. You don't want to be nationalised. We're going to be too busy dealing with mail, rail, water and the national grid. OK, well, and then we'll... So you'll be OK. Save us for your second term in office. You'll be OK. Thank you so much. Thank you. Cheers.