 We've got you fresh off the leadership campaign. What was your, do you want to explain what your, your role was on the, on the Becky Long Bailey campaign? So I was brought in early January to head up communications. So in my team was obviously we did press digital communications. We did events, events fell under my team as well. And really I was involved from the, what was the early stages of the campaign, building up the campaign team and, you know, working on messaging, working on interventions, strategic interventions that were made throughout the campaign. So yes, it's been very, very long campaign. Obviously it's been a long three months, very intense and very, very unique and unusual circumstances, I would say, particularly for the left. I don't think we've been in this position before where we've just lost very badly in a general election and having to deal with the consequences of that for the, you know, in terms of the political context and where we go from there. And it's been a learning curve, I think, from, from my perspective. I think we made some mistakes in how we read the Labour membership. I mean, these are the things that I've learned in the campaign. And I think it's really important that the left learns the right lessons. And I think that Jeremy Corbyn won in 2015 because he was the only anti-austerity candidate. And because he was the only anti-austerity candidate, he was able to unite the soft left and the hard left and the paper members. And the paper members, they want to win an election, they're broadly left-wing, they're anti-austerity, you know, they're social democrats. And he was, Jeremy Corbyn, was the only person standing up for social democracy in that 2015 leadership contest. And then I think this time around, the soft left and the paper members, they sort of grew, obviously, disaffected and disillusioned with the left, with Corbynism as a project. Corbynism, from their perspective, ended on the 13th of December. And that project ended, and it was time for something new from that, from then on. And I just want to just read out a couple of things like, but I think illustrate this very well. So this is from YouGov polling in December of Labour members. So 44% of Labour members think, thought that Labour should be more centrist. 32% had no preference, 14% don't know. But this was a crucial one. Do you think Corbynism or Jeremy Corbyn's leadership changed the party for the better? Only 12% said yes, changed the party for the worse, 56%. So the reason I'm telling you this is because I think it's really important that the people have recognised that this wasn't a case of just Jeremy Corbyn handing the baton to the next leader, the next person that he wanted to succeed in. We just lost the general election. And I think that the campaign really was, it was difficult to mobilise people because we were trying to appeal to the soft left. And we had to appeal to the soft left because as I just illustrated with that polling, we'd lost them quite badly. Jeremy Corbyn's coalition had splintered and fractured. So I think by focusing the campaign on trying to appeal to the soft left, we didn't mobilise enough people. So that's my kind of analysis is, you know, Jeremy Corbyn mobilised a lot of people, people knew what his politics were. He's been around for decades. They knew what he stood for. And he was able to bring that coalition together. And I think it was very difficult in the current context to do the same thing. I just want to focus on that polling, first of all, because was that a private poll? No, I hadn't seen that before. That was in the public, you got polling. But seriously, only 12% of people thought that Corbyn and Corbynism made the Labour Party better, who were Labour members. Yes, exactly. So that was what we did. That's very damning, in fact. Well, exactly. And this is the thing. And, you know, I don't necessarily agree with that. But this is how people were feeling after the election. People were going through a grieving process. And people were thinking, I don't want that to ever happen again. I don't want to ever lose an election again. Of course, you will lose elections, general elections. But people were feeling in that moment. You know, they wanted to grasp for something that seemed to make sense in the context of trying to win an election. And look, Keir Starmer, I think our campaign succeeded in making sure that he made commitments, those 10 commitments, on policy that we can now hold him to. And I think that, you know, on a policy level, he was, I think he appealed to most members. Most Labour members are probably in that kind of ballpark on a policy level. I thought they run a very good campaign. I spoke to Simon Fletcher after. I congratulated them on the campaign, obviously. And Ben Nunn, who's just been made director of communications, you know, they're going to do, I wish them all the best. You know, the last thing they need is people sniping at them. But I think that in that moment after the election, I think we underestimated as a movement how many people in the Labour Party, how many Labour members were ideological socialists. I think we overestimated how many were ideological socialists. And I think we, after 2017, we overestimated in the country the appeal of democratic socialism. And I think that where we were in 2017 was probably about where the country was. And I felt like in 2019, we perhaps had an offer, had a manifesto that was a bit like if we'd been in government for two years. So, I mean, here going back a little bit on those things, it probably resonates with the members not going as far as 2019. I think that's probably where most of the members are. So what I'm saying is, look, we've got a leader now we can work with. I think, you know, there will be opportunity to influence and there will be an opportunity to scrutinise on a policy level. And I think that the right of the party is going to marginalise itself. It's going to keep throwing stones and keep briefing the press and negatively and undermining the whole project. And whereas on the left, I think it's so important that we just respect the outcome of the vote. Keir One, we respect votes, we respect the legitimacy of his leadership, work with him and rebuild those alliances with the soft left. Because I think that is so important now, is that we don't let the Blairites back in. Matt, does it sort of, I mean, for me, I hear all of that and I agree with pretty much all of it. But do you not think there's a kind of basic, there was a basic failure with the campaign, which perhaps you've already highlighted about the need to reach out to the soft left, which was that it just wasn't exciting. Keir Stammer was never going to make it an exciting campaign and Rebecca Longbailey failed to make it an exciting campaign. And actually something quite dull and predictable, always suited him, was played to his strengths. And I do wonder, I completely understand, I think Rebecca Longbailey was never going to and I would agree with that conclusion. And I think that the idea, if she pitched herself as a continuity Corbyn candidate, she wouldn't have won either. But for me it was, why should she be any more continuity Corbyn than Keir Stammer? Keir Stammer had a more senior role. She's younger, she's a woman. She's got great green credentials. You could have had a very shiny, happy, high energy launch, lots of young people, green politics, new economy, excitement. And people wouldn't even be talking about Jeremy Corbyn. And so I wonder if, I agree with you, if you run as a continuity Corbyn candidate, that's precisely what's going to happen. But in the absence of offering something new and exciting, your opponents did that anyway. Do you think that was something of an issue? Shouldn't really hit the ground running? There wasn't that energy? And if so, why was that? Well, first of all, continuity Corbyn wasn't something that we, wasn't like a message that we had crafted. It was a label that was attributed to her, which I thought was very unfair from the start. And it was something that we did our best to push back on. But I think in terms of the launch, the actual official launch of the campaign, I thought that was actually probably one of the better moments of the campaign. But it was high energy. It was a lot of young people. It looked slick. It was well put together. It was a series of very, very good broadcast clips. You did very good sit down interviews from on a comms level on a political level. I thought it was very, very effective. And actually it reset the campaign because it did, as you said, it did get off to a slower start because obviously she had not been planning a leadership run. She was still thinking about it over Christmas. It's a massive undertaking and a massive commitment. And, you know, I don't blame anyone for thinking very carefully about whether they want to do it. But Keir Starmer was obviously planning his campaign quite a lot in advance of the general election. And that showed. And he was able to get off to a flying start, launched a very, very good video that addressed a lot of the concerns that the members might have had with him. And look, I mean, I think we did everything we could in announcing things that were radical and exciting, like open selections, BBC reform. We announced party democracy reforms. We announced things that we were going to do in the party to try and win an election, like change the whole approach to communications and how the party relates to people and members and communities, reset the relationship with the trade union movement. Like there were lots of things that were good and quite radical. But you can only announce them, I'm sure they get good showing in the press and in broadcast. But if they don't cut through to people, which is going the next level, that suggests that there just isn't the enthusiasm for the contest. And I think that's what we suffered from is there wasn't people willing to engage. People were just feeling really defeated. They were feeling deflated about the whole thing. I just want to say two things, just as an appendage to what you just said, Matt. So there was, from the sounds of it, and this is what I've heard elsewhere, there was succession planning from the leader's office in terms of what happens next after December result. No, there wasn't. There was no succession planning. No. You would say that was one of the major reasons why Keir Starmer came out of the blocks, neutralised the criticisms in a way that Rebecca Lomberty... So already she was starting from a difficult position because Labour losing. And then that absence of a succession plan kind of sealed the deal. Yes. So people thought we might have a chance at one stage of catching up was a real testament to her and to the team because we really... In the early stages, there was nothing. We got everything up and running and it looked like a decent campaign. The launch was great, yeah, I remember. And I thought she did a series of very, very good interviews where she came across very well. I thought she... I think she's very capable, she's intelligent, she's across the detail, which is good. A good candidate, a very good person to work with. But Keir was way ahead and he was way ahead because he had the infrastructure in place and he had the people in place and he had the money. And that was what we were trying to nail him on. We were saying, you know, surely the candidates should have to disclose what their donors are. Now, not only was there not a succession plan, the rules of the game weren't exactly in our favour as well. We were accused in the beginning of being in with the bureaucracy of the party and all this kind of stuff, and you're the kind of chosen campaign and all this stuff, which was complete nonsense because if that was true, then they would have said that all candidates have to declare their donors up from. And then that would have been actually quite helpful because they were not just helpful to us on a cynical level, but also fair, I think, and members have a right to know that stuff. I think that 12% was the general public. I've just looked it up. The link come on it, say, I think it's the general public, only 12% think he changed the party for the better and 56% for the worse. Labour members, it's 27%. Labour members, okay, so that's still not great. Changed the party for the worse, 36%. Oh, and that's Labour members who think it was changed the party for the worse. Yes. So even among Labour members, they're not particularly enamoured with Corbynism at this point in time. And the more centrist is 44% public, 43% Labour members. So there's very little difference there. You see, it's such a broad category. I like the idea of Labour being more rhetorically centrist. I like the idea of Labour wearing nice suits and going, we just want to just calm things down, reset the economy, and maybe being rhetorically radical isn't a thing. I think that was one of the successes of the 2017, like you say, the manifesto. It just tapped into a common sense and people were, yeah, why don't we do that already? Is that centrism? I don't know. Yeah, no, exactly. I think that there's a difference between being centrist on a kind of ideological level on the spectrum of like, in case there was that social economic liberalism and where the public centre of gravity is. I mean, most people would say I'm a centrist because they see themselves as the arbiter of common sense. And that is sort of the proxy, right? So, yeah, it's things that are radical but seem reasonable to the public and radical given where we are. So, like, yeah, not taxing corporations the level that they were taxed in 2011 isn't radical. It's pretty reasonable and reasonable to most people. But given where we were, it was kind of quite a radical shift. It was like increasing it by a substantial amount. Equally, free tuition fees isn't particularly radical. It's the case across Europe. And this was some of the things Becky was trying to say in the campaign is that we need to articulate what we stand for and we need to articulate our vision for the country in terms that don't frighten people, in terms that do appeal to people's sense of what's to be expected. What do you think is next for the Labour left then? I mean, I think some of those conclusions you've come out with, they're quite strong. It feels like you know why you think Rebecca Longbailey sort of lost the campaign which is that actually, I mean, this is something we've talked about on the show in terms of Bernie Sanders also not winning the Democratic primary and excellent candidate, is that maybe, well, the public let alone the members aren't as far left as, you know, people like us on Navarra Media might have hoped they were. So, if that is the conclusion you've come to what role do you think the Labour left do play in the Labour Party now? How do you see the left organising what role do they have? How do you think a momentum, for example, should relate to a leader like Keir Starmer? Well, I think the left has to support the leadership and it doesn't mean that uncritically, it doesn't mean uncritically support it and come what may on everything it does but support trying to attain the Labour government. And not be wreckers and contribute constructively, be as constructive as possible and contribute ideas. And I think those ideas, you know, for example, Jonathan Reynolds is going to be the shadow DWP secretary, he's in favour of universal basic income, like I think they're going to be receptive to radical ideas. I think this is very, very different to Ed Miliband. Ed Miliband, he still had the Blairites kicking about and he had to accommodate them. And I don't feel like Keir has felt like he's had to accommodate them to the extent that Ed Miliband had to. I don't think he wanted to. So I think it's a very, very different story now and we are still influential in this context. But if we marginalise ourselves, we won't be. So I think we have to contribute constructively and be as constructive as possible and, as I say, rebuild that alliance with the soft left. Was that a conscious reason why Rebecca Long-Bailey was so rarely sort of even let alone a tactually barely criticised Keir Starmer? So one of the things I thought in terms of that would have made her victory more likely would have been, for example, if, say, she jumped on Keir Starmer when in the morning he said he wouldn't speak to the Sun during a Labour leadership election and then in the afternoon said he would do after a Labour leadership election. And I thought at the time Rebecca Long-Bailey should really be going, Keir Starmer is a flip-flopper over this. But there is, you know, the alternative position, I suppose, is that if she already saw the writing on the wall and saw that Keir Starmer was going to lead this particular race then she didn't want to make an enemy of him given that she knew he was ultimately at some point not going to be her boss and going to decide whether or not she'd be in the shadow cabinet and whether or not he would embrace the left or see them as an enemy. Was that potentially why Rebecca Long-Bailey held her tongue? I don't think so. I think it was more... She was reluctant to do attack. For many of the same reasons Jeremy was, which is that particularly attacking on her own side didn't feel comfortable doing that. Didn't feel comfortable attacking other candidates. So I think that's fair enough. In a leadership context, particularly when you're seen as the continuity candidate of the bureaucracy in the leader's office even if there was no succession plan, you're seen as that to... I think there was a feeling of like we're going to put forward a positive vision. We're not going to attack the other... I don't know, it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel right at the Hustings to do it. The Hustings were not set up for that kind of antagonism. It didn't feel right to do it in the press and I felt like Keir was running a positive campaign and they did a good job of that and if we're attacking him it can look a bit desperate. I've got two questions for you, Matt. Quickly, do you think aspirational socialism was a good frame? That's the first one. And then secondly, do you think that there was a failure generally with the campaign and so much as... Very quickly, Lisa and Andy got to represent herself as the candidate for the non-London members, the non-metropolitan members, sort of in touch with working class, Labour supporters, voters. Got an endorsement from the NUM. Got an endorsement from the GMB. I saw that all happening and I just thought this should all be happening for Rebecca Long-Bailey. Maybe not the actual endorsement from the GMB but it seemed to me that there was an attempt to frame Rebecca Long-Bailey as the kind of young, millennial momentum candidate, which is great. You need that. You need to map those people. But at the same time, there wasn't an attempt to reach out to the other parts of his vote, which really matter. You've already said the soft left, but also older people who might be in leave voting seats where the CLP has just been through thick and thin together, where there's a very different political economy, a very different political conversation to Manchester, to Brighton, to London. So those are two questions. The aspirational socialism one and then the younger metropolitan demographic. So, first of all, the NUM is about 10 old blokes sitting in someone's front room. It was symbolic, wasn't it? It was symbolic though, wasn't it? Okay, fine. But I wouldn't read too much into the NUM and the GMB were not hugely supportive of the Green New Deal and that kind of green radicalism that Rebecca wanted to represent. So I think that those things have to be taken into account and it was actually pretty inevitable that Lisa would get the GMB nomination. I would say as well though that Lisa was in a unique position in the race, particularly in the final three because she wasn't having to or feeling like she was having to defend the previous leadership. So she did have this kind of freedom, I think. It looked like a freedom to say what she wanted and she looked more like the straight talking on his politics candid, which is the space that Jeremy occupied in 2015. But if you are the establishment, if you are the bureaucracy, if you do represent what you have to be accountable for, the decisions that were taken by the leadership, it's very difficult to do that. We weren't outsiders, we weren't insurgents. We were running a very, very different campaign to Jeremy in 2015 and Jeremy in 2016 and we had to. And it was about the context and I think that people have to bear that in mind. Jeremy was the right person to lead the Labour Party in 2015 and he was the right person to lead the Labour Party in 2016 and Labour members, that's why they voted for it. But I feel like the context changes. Things move on and I think Jeremy Corbyn was the person who had the best chance of winning that election in 2017 of all the candidates that stood in 2015. Obviously more than Owen Smith. I think his brand of insurgent anti-establishment politics nearly did the job in 2017. And I think it's come very, very close basically. In 2020, we're in a different world now. We've lost the general election. Members are looking for something different and I think we have to recognise that. We can't just keep running the same campaign again and again. We've got a couple of questions I want to throw in from the audience. Spiritual human asks, was RLB campaign consciously or by consequence of just running, making sure Keir Starmer expressed socialist credentials thereby pushing his campaign more left than it may have wanted? And Derby PA asks, will we ever get to know who funded Sir Starmer? I might just jump in on that second one actually. I think in the next edition of Private Eye, Solomon Hughes today tweeted that it's going to become apparent that a major funder for Change UK was one of Keir Starmer's funders, but it won't be named until that edition of Private Eye comes out. He's a journalist for Private Eye. Matt, I'll go to you for that first question and then if you've got any goss on the second one. Was it a conscious decision or just by consequence of RLB standing that Keir Starmer was pushed to the left? And I suppose to what extent do you think he was pushed to the left? That's a very good question. I think by consequence, it wasn't conscious. Obviously, I think it's important that the left runs in leadership contests to be standard barriers for a particular type of politics to stick big red flags in the ground and start conversations and affect the discourse on policy. I think it's very important, but I think what we were able to do is I think draw Keir out to much firmer commitment just by making those commitments ourselves and being in the contest. That wasn't the reason that Rebecca ran, obviously. Rebecca was in it to win it. But yes, I think the outcome was better than it would have been if she didn't run. And in terms of... Just to finish that point, I think it's really important now that as an organised left we hold the leadership to those commitments. That's absolutely fair. He's absolutely fair enough to hold the leadership to policy commitments and to scrutinise them and Keir on those commitments. I don't think that's wrecking. And I think that we have to draw the distinction between that and what the Labour right does. And I think it's really important that they remain marginalised. And will we ever get to know who funded Keir Starmer? Well, look, I wanted to do a direct mail shot like he did. It would have cost £300,000. So... Which was pretty much all the money that we had. So... Someone was funding it. Some people, individuals, entities were funding it. And I think, look, I wasn't... I don't think we were unfair asking... They would disclose who those donors were for the interest of transparency. We believe it's a principled issue for us, you know? I hope that those donors, whoever they are, don't exert a huge amount of influence over him. But you don't get something for nothing in life and in politics. So that was my worry, is like, if he wins, he's going to owe all these people, you know, influence. And therefore it's going to be more difficult to keep him left. I don't know how much influence you're going to get over Keir Starmer for £300,000. I feel like that was... There were just so many rich people who were fucking desperate to get rid of a Corbynite from the Labour Party because they wanted a... I mean, depending on how you look at it, well, an opposition which conformed more to the type of what they expect from Westminster politicians, which you might look at as protecting the vested interests of the powerful, or, I mean, you can frame it however you want. Aaron, do you want to come in? Or should I go to a question from an audience member? You go in. Go, ask more. Okay, so TS... Well, this is a very good question. I think this is going to be actually the key question, or one of the key questions for Keir Starmer going forward. Is the Labour Party under Keir Starmer able to bring the progressive younger voters along that will need to stand a chance at the next general election? Does he have that kind of appeal or instinct? I have some thoughts on that, but I'm going to go to you first. Who wants to take that, Matt? We've got Matt for the guests. I think so. I think he can. And I think that really it comes down to policy. And I think if you can keep a lot of the policies that were in the 2019 manifesto that appealed to younger people, he's already talked in the campaign about abolishing tuition fees. He's appointed Rebecca as Shadow Education Secretary, so I feel like that commitment is safe. Obviously, I think there's space to go much further, but we don't know what the world's going to be like in 2024. You spoke at the beginning of the programme before I came in about how much economic upheaval there's going to be as a result of the coronavirus. So how we rebuild and what the economy looks like next month, let alone next year, it's difficult to say. And obviously, the election is not till 2024. So I think he's going to have to be radical in his offer. And if he can combine radicalism with credibility and ensure the appearance of credibility and inspire confidence in older voters, then I think the policies will do the rest for younger voters. I think he's going to really struggle to keep a lot of younger voters. The reason being, one of his USPs' big selling point is respectability politics. And by doing the respectability politics stuff, how authentic does it look if Keir Starmer's talking to Stormzy when he goes on to Ladd Bible? Now, that doesn't win you elections. Jeremy Corbyn did all of that stuff, and I'm not suggesting it does win you elections. But the secret source is in keeping that coalition Jeremy Corbyn got, which was more than 10 million people last year in December, which was still a failure, but that was more than either Ed Miliband or Gordon Brown or Tony Blair in 2005. How do you keep that coalition together and then get an extra two, three million? And I think even just keeping that coalition together is quite hard, especially if there's any sort of departure, if they leave behind a lot of left-wing policies. We've already seen it with Ed Miliband between 2010, 2015. The Green Party in 2015 got almost a million votes. I don't think that could be necessarily repeated because I think the behavior of the Green Party in the last several years has really exposed them for what they are. But it's got to be a concern. Young people aren't going to mess it. Young people in ethnic minorities, by the way. This is a front bench now. There's not a single... There's Lisa Nandy who's mixed race, mixed heritage. She's got a senior role. But other than her and David Lamey, there's no real. And then you've got Marsha Cordova. But Diane Abbott was a shadow foreign secretary. You've got a lot of Bane people who aren't there anymore in senior roles. So why should Bane people vote Labour if they're not seeing representation of Bane people at the top levels of the party? Labour take these people for granted. And I think they do so at their own peril. So I think you will struggle. But I think the solution there is the left needs to recompose itself and bloody quickly through the socialist MPs in parliament, through the left trade unions, the United CWU, FBU, Baker's Union, through momentum, through TWT. And what I think is actually in many ways the most important takeaway here is that the next three months are more important than the last three months. That might sound crazy because you had a decent candidate with a decent chance of, you know, she came second. You have to bear in mind that until Jeremy Corbyn, radical left candidates came last or didn't run in Labour leadership contests. But the next three months matter more than the last three months because now it's about recomposing, re-solidifying those left forces. And I don't think Labour can win an election without them in order. And also, I don't think Keir Starmer will have a concrete centre-left policy proposal without them having their house in order because all the countervailing pressures, as we've said yesterday, from the media, from the parliamentary Labour Party, from the Tories, from big business, take it right. And unless you have a powerful, coherent left to stop that to mitigate and actually hopefully to drag it in the opposite direction and at the same time building consent in public more broadly for that programme, I think Labour have big problems. Keir Starmer's interest, I would argue, perhaps a bit of a counterintuitive argument, it's in Keir Starmer's interest if he wants to be the Prime Minister for the left to organise itself, to mobilise itself quickly and effectively. I mean, I'd make... I'm surprisingly, I suppose, I'd make exactly the same argument. I mean, I do think that why Keir Starmer's position is so interesting right now is that on an institutional level, the left really don't have very much leverage at all because I think that Keir Starmer could quite easily demote all the lefties from Shadow Cabinet. He can sack Jenny Formby. No one in the media is going to care. They're just all going to clap. Most of the PLP will just clap and it's not as if sort of Rebecca Long Bailey or anyone on the left is going to be given a chance to wreck his chances because they won't get airwaves in the same way that Wes Streeting or Jess Phillips did. Also, they're just numerically weaker in the parliamentary Labour Party than the right were. So whilst Keir Starmer, if he wanted to, I think could tomorrow basically purge the left from the Labour Party, the reason I hope he won't is because he has enough foresight to realise that the only way he's going to win a general election is by keeping the left on board for two reasons. One, because they're his only bolster and ballast against the right, you know, taking him down as they took down Ed Miliband. Ed Miliband didn't have really anyone to the left of him and that meant that he was completely in hoc to the people to the right of him and it meant that we went into the 2015 general election with completely wishy-washy offer that just didn't inspire anyone. At the same time, I think this does come down to this youth question and I think the only way that the Labour Party is going to win at this point really is by looking like a coalition because, yeah, I'm not convinced that Keir Starmer himself as a person is going to be able to mobilise young voters. I think he's going to be perfectly acceptable to young voters. I don't think he's going to switch them off, because we just need a dynamic, pluralist youth wing of the Labour Party to be making sure that people turn out at the next general election because, you know, you cannot take young voters for granted. That's something that we, you know, the last five years of electoral history have proven beyond doubt. We can't take young voters for granted, of course not, but, I mean, I do think that the real problem Labour has is with older voters. I think that is the big problem. I didn't want to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. We do have to find a way. In 2017, a lot of them stayed at home. A lot of them, because of the dementia tax, they didn't bother. We've got to find a way of trying to win back some of those older voters and I just feel like, yes, okay, we can keep the younger people hopefully we can with the policies that hopefully Keir is going to stick to and I do think that we can, as you said, we can ensure that we put pressure on the leader to make sure that he sticks to those commitments. But I also think that he knows that when the right come for him, it's only going to be the left that defends him and he'd be mad to alienate the left at any stage because I think it's true. I think if the right come for him, the left would defend him and I think, as I say, it all comes back to the alliance between the soft left and the left. If we can build that, maintain that, then we'll be in a much, much better position in the future.