:00:00. > :00:00.were on show, ready for any potential terrorist incident. Of
:00:00. > :00:00.course, we will bring you much more as soon as we have it. Time now for
:00:07. > :00:10.HARDtalk. The Labour Party is at war with
:00:11. > :00:21.itself. preoccupied with a challenge
:00:22. > :00:23.to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership and riven by accusations
:00:24. > :00:25.of plotting, intimidation And all this after the Brexit vote
:00:26. > :00:29.exposed the disconnection between Labour and its core
:00:30. > :00:46.working-class voters. My guess is that when Labour MP,
:00:47. > :00:49.Frank Field, one of the few loud Brexit voices in his party.
:00:50. > :01:14.Is this the beginning of the end for Labour?
:01:15. > :01:25.Frank Field, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. A puzzling fact, it was
:01:26. > :01:29.David Cameron who put his career on the line for remaining inside the EU
:01:30. > :01:35.and he had to resign after the Brexit vote, the Tory party at Pitt
:01:36. > :01:42.to be in disarray but the party who is suffering complete meltdown and
:01:43. > :01:48.chaos is your party, the Labour Party, why? There are number of
:01:49. > :01:53.reasons. The Tories clearly understand how and the movement of
:01:54. > :01:58.power rather more than we do and they were quick moving from one
:01:59. > :02:04.Prime Minister to another. There was a folding of the candidates in the
:02:05. > :02:11.Tory opposition so that helped. It was quick and it was decisive. She
:02:12. > :02:19.has built a new government... Your party has never looked more useless
:02:20. > :02:25.if I may say so. Not even responding to what the government a new agenda
:02:26. > :02:28.stock they have set an agenda within two areas, the first of which is a
:02:29. > :02:34.major one, the acceptance that we are going to leave Europe. How and
:02:35. > :02:46.what we mean by that is part of the debate. But we just... We should
:02:47. > :02:51.have another referendum on this. It is over, it is finished, we now have
:02:52. > :02:57.the opportunity and the duty to seize on how we in our shape
:02:58. > :03:04.Britain's relationship with Europe. We are looking to a world stage
:03:05. > :03:11.rather than a narrow one. How could it be that just 4% of Labour MPs
:03:12. > :03:16.favoured Brexit in that long campaign and yet 52% of the
:03:17. > :03:24.electorate favoured Brexit. Why did that disconnect occur? It is a
:03:25. > :03:27.long-standing one in that if you go back historically, the Labour Party
:03:28. > :03:30.has been this coalition between working-class interests which were
:03:31. > :03:35.thought to be represented by the trade unions and what they called
:03:36. > :03:40.the intellectuals, the Fabian Knights of the Labour Party. There
:03:41. > :03:47.was a trade-off between the two of what the policies of would-be and if
:03:48. > :03:54.you look, certainly to the 60s, when our boat began to unwind because you
:03:55. > :04:01.talked about sort of the sword death of the Labour Party, my worry is
:04:02. > :04:08.that it will be a fast death. -- the slow death. Those who once got these
:04:09. > :04:13.idealistic objectives of what politics is about, a crucial part
:04:14. > :04:19.that affects the flavour of any agenda and how governments perform,
:04:20. > :04:25.have become the dominant one rather than trying to represent those class
:04:26. > :04:30.interests and now we have moved for many Labour supporters, which is the
:04:31. > :04:39.Brexit vote shows, is not a class is issue but we are fed up with having
:04:40. > :04:47.globalisation push down. There is a huge new agenda about identity,
:04:48. > :04:51.country... It is about immigration and many of your opponents inside
:04:52. > :04:56.the Labour Party who categorically disagreed about the future of
:04:57. > :05:03.written and of your party say that you and others who supported Britain
:05:04. > :05:07.manipulated misleading argument about the nature of immigration in
:05:08. > :05:14.the UK today. If that is true it is because they were not listening. I
:05:15. > :05:17.have been accused of being racist since the early 2000. You cannot
:05:18. > :05:23.have this level of immigration because of the fact it has on the
:05:24. > :05:28.country and its identity and also the Labour interests which are
:05:29. > :05:33.generally the most vulnerable in our society. Right up to the last
:05:34. > :05:37.election when we staged a meeting within the Parliamentary Labour
:05:38. > :05:43.Party over immigration, and I asked Ed Miliband, I do not see a link
:05:44. > :05:47.between a 35 early and people in and wages push down, shortage of houses,
:05:48. > :05:51.cannot go to your school and soured and there were growling from some
:05:52. > :05:56.members who disapproved and aired got up and said he could not see any
:05:57. > :06:03.link at all. So that is how related we were to the real world and to our
:06:04. > :06:09.voters. Half our voters were taken out when we lost those seats. The
:06:10. > :06:14.court interests of working people that the fundamental of that is to
:06:15. > :06:19.have a strong growing economy and if you look at these sorts of
:06:20. > :06:22.indicators that come from business, CBI, Chambers of Commerce and people
:06:23. > :06:28.that run businesses, they all say the levels of immigration reflect
:06:29. > :06:33.the needs of British industry, British businesses will skilled
:06:34. > :06:42.workers, hundreds of thousands that come from the EU and frankly from
:06:43. > :06:48.outside of the EU. This success has been bought at a price of pushing
:06:49. > :06:55.down wages. I... Clearly the idea that you can put walls up is absurd
:06:56. > :07:00.but moving into a system where one has, like the Australian system, you
:07:01. > :07:08.are designated what you need and you feel those needs. And you do not
:07:09. > :07:17.have a rush. Your sets of figures, it is great to hear, to hear these
:07:18. > :07:21.success on the economic front but there has been a real economic price
:07:22. > :07:27.to be paid and that is being paid... The further down the ladder you are
:07:28. > :07:32.the bigger the price and the higher up the ladder, did he go the
:07:33. > :07:37.advantages of these open market. When you described to me what the
:07:38. > :07:42.lessons of Brexit are, you sound like most of the senior figures in
:07:43. > :07:47.Ukip, when you talk about and is shown in point system to control
:07:48. > :07:53.immigration, culture and identity and national sense being at the
:07:54. > :07:59.heart of Labour's political future, if you are actually using the
:08:00. > :08:06.language of Ukip. Is that when you want Labour to go? I think you are
:08:07. > :08:14.being very kind to Ukip... They are at about the same stage as the
:08:15. > :08:20.Labour Party. Remain and I say took because it is wrong to lose this
:08:21. > :08:25.language, but these are people who previously voted Labour, almost a
:08:26. > :08:30.million, crossed over to support Ukip. If they get another million of
:08:31. > :08:33.our voters, we are finished and they begin to move into pole position and
:08:34. > :08:40.I think the danger for us is that they begin to talk... I do not
:08:41. > :08:44.recognise anything that I said that they have been saying but I am not
:08:45. > :08:50.playing the game of guilt by association. I am interested what
:08:51. > :08:58.electorate are after, the form of representation are after and if you
:08:59. > :09:01.keep ours reform itself -- Ukip, controlling the numbers and borders,
:09:02. > :09:07.and then becomes the English party then the outlook for us is grim
:09:08. > :09:15.beyond belief. Labour needs to compete on that territory? We have
:09:16. > :09:23.never done it in the past for crude, feeble... Account to ideology,
:09:24. > :09:30.Jeremy Corbyn, your party leader, an international socialist to the court
:09:31. > :09:37.is a counter position. That needs to be made plain, that he has ideas
:09:38. > :09:40.about the effects of globalisation on poorer working-class people. He
:09:41. > :09:46.has made a really good stab at that and it is part of the debate but
:09:47. > :09:49.because, as you say, he is his internationalist, there is no way he
:09:50. > :09:56.could deliver protection for those groups so hard treated. So while his
:09:57. > :10:01.story is a good one at heart and he has begun to shift the agenda. There
:10:02. > :10:07.is no way that if he had power, he would actually satisfy our boat or
:10:08. > :10:13.given his stance win an election. You made that very plain. You are
:10:14. > :10:23.being rather polite me but he said there is not a chance in hell of
:10:24. > :10:27.Jeremy winning the vote. There are many people inside the party, let
:10:28. > :10:33.alone an outsider, who believe this leadership challenge represents the
:10:34. > :10:38.death throes of Labour. He said that there is an existential crisis, is
:10:39. > :10:42.Labour dying? Yes. I think the main parties themselves dying... Let's
:10:43. > :10:48.leave the Tories to talk about it themselves. I am not trying to move
:10:49. > :10:51.it around. And, of course, we are. You only have to look at the
:10:52. > :10:59.long-term decline of our boat and the unwillingness of those who are
:11:00. > :11:06.called leaders to pay some attention to the fact our vote goes down
:11:07. > :11:11.rather than up. It is to increase not decrease. When it goes down you
:11:12. > :11:15.think there is something actually wrong here and that is the long-term
:11:16. > :11:22.crisis for us which is in this disguised. If you look at the
:11:23. > :11:25.results of the referendum, we have now got the Parliamentary party
:11:26. > :11:31.which I think is a good-looking, which has fantasies about being a
:11:32. > :11:36.Europe should have been about, all the old stuff you get from them but
:11:37. > :11:43.it is backward looking politics and we have a dozen Labour MPs who have
:11:44. > :11:51.seats. If you take Stoke, it has three or four Labour members, Stoke
:11:52. > :11:58.voted by 72% to leave the EU. And this is just typical of huge swathes
:11:59. > :12:04.of Labour seats, what a Labour MPs who were then candidates, going to
:12:05. > :12:09.say to those voters when, in fact, on this fundamental issue, about
:12:10. > :12:14.reorientate either direction of the country about saying that I am still
:12:15. > :12:16.a Europhile? Are you saying it is going to be defined by these Brexit
:12:17. > :12:25.issue? I think politics generally, we are
:12:26. > :12:28.going to respond to it. To reshape the machinery of government, to
:12:29. > :12:31.begin to respond to what the results of that referendum were. So of
:12:32. > :12:36.course a lot of the stuff coming down the chute, so to speak, towards
:12:37. > :12:38.the House of Commons for us to be debating are hopefully shaping and
:12:39. > :12:43.reshaping is going to be about the nature of our exit from Europe and
:12:44. > :12:48.how serious we are. How do we actually protect people, can we
:12:49. > :12:52.actually, and I think we should start from the idealistic goal that
:12:53. > :12:56.we want, actually, control of our borders, therefore free movement.
:12:57. > :13:01.But we also want access to the free market. People say it... You are in
:13:02. > :13:04.a bind. Because I want to get to the mechanics of where Labour goes from
:13:05. > :13:08.here on the mechanics right now are that there is a challenge to Jeremy
:13:09. > :13:10.Corbyn coming from Owen Smith. He says that he isn't really
:13:11. > :13:15.ideologically very far from Jeremy Corbyn but there is a question of
:13:16. > :13:18.confidence. He is competent, Jeremy Corbyn is not competent. You have a
:13:19. > :13:22.problem because you have just told me that Jeremy Corbyn doesn't have a
:13:23. > :13:26.cat in hell's chance of appealing to the British public at Rohan Smith
:13:27. > :13:30.wanted to remain in Europe, and you are telling me that Europe defines
:13:31. > :13:35.the party's future. So you haven't got a candidate you can back on this
:13:36. > :13:39.race. Yes, but surely at some stage reality will break in and the Labour
:13:40. > :13:44.Party will realise we are going to leave Europe and get down to that
:13:45. > :13:48.policy. You have talked about Europe and Labour need to do to react to
:13:49. > :13:52.the result of the referendum but you are a member, you are a veteran MP.
:13:53. > :13:56.There are people in constituencies across the country having fierce
:13:57. > :13:59.arguments, accusing each other of treachery, of intimidation, of
:14:00. > :14:06.plotting. The party is at war with itself. What is going to happen to
:14:07. > :14:10.give Labour a semblance of competent leadership? Nothing immediately.
:14:11. > :14:13.This will go on for some time. And then I do believe, before the
:14:14. > :14:17.election, the trade unions will move. Sadly I think the stewardship
:14:18. > :14:24.of Jeremy's, interesting from lots of ways about wielding social
:14:25. > :14:28.protest and so on, will then be brought to an end. You think Auburn
:14:29. > :14:32.will beat Smith easily, do you? I think on the showing at present I
:14:33. > :14:37.will be voting for Smith but I think Auburn will win. I hope I am wrong.
:14:38. > :14:40.This is the absurdity of Labour today. Everything you have said in
:14:41. > :14:44.this interview suggest you couldn't vote for Smith because of a key
:14:45. > :14:47.issue, which as far as you are concerned as Europe, he is on
:14:48. > :14:50.entirely the wrong side of the fence from you, and get you're saying you
:14:51. > :14:54.are not going to vote for him because Corbyn is even more useless.
:14:55. > :14:58.True, but the key thing is that Smith actually wants to win, not
:14:59. > :15:02.just this contest but the general election. He won't be able to win
:15:03. > :15:05.the general election holding the views he currently has. He will
:15:06. > :15:07.shift if he serious about winning and I am interested in having
:15:08. > :15:14.somebody who is actually interested in winning. Never mind winning, you
:15:15. > :15:17.may find yourself out of a seat because momentum, a grassroots
:15:18. > :15:21.movement on the far left of the party which backed Jeremy Corbyn has
:15:22. > :15:25.made it plain that those MPs such as yourself who had turned against
:15:26. > :15:28.Jeremy Corbyn and want him out, you will face a challenge in your
:15:29. > :15:33.constituency. Some neighbouring constituencies of yours are already
:15:34. > :15:37.at war over this issue. How will you react if your own constituency tries
:15:38. > :15:41.to topple you? Well, we will do our best to prevent that happening.
:15:42. > :15:47.There is a group of people -- as a group of people. I have been down
:15:48. > :15:51.this road before. In the 80s. In the 80s. And all the polls show that if
:15:52. > :15:55.I actually stood as independent Labour, joining the Labour group in
:15:56. > :16:00.Parliament afterwards, I would win on that basis. Hang on, so if there
:16:01. > :16:02.is mandatory reselection and you don't get reselected you are saying
:16:03. > :16:07.you'll stand against the official Labour candidate? Problem is
:16:08. > :16:11.willing, I am here to stand in the election, I will be in that
:16:12. > :16:14.election, whatever happens. So you are, even though you have been a
:16:15. > :16:19.loyal Labour member for many years and in the 80s you stayed in Labour
:16:20. > :16:23.when others left, you are saying you are prepared now to contemplate a
:16:24. > :16:26.split. No, I am not. What I am saying is I am prepared to actually
:16:27. > :16:30.win the Birkenhead beat and join the Parliamentary Labour Party in
:16:31. > :16:33.Parliament. Yes, but you are also saying if you're not going to stand
:16:34. > :16:36.for official Labour you will stand for something else this is the
:16:37. > :16:40.absolute number where Labour is today. There are many people like
:16:41. > :16:43.yourself who are saying if Corbyn wins and his cronies and associates
:16:44. > :16:50.dominate the party we will have two create a sort of de facto split, we
:16:51. > :16:53.will become an alternative Labour, a sort of... I don't know how you
:16:54. > :16:57.would put it, semi- official Labour. Is that what is going to happen, a
:16:58. > :17:00.split which and called a split? I have no idea what is going to happen
:17:01. > :17:04.and what people are proposing because I am not involved in that.
:17:05. > :17:08.According to the papers there is lots of plotting going on. Have you
:17:09. > :17:15.not heard any of these rumours? Well, I have heard the rumours. What
:17:16. > :17:18.I am interested in is the source of them. The key thing is if we were
:17:19. > :17:20.going to let in Parliament and claimed that we should have the
:17:21. > :17:23.short money because the vast majority of Labour MPs are elected
:17:24. > :17:25.-- re-elected their own leader, is whether the Speaker would regard our
:17:26. > :17:30.leader as the Leader of the Opposition, and therefore to in the
:17:31. > :17:34.sense stand up at Prime Minister's Question Time and leave the attack
:17:35. > :17:41.on behalf of the opposition parties. Would it be our leader or does that
:17:42. > :17:46.legal advice to the speaker say that it has to be Jeremy Corbyn? If it is
:17:47. > :17:51.us, and the Parliamentary Labour Party is in a much stronger
:17:52. > :17:54.position... For a man who claims he hasn't thought about this very much
:17:55. > :17:57.you seem to have a great deal of the detail of what might happen if you
:17:58. > :18:01.are in the Parliamentary party did decide to do is associate from the
:18:02. > :18:05.official Corbyn leadership, but I don't want to get hung up on
:18:06. > :18:08.legalities. I just want to ask you this one final question on this
:18:09. > :18:12.point. In the 1980s you saw senior Labour figures like David Owen,
:18:13. > :18:17.Shirley Williams, walk away and set up the SDP. In the end, after a
:18:18. > :18:22.short burst of optimism, it failed. Do you think, even if it is not you,
:18:23. > :18:25.that some of your colleagues in the Parliamentary party will try a
:18:26. > :18:30.similar manoeuvre over the next few months? They would be foolish to do
:18:31. > :18:34.so. They should do what I am doing, we should actually fly under Labour
:18:35. > :18:39.colours, even if there are two of us actually in the ring, and win the
:18:40. > :18:42.seats and come back and reform the Parliamentary Labour vote. And in
:18:43. > :18:46.the process, of course, we will get a new leader. Now, I do want to ask
:18:47. > :18:50.you about something rather specific and in a way it is impressive you
:18:51. > :18:52.have managed to make a lot of noise in Parliament about one specific
:18:53. > :19:00.issue even when your party is in total meltdown, but you have. You
:19:01. > :19:03.have let a Parliamentary committee which has been at the forefront of
:19:04. > :19:06.the issue of the collapse of the retail chain, Redditch home stores,
:19:07. > :19:09.VHS, and the role and that collapsed of Sir Philip Green, who owned it
:19:10. > :19:14.for a long time and then sold it for the princely sum of ?1 -- BHS. It
:19:15. > :19:18.now turns out the company is riddled with debt and can't afford its
:19:19. > :19:22.pension scheme. You have described Sir Philip Green's role as
:19:23. > :19:27.indicative of the unacceptable face of capitalism. What exactly do you
:19:28. > :19:30.mean by that? Unfortunately it is not my phrase, I wouldn't mind
:19:31. > :19:34.having it. It was a joint enquiry. The chair of the business Select
:19:35. > :19:38.Committee and I join together to do this because we have common
:19:39. > :19:42.interests, which actually do, these initial stages overlap. What I mean
:19:43. > :19:46.by that is that since the fall of the Berlin Wall the only show in
:19:47. > :19:53.town is what people call capitalism. And therefore it is very important
:19:54. > :19:57.that capitalism, so-called, works. Is it actually as the Prime Minister
:19:58. > :20:01.says she wanted to work for the many, all of us, or is it for the
:20:02. > :20:09.actual view? And I think both in Sports Direct and in BHS we got
:20:10. > :20:13.examples here of corporate behaviour which most people out there think is
:20:14. > :20:20.totally unacceptable. And therefore we are doing a report, a follow-up
:20:21. > :20:25.on our reports, so it's not going to go cold in any way. But of course it
:20:26. > :20:29.does also shift to the Prime Minister. And her great strength is
:20:30. > :20:34.actually thinking about concrete issues. She isn't, thank God,
:20:35. > :20:37.somebody who wants to spend her time thinking what the nature of
:20:38. > :20:42.capitalism and how would I define a fair system? She will be concerned
:20:43. > :20:45.about making the present system, shoving it along with all her
:20:46. > :20:51.authority to make it a fairer system. And she is now got on her
:20:52. > :20:57.desk two reports, both about Sports Direct and British Home Stores,
:20:58. > :21:02.saying this is a challenge to what you said, the sort of society your
:21:03. > :21:05.administration, your stewardship, is actually going to create. The big
:21:06. > :21:10.point about what it says about capitalism, in a minute. But just on
:21:11. > :21:14.the specifics, you and Sir Philip Green are now locked in a pretty
:21:15. > :21:19.jarring war of words. And he has listened to what you have said about
:21:20. > :21:23.him, and he has actually now got his lawyers involved, accusing you of
:21:24. > :21:27.defamatory and false allegations, demanding a full apology. So here's
:21:28. > :21:30.your opportunity, are you now going to apologise for the things you have
:21:31. > :21:35.said about... No, I am not. He says he is going to sue me, I really
:21:36. > :21:40.happy to discuss it. He knows that if he wants to pursue this we will
:21:41. > :21:46.go to court. The first thing I wish... I will ask for is trial by
:21:47. > :21:49.jury. So it would only be me on trial, and that would therefore be
:21:50. > :21:55.another front opens to put pressure on him to do the decent thing, which
:21:56. > :22:00.is, given the unbelievable amount of loot that he and Lady Green and
:22:01. > :22:04.their family have out of BHS and the Arcadia group, that he stumps up
:22:05. > :22:08.handsomely so that no pensioner is made worse off. That is the goal.
:22:09. > :22:12.But isn't the point, like he says, that this war of words is on helping
:22:13. > :22:16.the pensions regulator get a deal which Sir Philip Green has said he
:22:17. > :22:19.is ready to be a part of the actually get some money to those
:22:20. > :22:24.pensioners who have lost out big-time? It is appropriate that new
:22:25. > :22:28.Labour gave him his knighthood, because it is spin, it is wonderful
:22:29. > :22:33.staff. He talks about it as voluntary. It is voluntary engaging
:22:34. > :22:36.with the regulator. The regulator is investigating, by law she is
:22:37. > :22:43.compelling him, to actually talk to her. She is demanding access to
:22:44. > :22:50.accounts and movements of money, of capital, since 2002. I mean, the
:22:51. > :22:54.screws up on him big-time from the pension regulator. The idea that
:22:55. > :22:56.somehow it is terrible old me shouting in the wings and he has
:22:57. > :23:00.voluntarily running around trying to get the pensions, if you want to
:23:01. > :23:06.believe that, do believe that. At the end of the day we will see what
:23:07. > :23:09.the agreement is. Yes, well, what I want to do is actually reflect at
:23:10. > :23:11.the end of this interview on what we might tie together from the
:23:12. > :23:16.discussion we have had about Brexit, and indeed even the collapse of
:23:17. > :23:20.British Home Stores. You introduce this notion that what is at stake
:23:21. > :23:23.here is the nature of capitalism in Britain today. It just seems to me
:23:24. > :23:27.that the Labour Party, the party of the left, the working classes, has
:23:28. > :23:31.abdicated its role in that debate. It is ironic, is it not, that
:23:32. > :23:34.Theresa May walks in Number Ten Downing Street talking the language
:23:35. > :23:36.of defending the many against the privileged few, defending the
:23:37. > :23:41.workers' interests against the overpaid corporate losses, and
:23:42. > :23:51.Labour, today, isn't even in the argument. No, I mean, the weakness
:23:52. > :23:55.is that most people would have cheered and she had been a Labour
:23:56. > :23:58.Prime Minister, I am not disagreeing, I just underscoring the
:23:59. > :24:02.importance of the question, how desperate our position is, that we
:24:03. > :24:06.are so irrelevant to the conversation going on with the
:24:07. > :24:09.electorate, but also how power is exercised in this country, that a
:24:10. > :24:14.Prime Minister has got the total freedom to shape what her
:24:15. > :24:19.stewardship will be about. Frank Field, that's it for now. Thank you
:24:20. > :24:21.very much for being on HARDtalk. Much appreciated.