Any quotes used must be attributed to Murnaghan, Sky News 

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

One year ago Ed Miliband beat his brother to become Labour leader but as the party prepares for its annual conference the polls suggest the voters are still pretty unclear about what he and his party actually stand for.  He’s made it clear it is not New Labour or Old Labour and there has been talk of Blue Labour, even Purple Labour, but what exactly is it? Well we’re joined now for their thoughts by former Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee and Labour MP Tom Watson.  A very good morning to you all.  I mentioned there a scene almost revisited, let’s take ourselves back to the drama, the joy, the disappointment of exactly a year ago, did Labour end up, Polly Toynbee, with the right Miliband?

POLLY TOYNBEE:

Well I think they did, I think what they really needed and still need was a big break from the past and I think with David Miliband it would have been much harder.  I think they are both excellent but it would have been much harder, he’d been right at the heart of Downing Street through all the Blair years, he’d been Foreign Secretary under Brown, I think it would have been more difficult.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Well Ed Miliband had been pretty close with Gordon Brown during some of those, we heard from Alistair Darling, during some of the briefing years.

POLLY TOYNBEE:

He’s been away quite a lot of the time in America, he wasn’t there for Iraq and all of that.  When he came back he didn’t have an economic brief, he was busy doing energy and Green issues and things of that sort and I think the people on the Blair side also regarded him as somewhat out of the prey, he wasn’t quite at the cut and thrust of it so it is much easier for him to shake off the past and to talk about the mistakes of the Blair/Brown era than it would have been for his brother I think.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

In terms of abilities though, Hazel Blears, has Ed Miliband got better intellectual and political abilities than David?

HAZEL BLEARS:

Well I think we are just a year on, it’s not a huge amount of time and I do think that Ed is beginning to establish his own clear voice and I think that’s really important for him.  The best thing I took out the polls in the last couple of weeks is that more than twice the number of people think that Ed Miliband understands their life, is in touch with them than they think about David Cameron and I think that …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Hold on, they also said they wouldn’t like him to dinner and they think he is a bit of a geek.  

HAZEL BLEARS:

But they do say that they think he understands their lives, he understands the pressures they’ve got with the economy at the moment and they do not believe that about David Cameron and I think that’s a really telling issue as Ed develops his voice, develops his ideas.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Okay, developing his voice, because you had a role to play in this, Tom Watson, because it was seen the point at which Ed Miliband really came alive there was during the phone hacking scandal when he went out there and he told it as he saw it, he spoke from the heart about Millie Dowler and phone hacking and of course that’s something you are very much involved in.  Was that a turning point for him?

TOM WATSON:

Yes, I think it was.  Look he’s a decent guy, he’s got strong values and he did what he thought was right.  It is my honest view that the other candidates in the leadership election would not have made that call, they would have taken a different path.  He went to PMQs, he called for the BSkyB bid to be shelved, he called for Rebekah Brooks to resign and he showed strong leadership, it is probably the biggest call he’ll make this year on that and the party was very pleased and supported him.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Can he pick that ball up and keep running with it?  I mean where does he go now. I interviewed him an hour and a bit ago and I said okay, you’ve got the confidence, people heard the real Ed Miliband speaking there but they want to hear that as well on the NHS, on the economy, on schools.

TOM WATSON:

Where I think he goes with this, there are a lot of people who say he has got to spend more time beating himself up about the past and I think our circumstances are in such crisis now that he hasn’t got time to do that, he has got to look to the future and I’ve been reading – Polly will be pleased with me for once but I’ve actually been reading her old pin-up boy, Roy Jenkins, recently.  He wrote a great book in the 70s when left government and I was struck about how he was obsessed on every page with how do we address the problems of inequality in society and you’ve seen this weekend he’s beginning to talk in harder language against the vested interests, people commuting to work because they’ve had to buy cheaper houses in the suburbs, they’ve seen hikes in their transport fares, they are worried about their energy costs, they are worried about an over-burdened …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Polly, is that working, is that getting through, are people do you feel beginning to connect because we mentioned the polls there, he is still personally on rock bottom and Labour really haven’t moved in the year he’s been leader.

POLLY TOYNBEE:

We haven’t dropped any further than say David Cameron dropped in his first year in opposition.  It’s interesting, opposition leaders tend to drop and the crucial thing is that this year he should pick up and I think you see that self confidence in him.  He knows and everybody knows that there is only one issue and that’s the economy and credibility on the economy means that the two Ed’s and the team around them have to produce a plan that people can believe in, they have to produce a plan that works, they have to produce a plan that says how do you fix our growth, you have to say how do we reduce the deficit?  Well this government is adding to the deficit, not reducing it, because their plan isn’t working.  Now that’s a fairly simple message and now we want to hear the growth strategy and…

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

The thing is you’ve lost this strategy, Hazel Blears, the party has lost that confidence of the public in its ability to handle the economy, again from the polling.  You’ve had the albatross hung round your neck saying you overspent when you while in power and boy how you overspent.  You left the country with this huge  deficit and that’s why it has so many problems.

HAZEL BLEARS:

Yes, and I think we have to be honest about what we got wrong and also have to talk, I think more forcefully, about the things we got right as well. 

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Which were?

HAZEL BLEARS:

Well you look round communities like this in Liverpool, the regeneration that took place here, the fact that we always used to have massive unemployment.  It’s too high now but actually the jobs we created during the time we were in office, right across our big cities – I think one of the things the Tories get wrong is that they are London focused all the time and the engines of growth in the next few years are going to be in the big city areas.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

To be fair they do talk a great book about regional strategies …

HAZEL BLEARS:

You’ve got this regional growth improvement fund …it is going to go nowhere.  It is oversubscribed I think four times, projects about broadband, about infrastructure, all of that, that needs to happen and the Tories just don’t get that.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Tom Watson, what do you think about that in terms of telling the story, the Labour story on the economy, dealing with the past – you mentioned that as well, dealing with what happened while you were in power but we are where we are and the problems we all face we face together, Labour has to say – and it is a dangerous strategy – that we do temporarily have to borrow more than the current government’s plans.

TOM WATSON:

I think ordinarily in slower time we would have a much more forensic analysis of what we did right and wrong but actually the circumstances facing families now are so great, we have got to …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

But let’s move on from what you did right and wrong, you have to say out loud we’re going to borrow more.  Even under Darling plans you were going to borrow more.

TOM WATSON:

Well let’s remember the deficit is rising under the Tories, they are not saying it out loud, they’ve made the political test cut on the deficit and it’s going up so you only have to ask Vince Cable, is the plan working?  If he had hair he would be tearing it out, I’m sure, behind closed doors.  So we’ve got to invest immediately to stimulate growth but we’ve also got to think about …

POLLY TOYNBEE:

But this government is borrowing more.  When you say the deficit is rising, this government is borrowing more at the same time as cutting, at the same time as losing jobs.  It’s not working.  Labour has to produce a policy that says we would also borrow more but we would invest it in jobs.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

But for that to work, for the investment growth cycle to work, you actually have to borrow, you have to prime the pump, that’s what we’re not hearing out loud.

POLLY TOYNBEE:

They’re priming the pump in order to cut and lose jobs which is daft.

HAZEL BLEARS:

What they do now, if you look at the August borrowing figures, the August borrowing figures are the highest that we have ever seen at the same time as we have got massive cuts.  To any ordinary person, they don’t have to be economists, they understand that, that we are getting worse rather than better and what they do want to see is the foundations of growth and that does mean investing more in things like super-fast broadband, in better transport, they know that’s how they get jobs.       

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

But do they because people relate it to their own household budgets don’t they and you think, times are bad, I’m not even sure if I’ve got a job, I’m not sure if I’ll keep my job, I’m not sure I’ll get a pay rise again so I’ll do everything I can to reduce my overheads.

HAZEL BLEARS:

People recognise if they’ve got a mortgage and they don’t expect to pay the whole of the mortgage off in a really short period of time.  They know that you need to do that gradually and that was our plan.  We would cut the deficit but not at this breakneck speed that is actually damaging the fundamentals of the economy.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

All right, give me some colours now.  In my introduction there, colours and names, is it New Labour, Old Labour, New Old Labour, does anyone care?  Blue, purple or whatever?

TOM WATSON:

I don’t care, just Labour.

HAZEL BLEARS:

Labour. 

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

But is it important to look at that past and to look at the glory days of New Labour?  You were part of it, Hazel Blears, the great euphoria that saw Tony Blair being elected.

POLLY TOYNBEE:

I think there are certainly things that Labour needs to keep saying, for instance you want family policy, Labour had family policy.  You look at the Children’s Centres, you look at Childcare Credits, you look at Children’s Tax Credits.  You look at the things that Labour did for families that are now all being ripped away, there is a lot of good to say about the past but I do think this nonsense about colours, that’s because everybody thought Labour was going to fall apart.  They thought this is back to the early 80s, we’re going to have huge schisms and splits and rifts, the amazing thing about this year is it might not have been the best year for Labour, they are a bit ahead in the polls and there aren’t any great splits.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

There is a whiff of old Labour it’s said about Ed Miliband yet …

HAZEL BLEARS:

Such as?  I think the important thing to keep from New Labour, and I actually think it’s a Labour thing, is that most parents want their kids to do better than they did and they want their families to get on and that’s absolutely where Ed is with this British promise stuff saying this could be the first generation that does worse than its parents and therefore the tuition fees announcement today, I think is important to say we are going to keep that aspiration of people wanting to get on.  The Tories at the moment are the pessimists and we’ve got to just keep that positive attitude that supports families.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

You’ve got a hard policy there which is good for people like me to bite on.  I just want to ask you as we come to the end of the conversation because he’s got a difficult autumn/winter ahead of him, Mr Miliband, and the party indeed with all the problems in the public sector, waves of strikes, civil disobedience, Tom Watson do you think he should get out there and say these are by and large almost overwhelmingly Labour supporters, these are the ordinary working families who are struggling and they feel so deeply about what’s happening to them that they are going to go on strike and we’d like your support please, leader?

TOM WATSON:   

He should take these things as they come, there are different issues.  Let me put it like this, if I was having my pension attacked in the way that some of the people in local government are, I think I’d be wanting to go on strike so people are extremely worried about their futures and he’s got to identify with them when the cause is good.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Well he didn’t identify with them when they went on strike on June 30th.

TOM WATSON:

I would personally have supported those strikes on June 30th but Ed has to lead a party that is cautious and they were still in the middle of negotiations and so he made a big call there, he was criticised by union general secretaries for it …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Ah, cautious, but this is the New Labour, Old Labour thing, Polly Toynbee.  This so-called middle ground, is there a reluctance to abandon that?

POLLY TOYNBEE:

Here’s a fact about the strikes, no Labour leader since the beginning of time has ever supported a strike.  Not Michael Foot, not Neil Kinnock, not as leaders, not any of them, ever.  Not the miner’s strike, nothing.  All of the great romantic strikes of the past, Labour put itself on the side of democracy and the people and has to as a democratically elected party.  Labour party supporters may want to go out and strike and may want to demonstrate but that’s always been the position so there is nothing new about the fact that Ed Miliband …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

But when it comes to relations with the unions, they kind of get it.

POLLY TOYNBEE:

They don’t like it but it’s always been so and it’s always caused this tension but I do think that democratic parties, it is quite difficult to support directly, openly, what looks like an undemocratic action.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

Very quickly on that Hazel Blears, you support obviously the right of people who are concerned about their pensions and are prepared to come out on strike, should Labour throw its weight behind them?

HAZEL BLEARS:

I don't know any working people who actively want to strike, they are usually driven to it because they are in very difficult circumstances indeed.  If you are a leader of a political party you are not going to be out there fomenting civil disobedience, you are going to make sure you are on their side but you are not going to be at the front of that line.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:

I am so sorry we are out of time, thank you very much indeed for your thoughts at the start of the Labour party conference Tom Watson, Hazel Blears and Polly Toynbee, thank you all.