YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Reed

lines on the record: 51
first: 2023-02-17
most recent: 2023-02-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That's it from this edition of political thinking. Thanks for listening. Jack Fenwick was the producer, Jonathan Brunet the Editor, and this week Annie Gardner was the studio manager.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tory war horse and campaigner who mocked Neil Kinnock in the nineteen ninety two election and said that the then Labour leader was running for office on the basis that he'd been wrong about all important issues in British politics. Kinnock boasted of the fact that he'd taken his party back to being electable. He persuaded them to abandon a policy of leaving the European common market as it was known then, abandoned a policy of being in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament, and abandoned a policy of opposition to capitalism and the free market. Hesotine's jibe was saying you were wrong about pretty much everything isn't a great way to get yourself elected.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Steve Reed, thanks very much indeed for joining me on political. Not language that Steve Reed would ever use, certainly not language that Keir Starmer would use, but increasingly it looks as if their strategy is to go back to the future, back in other words, to what work for new labour and for Tony Blair, back to a connection with the people who help found the Labour Party and who it was meant to represent the working classes. There is, of course, a danger in this approach. Rishisunek is likely to remind Kir Starmer again and again that he did argue that Jeremy Corbyn was fit to be our next Prime Minister. If Starmer points out the many ways he's changed his approach in just the way that Steve Reed did during the last half hour or so, it is possible that the Tories will revert to a charge that was used by Michael Hesseltine.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of the joy of this podcast is people say to me I get a sense of who the person is. But it's the same thing. It's the same thing wanted to do it better. I wanted to do my roast potatoes better. I wanted to run a council better. You know, it's the same thing, isn't it? Some people, I just want to make things a bit better for people. And even if that's something as simple as your Sunday lunch, then that's where I'm going to go.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Detailed I think that's part of what you have to do when you're in a job like this but what really drives me is I want to change things and make them better. You know this when I saw what happened to my forgive I asked you who you are don't give you the politicians is that who you are in your essence for people”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Though you spent a week learning how to cook better roast potatoes than him because you're so competitive. Well, it was more because I really like a good roast potato and who doesn't, to be fair, but I did. I had a week off work and during that week I was trying different varieties of potato and different types of oil at different temperatures to see what gave you the crispest exterior and the fluffiest interior to mop up the onion gravy. There's a whole series of different roast potatoes. It's a great use of time, Nick. You know, I've never looked back on that. For the last 20 years, I can make a really good roastie. For people wondering what sort of next Justice Secretary they might get if you get the job and Labour gets elected. Is that who you are, methodical, perfectionist”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cooking? The things I like to do, Nick, yes, I like cooking. I really enjoy cooking. If I get in the kitchen and I've got myself a recipe and I'm focusing on the little details of chopping this or adding that, I stop thinking about work and I stop thinking about the other things that are going on. It's just mere beans on toast. This is proper cooking. I like, I really enjoy cooking. I think back when I was a student, I went off to university in Sheffield and I discovered I didn't know how to cook. I could make baked potatoes with beans and that's why I ate for six months. But after that I was desperate with something else and somebody bought me a Delia Smith's cookbook for Christmas that year and I started trying out new recipes and discovered there was a whole world of culinary pleasures to explore there but I also found I enjoyed the creativity of cooking it's a bit of a creative outlet something you can focus on but this is my toughest question who's roast potatoes are better yours or your friend Pete”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“would be Corbyn's analysis proved to be right and a whole host of issues, and Tony Blair's proved to be wrong. No, I don't agree that for a second. Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister in 1997, won three elections in a row, and transformed this country. He made it stronger, he made it wealthier, he reduced crime, he improved schools. Jeremy Corbyn lost two elections catastrophically and left Labour unelectable. No comparison You've got quite a job on Yan's preparing, you hope to be in government. How do you switch off? How do I switch off? How do you relax?”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tough on crime Tough on the causes of crime. Well it is it is it is you're right and that was Tony Blair's phrase thirty years ago this year actually he first came up with that but we need to take that slogan and make it make it meet. The future, the challenges of today and the years to come. Some people this week who supported Jeremy Corbyn find that very hard to take. Twenty years ago this week he was out on the streets campaigning against the Iraq war, a war pursued by Tony Blair.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whatsoever, because what we're saying here that is in some circumstances an individual that has had these traumatic experiences early on in their life goes on to offend, but most do not. So there is an element of choice here, and people making bad choices who then go on to cause harm to society, then we do need to deal with that choice that they've made. But as I was saying about my own experience, for all that I wanted punishment for the people that helped me up with a knife, I'd much rather never have been held up with a knife. So if, and I don't know their backgrounds obviously, if there's an opportunity to intervene earlier on in a child's development to stop them becoming criminalised, why would you not do that? Because you're stopping people becoming victims of crime. Why would you not do that? I think the phrase, a slogan, that could sum this up.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two drugs who cannot give them the love and the attention that they need when they need it. That affects that child's cognitive unemotional development, and it can also affect their sense of right and wrong, so they don't have the same sense of right and wrong as most other people would have. And that makes them all likely to go into crime. So by tackling that trauma, early intervention as we were talking about before, family support, helping to stop those traumatic experiences becoming hardwired into a brain as that child develops, you can make it less likely that they offend. Isn't there attention almost a contradiction, if you like, between talking about the trauma of someone who carries out a crime? And on the other hand, saying Look, we mustn't pay too much attention to what causes crime, we've got to worry about the victims. No, no contradiction at all.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so it sounds quite jargonistic. What we're trying to tackle here is how do you prevent crime at source? How do you stop it happening so that people don't become criminals all the way through their lives? And if you look at a lot of criminals, hardened criminals or even lower level offenders, it often stems from the experience very early on in their life. So the language used for this is”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, you certainly have a right to ask it, yeah, yeah. And I did once at university, but I didn't like it and I didn't do it again. I've never smoked cigarettes. It's a thing I regret.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Parties will have debate some people will look at different things and they will opine in different ways at different points, but then we come to a settled view. And, you know, I'm the shadow justice secretary. My experience of seeing kids die on the streets of South London because of their involvement with drug dealers and drug gangs and the fear, the horror that I saw in the parents' eyes when I met them afterwards tells me we're not going to be legalizing drugs. What we need to do is give those kids better alternatives to getting involved in the kind of gangs that will destroy their lives while they destroy their community around them.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“a lot of police forces don't immediately arrest you for small scale possession, to be honest because they're taking decisions about the best use of their time. But I'm Kira's appointed me Shadow Secretary of State for Justice. I'm responsible for that policy area and I've been pretty clear on that too. We won't be legalising drugs because a foreign service.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, any political party that can't win the support of enough British voters to get into government is never going into government. You're not a party of government, then you're a party of protest. We need to become a vehicle for the British people to make the change it wants to see. That's what is meant by the political wing of the British people.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah well as the shadow justice secretary I've been pretty crystal clear on that one you know I've said you're not going to put somebody who rapes women in a women's prison I think what's happened in the Labour Party is that people were trying hard not to cause offence to the trans community and then inadvertently Course concern among some women that we weren't properly respectful of their interests too, but we absolutely are. And it's always going to be about balancing rights and responsibilities, but protecting the rights and interests and safety of women needs to be paramount for all of us.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is no conflict because there's clearly a difference, isn't there? Otherwise, they wouldn't have been, they've transitioned. I think to some extent there are people who have turned the lives of trans people into a political football. women or men that I've spoken to do not wish to be used in that way, and they do feel that they're being used, they're being demonized, it's made their lives more difficult. We have to be very careful not to do that. Most trans people, Secretary Secretary.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Women denied their rights, we've got to a much better place in this country, but I think it's very important that there are still safe spaces for biological women where they feel that whatever it is that is worrying them isn't able to happen to them.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, most of what legislation and laws are about are balancing rights between sometimes competing interests. And I think the issue here is particularly given the horrific murder of that young girl up in Merseyside recently. It's very important that people speak about this in a way that is careful not to whip up antagonisms. So I would never say anything. People who are trans have gone through really difficult experiences in their lives. They've gone through huge personal and social conflicts and they deserve all the compassion that we can give them. But in supporting trans rights, which I do, we also have to balance that with the rights of women. I know I was brought up by my mum, strong women in my family, to be a feminist. We've had millennia of patriarchy and misogyny.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conservatives in their recession allowed my family and my community to sink with no support for them to pick up the pieces or contribute in the way that they wanted to, but also they were trying to stop me loving the person I loved gratuitously, so I'm no conservative. That is clear.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me say. But most Tory MPs voted against it, and it was Labour MPs that got that through. But for me, the story here is it's actually a story of why politics matters. You know, people quite often say to me, if you're knocking on the doors, you still get some people say, I'm not going to vote, it doesn't make any difference. And it couldn't be more profound for me. There I was on marches outside Parliament against Section 28, and then, some years later there I was in Parliament, almost the very first debate I spoke in and voted on, was for equal marriage, and now I have a wedding ring on my finger because I finally last year got married to my long term partner, now husband. Now, what a story of change and transformation of our country, but also personally for me it couldn't be more profound than I am now allowed to openly love the person I love. It couldn't be more profound, and yet we had a government telling me that I wasn't allowed to be who I was I was second class, my relationship didn't count. I couldn't tolerate that. So my experience was that”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I'm angry with the Conservative Party, well, my sexuality, because I was growing up gay and I was still coming to terms with it in my teenage years, I mean, back then it was the era of AIDS. You saw TV adverts on the television with headstones collapsing telling you not to die of ignorance. And of course, I was terrified by all of that. So leave aside the other social pressures on you not to be gay at that point. I didn't really come out until my twenties, but by the time I was coming to terms with that and coming to terms with who I was, there was the Thatcher government enacting legislation, Section twenty eight, was part of it that was gratuitously describing gay relationships as pretend family relationships, banning children being taught about sexuality in school, so kids like me growing up gay, no one would speech you about it. So where'd you get your information from? You just heard negative things. You saw negative stereotypes.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was, I mean, it made me angry because I could by this point I was a teenager, I was seeing what was going up and down the country. I was seeing people's lives and livelihoods being taken away. But the key was not that you should be anti-changed, but there was nothing put in its place. There was no industrial strategy. There was no training for the new jobs that have come and replaced it. People were thrown on the scrap heap. So I saw Talented, compassionate, caring people that I loved enormously have their lives thrown away, and I felt that profoundly and I felt a government that allows us to happen is not a government I can support. So it was about that time I joined the Labour Party, age 16. I mean, our family had always been Labour, but no one was a member of it. I joined the Labour Party.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So during the Thatcher recession, Just as happened in many parts of the north, it closed down and all of those people in my family that worked there lost their jobs. And for those people nothing was put in its place. It was a microcosm of having a steelworks closed down or having a pit closed down because our whole community, our whole life was centered around this one place and people's lives fell apart, if I'm really honest.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was told this was going to be my life because it was a decent job, a decent wage, a secure sense of who you were, what job you were going to do. So I was brought up speaking the language of print, printing, printworks. We did our summer holidays with people from the factory. We had Christmas parties for the kids in the factory. My godparents worked at the factory as well. It was our life.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it certainly wasn't tough and rough, I wouldn't say that. My parents had been listening when I lost my dad last year, but my mum, you know, that wouldn't be fair to characterise it that way. But what happened? There is sort of an analogy with what happened in those communities in the north where industry was taken away and nothing was put back in their place. That's the red wall. We were more of a red brick, you know, because we were living in the south and obviously the same circumstances didn't apply as in the former industrialized areas. My family all worked in a print factory in Watford called Audum's, you know, my dad worked there. All of my uncles worked there. All of my aunties worked there. My grandparents worked there. The intention was, as I was growing up, I was going to work there as well. My grandparents had worked there as well. It was this epicenter of our community.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For those families if it was linked to somebody who was living the same life in the same community as them. So we had a program called Homestart, which got parents living in a similar community from a similar background who had successfully parented their kids and linked them with the families that were struggling and gave them advice and the helping family was supported to support that family and it really made a difference.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm interested because that's exactly what we did when I was leader at Lambeth Council. It's not just about criminal justice. It's also about family support. And youth services, the provision of positive activities for young people to do. Back in, it was a long time ago, Nick. It was in 2006. I was elected leader of the council in Lambeth. But over that year, 067, 13 homicides, any number of other kids getting involved in gangs open drug dealing on the streets outside the train stations, businesses closing down, people frightened to go into those areas. We had to do something about it. And we actually, we commissioned the biggest piece of research that had ever been done into the causes of violent youth crime and then structured a series of interventions around that. There were many of them, and I'm sure we won't have time to go into all of them, but one of them was earlier intervention with families and supporting families. But quite often that support came better.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are sanctions for breaking all sorts of orders, but the key point here is to help the parent by carrot and stick to accept support that will turn their kids' lives around. And from speakers to parents in that circumstance myself, they will welcome it.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've spoken to people in this situation, though, Nick, and that isn't generally what they say. Parents love their kids. If their kids are tearaways, if their kids are committing these kind of offences, the parents don't want their kids doing that. They want to know how they can better turn their lives around. And if we can offer more support, and yes, it's going to be mandatory, but many parents will welcome that is my experience. They want their kids to do well in life. They do not want their kids criminalised and ending up in prison, but they need a bit more help. And sometimes you have to have a second coming.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You do it when the kid is at an approach. The first ages that kids start offending can be surprisingly young. 10 and 11 year olds can be offending, vanishing from home. And it's at that point you need to support the parents to get control of them. And many parents will welcome that.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whose kids are committing multiple offences, but the parents are not taking their parental responsibility seriously. So we will issue, allow the police to issue parental orders that will require a parent to go on a training course to learn how to better manage their kids. Now, I've spoken to many parents in these circumstances. It's not simply punitive because many parents in this situation are at their absolute wit's end. They do not want their kids committing crime, ending up in a youth offending institute, ending up in prison. They want their kids to have a decent life. Every parent wants that.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the first point you say is really important. We talk about the crime escalator. Serious criminals start out doing lower level crimes. So if you can catch them and divert them away through appropriate sanction and support, you can stop them committing those crimes in the first place. You can stop the crime in a young life becoming a life of crime. That's to everybody's benefit, the individual offender, but more importantly, people who will never become their victims because they've been stopped. So if you look at antisocial behavior, low level offending, it absolutely scars and debilitates many communities up and down this country where people feel the wrong people are in control of the streets. So we need a range of measures to start to tackle that, to give people back control of their own communities. One of those is parenting orders. One of the proposals we've come up with is parenting orders. And what this is, is you very often got parents.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who are found to have dumped rubbish on streets will be made to clear it up afterwards if you make the mess you'll clear up the mess and it actually has a very beneficial effect on the entire community.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It may have punished them, but it's failed in preventing them from offending. Now, if we could deal with reoffending, that's 80% of offences, and for all that I want to punish criminals, and I understand that because it helps to protect communities, the bigger step is to prevent crime from happening in the first place, because then people don't become victims. And the experience I just told you about, Nick, when I was held up at Knife Point, We can talk about the sense I had about I wanted those people punished, but I'd much rather not have been a victim of that crime in the first place. I'll give you another example of being on the side of people in their communities. The single biggest thing that people have emailed about me about in my 10 years as an MP is litter, dump rubbish on the streets, sofas, televisions, you know, whatever it is, people don't like it if their area looks unloved and full of rubbish because it says something about who they are, where they live, deters inward investment. So we're proposing to introduce cleanup squads.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want prison to make people less likely to offend. Be clear on this. Retribution, punishment, yes. Someone's done something wrong. It deserves a custodial sentence. They will serve that custodial sentence. But when they come out, I want them not to commit offences again. And 80% of all offences are committed by people who have already offended. So in that sense, they've come into contact with a criminal justice system and”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it keeps them off the streets while they're locked up, but in most cases prisoners are released at some point, and with escalating violence in prisons and escalating drug use in prisons, if a prisoner comes out fuelled by violence and high on drugs, what are they going to do when they get out they're going to offend again, aren't they? So in that sense, it hasn't worked, not working under this government. So I get them more.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It should work. I mean, when you've got prisons in the state, they are under this government where you're more likely to leave prison addicted to drugs than when you first go in. It's clearly not working because if you come out more addicted to drugs than when you went in, you're much more likely to commit offences to feed your habit.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not so much giving an outlet to it, it's getting a criminal justice system that works for me, it's not so much about how I feel or what I say, it's what I will do if we're elected into office at the next general election.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“retribution I wasn't thinking I wonder what went wrong in their lives that led them into doing this thing I went these people have just done this to me they probably are doing it to other people as well they need to be got hold of and they need to be stopped”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um it was probably late in the evening on a, I think it was probably a Sunday evening. I walked round the corner in Clapham in South London where I was living in a shared house at the time and two guys jumped out on me from behind a wall, put a knife at my throat, took my bag, rifled my pockets, took my wallet, let go, punched me in the stomach and ran off. And I called the police. We had a police station nearby because we had Bobbies on the beat back then. I knew the name of our local police officer. They came in a squad car. We looked around, we couldn't find anything. Later on that evening I got home afterwards and I was looking in the, doing my teeth in the mirror. There was a nick on my neck where the knife had been, and that is when your mind turns, you think how much worse that could have been. And you've been assaulted. They've taken things from me. They could have caused serious physical harm. Yes, I did feel the need for”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a couple of decades ago in it, but it does stay with you when you've had an experience like that. What happened? Tell us that first. Well, what happened? I was walking back from a barbecue.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them because other kids were dying literally, we had three teen homicides in six months, and I had to, as the councillor leader, do something to save those lives.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we did give that impression, and some of it was about how the party at that point was talking about there was too much trying to understand what had led an offender into offending which sounded like excusing their behaviour and not enough talking about how we supported victims, understood victims, understood the need. The human need for retribution as well as rehabilitation so the offender doesn't commit crimes again. And again, I take this back to my experience in Lambeth. I learned a lot of my politics on the streets of South London. And when I was elected leader of the council then in 06 we won the council actually from a Tory Libdem coalition completely against the run of play that year. It was the only council the country labour won back. There was huge incidents of violent knife crime, drug dealing on the streets and we needed to do something about that and it didn't involve understanding why kids were getting involved in the problems. It involved stopping.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I wouldn't describe it in that way at all. I think it's the Labour Party getting back to its roots. The Labour Party was formed by working people to represent working people. It took a rather unfortunate detour for a few years, but now it's squarely back where it needs to be. Every time Kirk Starmo, Rachel Reeves, or me are giving speeches, we're talking about working people and how we can make British people's lives better. That's where we always should have been.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How who these new people were that had come into our party? Were they really all hard left Corbinistas or were they something different? They were actually something different.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, not very much. I did get a little bit of that, but I think my cars were pretty much on the table all the way through. No, I felt personally a deep responsibility to get the Labour Party back on the side of the British people very, very profound that for me. It was similar to what I'd had when I became a counsellor in Lambeth, because I'd seen what Red Ted, as you call him, had done to that councillor. But I felt that Labour had a responsibility to fix that problem, but also Labour was the only party that could fix that council. And I feel the same about the country. The Labour Party gave me through my life so many opportunities that allowed me to make more of my life, the National Health Service being the single biggest one of them, but so much beyond that too. I didn't want a party with a proud one hundred twenty year history to die in the cesspit of racism, and if I could do something to save it, I would do that. So we set up labour together and we started to bring together people to try to understand.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were faced with a choice at that point, and it happens to different parties at different times. If you don't like the direction it's going in, do you walk off the pitch and leave it to those who you don't agree with, or do you stay on the pitch and try to win it back? And actually, history has shown that what Keir did, and I supported him in this, that was the right thing to do, because many of my colleagues back in the day, there was no clear shared view about what we needed to do to get labour back facing the electorate rather than this rabbit hole that had gone down under the hard left. There wasn't a shared view. Some people did walk away, you know, Tristram Hunt, Chukra Muna, Chris Leslie, others they walked off and they either left politics, set up other parties.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And was close to Corbyn. And, you know, I'd seen it before. We'd fought it off in Lambeth. We'd won the party back in Lambeth, and we'd actually run a pretty decent council after that by connecting back with communities. So when I saw Corbyn come in as Labour leader, my fear was that we would see a repeat of that and we did see a repeat of that with the antisemitism, with the moving away from where our voters were and it culminated in our worst electoral defeat in December 2019 for eighty five years and that is what we've had to rebuild from. So I was heartbroken when Corbyn was elected leader because I'd seen what the hard left had done in Lambeth and I'm relieved that we are now at the end of that process and that Keir has genuinely taken this party back and in his words made it the political wing of the British people again which is what it needs to be.”
2023-02-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Reed One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source