Labour deputy leadership candidate Richard Burgon has said that every policy in Labour’s last manifesto should be retained unless party members explicitly decide otherwise.
Asked on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday if he agreed with front runner Keir Starmer’s analysis that the manifesto was partly to blame for the party’s election defeat, he said: “No, I don’t accept that.
“I’m proud of the manifesto that we stood on, I think the manifesto contains policies which contain the solutions to many of the problems faced by communities in adversity across the country.
“What I would say is that the socialist policies in the manifesto were not the reason we lost the general election… even in the aftermath of this devastating defeat we can’t drop our socialist policies, we can’t drop our anti-austerity economics and that’s why I’m clear that whoever is elected leader of the Labour party, they don’t have a mandate to ditch a single one of those socialist policies in the last two manifestos without the express permission of Labour members.
Asked what – if not the party’s policies – had cost them December’s election, Mr Burgon laid the blame at Brexit’s door.
(Image: Steve Bainbridge ©2019)
He said: “I think that Brexit did overshadow the election and when people didn’t trust us to deliver the policies in the manifesto, what people were often saying to me on the doorstep is you couldn’t even get Brexit done and now you’re promising this… that policy [Brexit policy] failed and any idea that by being clearly Remain, which I think Keir suggested in his interview, I think he’s mistaken as well and it would have been even worse if we had tried that.”
Mr Burgon also said that Jeremy Corbyn has still “got a long political career ahead of him” and would make a good Shadow Foreign Secretary.
“It’s not the end for Jeremy Corbyn, he’s got a long political career ahead of him should he wish,” he added.
