What's It Like to Work for Jeremy Corbyn？
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Summary
In this episode, I chat with Labour's former spokesperson for the party's 2016 election campaign, Owen Jones, about his time as a politician and his thoughts on the current state of the Labour Party and its leadership. We discuss how he got into politics, why he left the party, and what he thinks about the current political climate.
Transcript
00:00:00.700
Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:00:06.520
The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,
00:00:11.780
including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:00:15.780
Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:00:22.600
Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:00:30.000
People on the left are like, why are you still a member of the Labour Party?
00:00:34.560
The reason I would vote for it is to destroy it.
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I was a spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn between 2016 and 2017.
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One of the things I really like about you is you, you know,
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whatever your ideological leanings you're someone who tries to work across different lines and you
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you're interested in talking to people with different points of view and trying to persuade
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people as opposed to you know screaming shouting the way we do politics nowadays right um and uh
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how do you reflect on your time in politics does it allow for that sort of thing have we got worse
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at doing that better at doing that what were your experiences like uh well um i've i've slowly come
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to terms with the realization that uh maybe we're not going to build uh socialism in britain
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anytime soon how did you realize that that's a genuinely interesting question
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or was that just a joke uh no no i mean look obviously the corbyn project uh went the way
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the way it went and uh had its many different structural challenges that were he's gone into
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political speak now isn't it it didn't work out it didn't work out um and look i mean i i think
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that there's a lot of areas where i public policy and governance can be improved and i'm willing to
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and quite enthusiastic about working cross-party and working with whoever wants to deliver those
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things and improve those things and quite pragmatic so if people share my objectives and
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perspective on particular policy areas which like i think gambling cuts across political lines
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obviously there are ideological elements to it of course as we've touched on but i think
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fundamentally like it does cut across political lines and and their scope to work collaboratively
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and i think that there are other such areas um and i think that that's kind of where
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i'd prefer to spend my energy because the labor party and the internal politics can sap
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a person's energy quite quickly and create a level of despondency that isn't productive yeah so yeah
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well i wasn't getting it at it actually from a sort of left right point of view i think
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actually there's there's increasingly this is also happening on the right this sort of
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tribalism and you believe this therefore you must be outcast and we're going to cancel you
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from this tribe you don't belong uh like we had david starkey on the show uh some time ago and he
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said that he's pro-mandatory vaccination which to me is an abhorrent view but david starkey has a
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right to say it and i'm still going to be uh you know polite and have that conversation even though
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i massively disagree and then someone wrote an article saying david starkey is not one of us
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you know and I'm just like you're not you're not going to get very far in anything you're
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trying to solve in the world if your attitude is this person has a position I fundamentally
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disagree with therefore you you can't be spoken with and had a conversation yeah did you see that
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that is that a new thing in politics or is that has it always been like this in your in your
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experience i think i think um it's a relatively new phenomenon and i think it's from brought about
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by social media and the kind of silos that people create and the echo chambers and positive
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reinforcement that people get from like-minded people and i think that that that's part of the
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issue yeah um i mean david starkey may be a slightly controversial example um given some
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of his comments in the past um but like yeah i mean i think that it's it's a relatively new
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phenomenon i think it's part of the social media era and and um yeah i mean it's interesting i
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think like because like a political strategy particularly for like a left populist or even
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any any kind of populist movement would be to mobilize the base and move the middle as a result
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and a lot of emphasis goes on mobilizing the base
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and as a result of that, you know, dictating the terms of debate.
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So I think populism as well as a political strategy
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I think a lot of parties and successive political leaders
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and in particular the future of the Labour Party.
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Do you think that it's got any real future in a party as a whole?
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Because the reality is, look, you would probably identify
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your values in Keir Starmer's are completely opposite
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and I can't imagine you being on board with what Starmer does.
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Can the Labour Party really hold these broad coalition of people together?
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Yeah, I think it's quite illustrative of how polarised the Labour Party is, given you've got a situation where a new leader has kicked out the previous leader.
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I mean, I know that there's a context and I know that there's other, you know, factors.
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But that is quite like a Stalinist thing to do, isn't it?
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Exactly, yeah. It's like, and, you know, I just noticed that poster up there.
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The audience can't see it, but we've got the poster,
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That is the sort of thing that happens generally in dictatorships, right?
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You come in, you get rid of the previous people.
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and the Labour Party to split into its various different factions
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I agree with you that actually it would be far more harmonious.
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People could get their views properly represented.
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You know, it would be far more effective as a party
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well, I'm going to vote for the Momentum Party,
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or a left-wing party ever be elected ever again?
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Well, under PR, the Tories would end up being split as well,
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The point, and it's interesting that David Starkey has come up,
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but actually the point that he made when we had him on
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he said one of the benefits of the first-pass system
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And he was talking then about the right extremists.
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but I'm also increasingly aware that it's got trade-offs
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breaking up the Labour Party would be a good thing.
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yeah so the only way you're going to bring that about is is if there's a minority labor government
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yeah so people say to me on the left like people on the left are like why are you still a member
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of the labor party why are you still why would you vote for the labor party the reason i would
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vote for it is to destroy it i would i would vote for it so we have a minority labor government
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that passes proportional representation in a confidence and supply deal with the smp or
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whatever yeah and then uh and then we all go our separate ways really so so what you're you're
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saying is that you don't see any future in the labor party uh no i don't i don't i don't look
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i think it's a completely unstable coalition between democratic socialists like me uh you
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know the social democrats even and blairites now who control the party who are free market
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don't want to change the fundamentals of the economy
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it would only ever happen under first past the post
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and you're right I think they'd split as well the Tories
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the things we explored because look the reason we started
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you know sort of center left of center and then brexit happened and we were trying to understand
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what had happened and why because the one thing that i found very unpleasant about that particular
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conversation was i'm a dark-skinned russian first generation immigrant and the idea that half the
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country voted for brexit because they hated dark-skinned people or they were racist was
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that to me is just a lie and it's a smear and it's slanderous and to say that is just
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to me that was just awful the way that that conversation was being had
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But one of the things we learned in exploring and talking to a lot of people who were former Labour or members of Labour or Blue Labour or whatever who'd voted Leave was the fact that the Labour Party no longer represents the very people it was founded to represent, right?
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At least that's how they feel. You might disagree. I don't know if you do. But do you think there's also a class issue within the Labour Party?
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There are some people who are, you know, university educated and very progressive in their thinking and they've read a lot of the right books and whatever.
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and there's also quite a lot of people who just you know they thought the Labour Party was about
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representing them in employment relations and regulating certain things that the free market
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doesn't regulate and making sure the state looks after people and they are not on board with
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identity politics they're not on board with some of the more sort of new ways of thinking let's say
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do you think that's also a big split I think the the the culture split is interesting if that if
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I mean, I don't know enough about whether that does cut across economic lines.
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So I feel like our way of conceptualizing class now is quite outdated.
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I think, you know, we do it along the lines of education
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and we do it along the lines of like what job people have
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When actually, I think if you look at class on the basis of someone's income,
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there are a lot of consistencies across like i'd say like there's there are a lot of consistencies
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across like who they vote for so people who are on lower incomes overwhelmingly vote labor still
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even in 2019 um but if you had if you have like a self-reporting way of conceptualizing class like
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asking for example retired homeowners who have a few buy-to-lets in the red wall whether they
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consider themselves working class they'll probably say yes because they had a working class job
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when they were working because they had a job that didn't require a degree when they were working
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so there's lots of ways that i think we conceptualize class that's quite unhelpful
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in the kind of broader sense but how quote unquote the working class people who identify still as
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working class even though their material circumstances perhaps tell a different story
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might perceive some of these culture the culture issues um i think is very different to
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how how i would perhaps define the working class the low-income workers who were often very often
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also graduates you know like people who went to university and work in grad jobs in london in
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their early 20s and are paying like 50 of their income after tax in rent you know these are also
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the working class i from my perspective so i i find yeah basically the way that we conceptualize
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it's quite it's quite interesting that is difficult for me matt because like we on the
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comedy circuit you meet people who went to oxford who are very well educated who both whose parents
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you know are wealthy um and they make 10 grand a year on the comedy circuit now by your definition
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they'd be working class right well if they're from wealth and they don't need to earn a lot
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of money no they do need to they just don't because they're comedians and they're idiots
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probably the thing that we should be foregrounding
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of whether whether you need a degree to do your job or whether you don't it's kind of i don't
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think that's as relevant as how much money you earn yeah it's an interesting point and the
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realignment is happening for sure you're right i got you with that idiot yeah you did yeah
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because they are um but the do you know you're not worried matt where we are politically
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because i would place myself in a different space to you in the political spectrum but i look at
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Labour, they're fucking useless. I look at Tories, they're imploding, they've got a fat buffoon in
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charge. You look at competency on either side of the political spectrum, there's a dearth of it.
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Do you not worry and think to yourself, where is the left, you know, where are the new left's
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ideas? Where are the new right's ideas? And if you don't have good ideas on the left and you don't
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have good ideas on the right, they're not going to be able to challenge each other and we're not
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going to be able to move forward as a nation yeah i think there is a real problem with a lack of
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vision and agenda i don't think we've had a government with an agenda for quite a while
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in this country i mean the only thing that i can really remember in the last 12 years is get brexit
00:14:46.820
done and it's done and like there's no kind of there's no vision for the country where the
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country needs to go we've got leveling up now which is like a computer game i don't no one
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knows what it means but we're leveling up it's it's like there's a there is a lack of ideas and
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i think that we are in an in an era now where there are so many different challenges that need
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to be confronted and there are different ways of confronting them obviously but you know the
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housing crisis climate change lots of different things that are happening that need big idea
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politics and everyone lots of people criticized jeremy obviously for their own reasons and
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he at least did have a vision and big ideas and when he said after we lost the last election that
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we won the argument what he meant by that was he was able to define and dictate the terms of debate
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everything was around you know that agenda and lots of things that are now coming out of leveling
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up as a concept um but because of you know jeremy corbyn putting that on the agenda so
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for me there's a role of for the opposition to try to influence the agenda of government
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absolutely and starmer isn't doing that he's just sort of hoping that they collapse
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i think that that's quite high risk because no one knows what starmer stands for
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If all of the problems can be pinned on Johnson,
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which by the looks of it, the Tory party is going to do,
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then the new leader is a clean skin and they can just move on
00:16:25.320
So, yeah, I mean, I think it's disappointing that in this moment,
00:16:28.760
the Labour Party could be making some quite compelling arguments
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lots of different things that they're just not on the playing field.
00:16:37.080
Do you not think that Jeremy Corbyn, by the way,
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Jeremy Corbyn, I agree with you completely. He was a person who had vision of what he wanted.
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Now, I personally don't agree with what he wanted on most things, but he had a vision and there's
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no denying it. But isn't Jeremy Corbyn exactly the example of why our politics is so broken now?
00:16:54.080
Because he had a vision when he was on the back benches. He came into the leadership and the
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fundamental issue on which he was clearly Eurosceptic. If you're trying to convince me,
00:17:04.240
he voted remain. I mean, come on. Right. But because of the way the party politics works and
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the way that the media works and the way that our brains work, where someone has said something we
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don't like, that means that person is over. We don't care what else they believe. But as long
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as they, you know, in his case, if he just came out and said, well, look, I've always been a
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Eurosceptic. I'm a man of principle. I know that my party doesn't share my vision, but this is what
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I believe. But even someone who I genuinely think Jeremy Corbyn is a principled man. I really,
00:17:33.340
really do. But he couldn't do that. He could not have the courage of his convictions once he
00:17:39.960
actually had some measure of power influence within the party. And I think that's why you
00:17:45.820
see it on all sides. The moment you commit to a vision, people start attacking you. And in our
00:17:50.800
world, we just, we can't handle it. We don't want it. It's too toxic, whatever. And I think that's
00:17:54.920
why politics is broken yeah i think when i was there um 2016 2017 uh uh we did feel i think the
00:18:04.320
whole project felt much more insurgent and we took more risks and because we felt like we had nothing
00:18:09.940
to lose and then but it changed yeah after 2017 you think okay we might get into government and
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i think you start taking less risks and i think that that was one of the things that really changed
00:18:22.760
after 2017 was you know in that election we did accept the result the referendum and you know it
00:18:30.420
was very much on domestic issues and then after that it was like okay we need to sort of keep
00:18:34.280
this coalition that we've managed to build together we don't upset anyone and then when
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you get into that frame of mind that's kind of it that's it you're trying to placate people
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and then it's just like then he was just like any politician yeah it became like he was exactly
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but the Labour Party missed a real opportunity.
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She said, give me a strong hand in negotiations,
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prime minister who could deliver brexit so that that should have been the message
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and then failing that when she brought the deal back which was criticized by everyone and probably
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needed labor's um well it needed labor support to pass it should have been uh they should have
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abstained on it and just let it pass you know as and then brexit becomes the tory's problem
00:20:17.500
but then what happened was the deal was blocked it looked like Labour was blocking it because it
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was voting against it therefore it looked like Labour was blocking Brexit and then we had
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two years of or whatever whatever it was a year of wrangling over a people's vote and the salience
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of Brexit was suddenly at the top of the agenda and that's not an election that we want to fight
00:20:39.820
or we want to or we're going to win and that's what happened so yeah that there were successive
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areas i think that that happened um obviously it's easy in hindsight but there were some of us at the
00:20:50.360
time that were saying you know we we should be saying we're the only party that can deliver
00:20:54.260
brexit because it's true we would have been able to do it and matt whenever i see the labor party
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and and i see their policies i just don't think they understand ordinary working class people
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i look at brexit they didn't get it really they didn't get really why people voted for it while
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people were frustrated by it. I look at their attitude to lockdowns and I just think you're
00:21:17.120
crippling ordinary working people. They didn't seem to get it. They wanted more lockdowns.
00:21:23.340
Don't you think the fundamental problem is that realistically you look at this party and they just
00:21:27.500
don't get what working people, who they are and what they represent? I think for the first time
00:21:33.160
in quite a long time i think well i i would argue since 1997 in in 2017 we had
00:21:40.400
an offer to the majority the vast majority of working people people you know that would have
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credibly uh improve their material circumstances and there was a you know a blueprint of how that
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was going to happen and it was as i say people bought into it and it was popular agenda even
00:22:02.180
they didn't win so that's where the labor party should be in my from my perspective it's like
00:22:07.440
what policies are going to improve the material circumstances of people who are living and the
00:22:13.820
most people are living paycheck to paycheck yeah and uh that's where it should be yeah and i mean
00:22:19.900
i i agree i think on the civil liberties stuff around the pandemic uh things like vaccine
00:22:27.200
passports and supporting the government in the restrictions that came in particularly towards
00:22:32.640
the end I think was a mistake it's not where the Labour Party should have been yeah Matt I feel bad
00:22:37.780
because you were here to talk about gambling and we did you can just see we're really interested
00:22:42.500
in what you have to say on this so this it wasn't like we sat down and we went you know what we'll
00:22:46.860
do 20 minutes on gambling and we're hitting with the Corbyn stuff like that wasn't the plan it just
00:22:51.360
it's really great to have the conversation and as I said you know earlier on I think it's
00:23:01.620
and who are not attached to a particular tribe.
00:23:04.300
Now, you have your own politics and your own vision,
00:23:13.220
and then we'll do a couple of special questions
00:23:23.020
We're not talking about fan ownership of football clubs.
00:23:26.320
And getting the billionaires out of, well, not out of the Premier League necessarily,
00:23:36.340
And I feel like that has been undermined by the marketization of football.
00:23:49.980
You have nothing to lose but your chains and your football club.
00:23:54.180
Guys, thank you so much for watching and listening.
00:23:56.320
where we're going to ask Matt a couple of very special questions from you
00:24:02.920
with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show.
00:24:08.020
And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,
00:24:26.320
Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:24:33.320
The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,
00:24:38.840
including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:24:42.860
Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:24:49.660
Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.