Labour leadership: Long-Bailey accuses Starmer of lacking policy during Andrew Neil interviews – as it happened

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs

9.24pm GMT

And here are the main points from the Rebecca Long-Bailey interview.

I don’t know what Keir’s policy ideas are, if I’m honest. I know he says he wants to adopt the same values that the Labour party currently has, but what does that mean in practice?

I think we need to see more detail, we need to see more meat on the bone in terms of what Keir believes in.

I don’t think that’s a bad idea. I think it would be quite disruptive potentially to do that in the months before a general election. But I certainly like your way of thinking.

When we have the general election, after that if we don’t win the general election, then we’ll have another leadership election.

There’s no such thing as Corbynism and this is one of the things that always irks me. There is socialism and there are principles in the Labour party. And if I continue them, then I’m proud to do that. But I’m certainly not a continuation of Jeremy Corbyn or indeed any other member of the shadow cabinet or previous leader.

I think there’s two elements to a leader. The first is being electable and resonating with communities and speaking the language of aspiration. The second is actually having the policies to improve their lives. And you need to have those two things, one doesn’t come without the other.

8.48pm GMT

Here are the main points from the Keir Starmer interview.

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It needs someone who can unite our party and bring it together, it needs someone who can effectively take on Boris Johnson at the despatch box, and it needs someone unrelentingly focused on winning that general election.

And there are different ways to inspire people. You can inspire people so they want to sit at your feet, listening to your next word; that’s not me. Or you can inspire people by building a team of people who want to come with you on a journey and change their party and their country … That’s the way I want to inspire people.

I think [Starmer’s] been appalled by the awfulness of the current leadership — not so much on policy but on the nastiness and the way they did things.

We obviously got it very wrong in that general election.

I’ve been running a very positive campaign, actually not just not criticising Jeremy, but not criticising the other candidates, because I profoundly believe that if our party can’t pull together and unify, then we’re going to carry on losing.

Well, I’m not particularly interested in finding things that they find palatable or unpalatable. I’m setting out my positive case, I’m saying, we need to unite the party, we need to be a very effective opposition against Boris Johnson, and we need to unrelentingly focus on winning that next general election.

Lots of things are going to change between now and 2024. It’s not unlikely that we’ll be leaving the EU without a deal. We don’t know what the state of the economy will be. Manufacturing could well may take a hit, so we’re going to have to craft that 2024 manifesto looking forward. My pledges are an indication to our members as to what I think is important, the direction of travel and what we will build on.

We got to the nitty-gritty of it, which is, should people in this country be able to go and work in Europe, should those in Europe be able to come to work here; most people thought that was a good idea. When we got to, should families be able to live together, broadly speaking, most people agreed with that.

Let me then explain how those guidelines came about. We were actually dealing with some of the grooming gangs up in the North West, and it came to my attention that some of those that we were now going to charge with very serious offences had previously been arrested but not charged. So I asked to see the file, because the question was, well if there’s offences this serious, why weren’t they charged.

When I looked into the file I saw that we were dealing there with girls, 13, 14, 15, who had been passed around between men in the most appalling circumstances. I looked into the file and what I saw was good faith decisions made by the police and prosecutors, using assumptions about credibility. So they were asking themselves, did this person go straight to the police and tell them what had happened; and the reality was, none of these victims had …