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Hello and welcome to Political Thinking.

It's not every week that a political party declares that the man who led it at the last

election, the man the party proposed to be our next Prime Minister, is now considered

unfit to be a member of Parliament. That though is what happened this week when Keir Starmer

declared that his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn would not be representing the Labour Party at the

next election. My guest on Political Thinking this week is one of those who was urging Starmer on.

Steve Reed, Labour's shadow justice secretary, was a founder member of the Labour Together Group,

a group that tried to keep people in the Labour Party, where many were thinking of leaving it

during the Corbyn years. And this week he's announcing a new approach to crime and approach

the promises to prevent crime, punish criminals and protect communities. And he says that when

Jeremy Corbyn was leader, Labour gave the impression they were more concerned about the criminals

than they were about the victim. Steve Reed, welcome to Political Thinking.

Thank you, Nick. Good to be here.

When Keir Starmer finally announced what, let's be honest, we all knew we were going to announce

that there was no way back for Jeremy Corbyn. Is someone who's a veteran of the struggle inside

the party? How did it make you feel? I felt relieved, is the truth of it. And there are two reasons

for this. One is the necessity for Keir as the leader of the Labour Party to show that he

has changed the party, if he's going to change the country. And that has been done. But for me too,

my history in politics goes back to Lambeth, where I was first elected as a councilor and later

became a council leader. And Lambeth had previously been run by the hard left under Ted Knight.

So I had seen the damage that they can do and how they can alienate the Labour Party from the

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