John McDonnell on his favourite Glastonbury 2017 acts, Jeremy Corbyn’s visit and whether Michael Eavis could join … – Somerset Live

Those who want Michael Eavis to be Prime Minister will have to wait, as one fast route for the Glastonbury festival founder to rise to the top of politics has been closed off for now.

Labour shadow chancellor, John McDonnell , said it wasnt possible to let unelected people into the shadow cabinet.

But responding to Somerset Lives light-hearted question, he did suggest there would be room for the ideas of the Eavis family.

And if either Emily or Michael became an MP, perhaps he wouldnt rule out a cabinet slot?

The Labour shadow chancellor, and key ally of Jeremy Corbyn , was speaking to Somerset Live after taking part in a discussion in the Left Field tent called is democracy broken?, which also featured co-leader of the Green party Jonathan Bartley and Faiza Shaheen.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr McDonnell answered questions on:

You can watch the full interview above.

Highlights from the interview

I think Jeremy has engaged with young people, hes engaged with people of all ages actually. But particularly young people have just been inspired by him.

For a long period of time politicians never exuded any sort of hope for the future and what hes done is hes said to young people, if you get engaged you can change the world, you can create the future.

Theyve decided to turn up and vote and more importantly than that, theyre going to pursue their ideas.

Corbyns speeches had encouraged people at the festival to contribute their ideas and people interested in politics should join the Labour party to try to implement them, he added.

Lets look at the reality of whats happened under successive Tory Governments. Not building council housing, allowing housing in London in particular to be used for, not housing need, but for speculative gain.

And then what happens? You then crowd families into unsafe conditions in tower blocks. And you ignore the advice thats been given over the years about safety and sprinklers.

Im so angry about it, we should be angry about it. The anger means we will never allow this to happen again.

We can demonstrate that were picking up votes under the first past the post system and we can win a majority Labour government, Im convinced about that.

Were picking up increased voting all over the country because of the ideas and well always continue to do that.

Over the last ten years or so Ive been believed in proportional representation in some form maintaining the constituency link is the system that I want because I think its a fairer system.

But Im in a minority in the Labour party at the moment and in the overall political debate. I still think we can win that argument and that eventually we need a fairer system.

Theres other reforms which need to take place. I also talked about the abolition of the House of Lords.

How do we bring forward a really detailed rural policy? Thatll mean us coming down here, holding more and more community consultations, and more importantly to engage with people, listening to people. In some ways the election being called interrupted that work.

He added the detail of policies targeted at helping the people of Somerset would be developed in detail after hearing what local people think.

Similar sessions on economic policy in the West Country had always been packed out, he said.

The need for infrastructure investment in this area has been sadly neglected. If we can get fair infrastructure investment around the whole of the country, rather than just piling it into London and the home counties in the south east as it is at the moment, I think we can turn the rural economy around."

I saw Stormzy last night, it was just terrific and hes one of our supporters as well.

And I saw Alison Moyet as well. Shes always superb, her set was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Just the whole crowd rose up in support, it was fantastic.

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John McDonnell on his favourite Glastonbury 2017 acts, Jeremy Corbyn's visit and whether Michael Eavis could join ... - Somerset Live