Iain Dale reveals Andy Burnham’s uncomfortable NHS privatisation moment during Labour leadership debate

Over the years I have hosted numerous debates and husting, whether during election campaigns or party leadership contests. Each is memorable in its own way.

In July 2015 I hosted the four contenders for the Labour leadership, Jeremy Corbyn, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham.

I had seen several of the other hustings and found them rather uninspiring. A major reason for this was the format – opening statements, followed by questioning from an interviewer followed by closing statements. Boring, snoring. The format didn’t enable the candidates to really get stuck into any issue.

Partly due to time constraints too, there was little interaction between the candidates, and the opening/closing statements were a complete waste of time as the candidates just trotted out well worn cliches and phrases which they had used in previous hustings.

Somewhere in the deep mists of time I remember seeing a US Presidential Primary – a republican one, I think – where the candidates were allowed to quiz each other. We used that format in the Women Leaders Debate and Business debate during the 2015 general election, and it worked brilliantly.

The politicians liked it and so did the listeners, so we thought we’d use it here too. I wasn’t sure that the four campaigns would go for this so we didn’t actually give them a choice, we just told them that was happening and none of them argued. In order to avoid repetition of questions we asked them all to provide their questions to us in advance.

When they started to come through I was fairly confident this was going to be a sparkier affair than the previous hustings. One of the candidates in particular had a question which I thought could be incendiary. Unfortunately, when it came to it, that particular candidate wimped out of asking the question and asked a much more watered down version. Shame!

I also made a deliberate decision not to do any preparation whatsoever. I had no notes, no reams of briefing material in front of me. All I had was my laptop, which came in very useful at one point when Andy Burnham was talking about privatisation in the NHS and how he would reverse it all.

I was pretty sure that he had been Health Secretary when the decision was made to privatise Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Suffolk. I googled it and sure enough, I was right.

His defence was that it had actually happened in 2011, after he had left office. Ah, I said, but you took the decision, didn’t you. It was one of his more uncomfortable moments.

You might be rather shocked and surprised that I did little preparation. I think interviewers and hosts are often more obsessed about following their instructions and trotting out embarassing quotes that their producer has found and spend the whole time trying to trip people up than actually facilitating a proper debate.

I didn’t want to do that. Although I think I intervened at appropriate moments and pushed the various candidates when I thought they were blustering, the 90 minutes was about them and not about me.

I only imposed myself into the debate when I thought I should or when I was prompted by my producer, Matt Harris (now the editor of Andrew Marr’s show), to do so.

Matt and I had a brilliant understanding. He instinctively knew when I might be tempted to avoid going in for the kill and he often came up with brilliant questions in my ear, that I might not have thought of. Every presenter needs a producer who knows them inside out, knows how their brain works and when they need a bit of help.

I often joked that I was but a mere mouthpiece of Matt Harris. It’s not really like that, because believe it or not I do have a mind of my own, but his interventions made me appear much better than I really was, or am.

Some of the best moments in the debate were when I just sat back, said nothing at all and let the four of them go at it. I can remember four of five occasions where I just thought, no, don’t intervene, the listener will get far more out of this if I just remain silent. Obviously when they are all speaking at once, you have to intervene to restore order, but in this type of format the presenter should think of themselves as the conductor of the orchestra, rather than the chief violinist.

Most of the questions came from listeners who had pre-submitted them, although we did take a couple of live ones on the night. One of those was from ‘Nigel in Kent’, aka Nigel Farage.

Every programme needs moments like that and the candidates seemed to enjoy being able to have a go at a political opponent.

The standout moment came when the four candidates were asked if they would put Ed Miliband in their shadow cabinets. Three of them trotted out the predictable “I’m not forming my team on your show, Iain”. And then came Jeremy Corbyn. “Yes, I would and I’d put him in charge of the environment,” declared Jeremy.

“There you are,” I dramatically gestured to the other three, “That’s why he’s winning, because he gives a straight answer to a straight question!”

For me, I felt I came of age as a presenter that night. That might seem a funny thing to say, but even after five years. I still regarded myself as a bit of a ‘newbie’ at all this.

HAVE I SAID TOO MUCH? MY LIFE IN POLTIICS AND THE MEDIA  by Iain Dale in published by Biteback on 15 July. Order signed copies via this link.

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Iain Dale is on LBC 7-10m Monday to Thursday.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.