Eddie Izzard interview: Comedian says he didn't ask Jeremy Corbyn's critics to support him in NEC election

The comedian turned activist is standing again for the NEC, but Momentum have been told not to vote for him, and the only support he has, he says he didn't ask for

The comedian turned marathon runner turned activist in standing for election to Labour's National Executive Committee (Getty)

Eddie Izzard is a man well placed to stop Jeremy Corbyn’s latest powergrab on the Labour Party, but he will not say whether he actually wants to do so.

The battle in which he has chosen to fight is itself evidence of Labour’s ongoing civil war, but he stands on the battleground pleading for an end to hostilities. He is a pacifist in combat fatigues.

This weekend, the party will announce who has been elected to four new posts on its National Executive Committee. The email and postal ballot of all party members is open until Friday. Izzard is among the candidates.

“I want to bring people together,” he tells The Independent. “I don’t want us to hack against each other. We’re a team. I just want us to win the next election.”

He has stood for election to the NEC before, and lost. But this election is different. The vote itself is part of the conflict. One of the extra positions will go automatically to a trade union representative. The other three will be directly elected by the rank and file membership, a move designed to shift party power back to the part of it that is avowedly pro-Corbyn.

It was approved by the party conference in October. Momentum have instructed their supporters which three candidates to for. One of them is Jon Lansman, Momentum’s founder. If the three Momentum backed candidates do not win, something very unusual will have happened.

Progress, the Labour grouping that encapsulates the part’s centre left elements, has instructed its supporters to vote for Izzard.

“I didn’t ask them to do it,” he says “That’s just them. I want support from all parts of the party. I haven’t gone in and asked any organisation for their support. I haven’t said, ‘There’s the slate, put me on it.’”

In his election campaign, he is determined to stick almost to basics, to offer “energy and enthusiasm.”

“I know that in any interview you will want me to take a contrary position but I am just not going to do that,” he says. “Jeremy is the leader. He has won two elections."

He went on: “I have been an activist, self-propelled, volunteering, saying ‘Can I go round the country? Can I do this, Can I do that?’ I’ve done it through thick and thin. Even when we were having a really tough time I’ve been out there, pushing. And I want to bring that energy in. It is a positive thing on my behalf.”

Izzard first became a prominent figure in the Labour cause in the bacon sandwich years. When, from a try-and-look-normal perspective, it needed all the help it could get. Those days are gone. The Labour Party certainly does not need any help getting the cool kids on board. They are fully signed up, in their hundreds of thousands. Which is why, at times, the Izzard sales pitch sounds curiously like a job interview.

“What I’m good at,” he explains,”and I think this is a little rare, is I’m a pretty good individual and I’m pretty good as a team player. I can’t really prove it but I know it from all the different elections I’ve fought in.”

Whether he personally agrees or disagrees with Jeremy Corbyn’s views on things, is not the point. Corbyn, for example, has spent three decades campaigning against the European Union, and the evidence to suggest he willfully sabotaged Labour’s weak-willed Remain campaign is not small. Izzard speaks four languages, regularly performs standup in French and is as pro European as they come.

“The leader of a party is not necessarily going to do exactly what you would have done,” he says. “That’s never going to happen. But that is the whole way parties work. Someone gets elected leader. It’s their direction. They have the wind in their sails. They say ok guys ‘We’re going to go in this direction.’ You can’t have everybody going in every direction. That’s just never going to work.”

In November last year, the wider reaches of the party were engaged in various battles over transgender issues, each one specific in its nature. One of the party’s veteran feminists, Linda Bellos, a friend of Jeremy Corbyn, had written on Facebook that she wanted to “thump” transgender activists over the issue of gender neutral changing rooms. On the same topic, another activist had described an amendment to the Gender Recognition Act as a “perverts charter”, suggesting it would allow predatory men to self-define as women and make women’s changing facilities unsafe.

In this area, Izzard will acknowledge there is something of a civil war occurring, between factions who should be supportive of one another. Izzard has spoken publicly about his own transvestitisim for more than 25 years, describing himself on occasions as a “male lesbian.”

“Women have had a tough time over many centuries, as have trans people. The idea that we’re now going to fight each other is not the way forward, after all the hell both groups, both communities have been through, the idea that we’re now going to turn on each other, that’s what I’m trying to avoid.

“I am very pleased with the place women have got to. I’m very pleased with the place transgender people have got to. The T in LGBT wasn’t even in there before.

“I came out in 1985. I’ve had a tough old ride. Just last year I’ve had someone shout homophobic abuse at me. Very positively, I gave it to the police and the CPS acted on that. I’m very pleased that we got to that place.

“I am looking at the positive things. I know this debate is going to go on. I don’t have a magic pill answer. I know I can’t say that but I want us to go forward rather than sideways.”

It is not only for this reason that Izzard says what he has to offer is that he is a “different voice.”

“I want to represent our members, I want to come in and be maybe a slightly different voice,” he says. “People who’ve come up through political systems, they can get into this factional siding thing. I’m going to relentlessly try not to do that. I’m going to keep my eye on the prize, which is to get us elected.”

Thing is, in the Miliband era, this was what was needed. But the party is overwhelmed by people from outside political systems now, and they’ve been instructed not to vote for him, and those who have been instructed to vote for him, he has very deliberately disowned.

Either way, this particular battle ends next week. It is hard to avoid the suspicion Izzard may again be caught in the crossfire.