Sitting down with Hilary Benn is like going back in a time machine to the Eighties when I first interviewed his dad, the late Tony Benn. Just like Benn senior, he strides over with a beaming smile and answers every question with charming old-school manners and gritty singlemindedness. Like his dad, he pulls out a recorder to guard against being misquoted. All that is missing is the famous pipe and a mug of tea.
“Dad would have been absolutely thrilled,” he said of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership election victory. “He knew and worked with Jeremy over many years. Dad always said that what people are looking for, particularly in difficult times, is a sense of hope and encouragement.”
As Labour gathers this weekend in Brighton for its first annual conference since May’s bitter defeat, the shadow foreign secretary says it is a “hugely important opportunity” for Mr Corbyn to tell the British public who he is.
“People see someone who is honest, who says what he believes and is principled and doesn’t compromise,” he said. But he also makes clear that being principled is not enough: “The challenge for Labour is to win people’s trust and confidence once again after our second bad election defeat.”
Mr Benn (who calls himself “a Benn but not a Bennite”) is the most senior moderate in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, and the survival of their relationship will be critical.
One of the first tests will be a vote next week on scrapping the Trident nuclear deterrent. Mr Corbyn has long campaigned against nuclear arms. Mr Benn backs a replacement for Trident. “Look, I was elected in May on our manifesto which committed us to maintain our nuclear deterrent,” said Mr Benn. But he offers a way to avoid confrontation, saying a “proper debate” is needed “over the next year or two rather than over the next four days”.
Another potential flashpoint is a trade union resolution calling on Labour to join the campaign to quit the EU if workers’ rights are watered down in David Cameron’s pre-referendum talks. Again, Mr Benn aims to play peacemaker.
“I’m absolutely with the unions in saying David Cameron has no right to mess with worker rights,” he said. “But the answer is not to leave the European Union, which was fundamental in bringing rights like paid leave.
"Dad always said that what people are looking for, particularly in difficult times, is a sense of hope and encouragement"
Hilary Benn
“It would be like saying, ‘We lost a vote in the Commons so we will walk away from Parliament.’ No, the answer is to get a Labour government elected.”
Have they discussed the possibility that Cameron will call a vote on a bombing campaign against Islamic State fanatics in Syria? “We are both aware this is an issue we are going to have to address,” he said. “If the Government has a proposition to bring forward, we will consider it.” Could he see himself voting the opposite way to his leader, a former chairman of Stop the War? “That’s a hypothetical question,” Mr Benn says.
That’s hardly a dismissal of the idea. “Nobody can forecast how they will vote until we see the proposition.”
A pattern is slowly emerging as we chat, in which Mr Benn politely accentuates the positive, and tries to avoid contradicting his leader.
But like Mr Corbyn he is too honest to dissemble away their differences. One gets the impression that if they do ever fall out badly, it will be sudden and brutal.
“The idea that a new leader is elected and everybody else says, ‘I now no longer think the things I did before,’ is not credible,” he said when asked if collective shadow cabinet responsibility was being relaxed. “We might as well be honest and have the debate.”
On Monday, in his big conference speech, Mr Benn will stress the vital importance of being “outward-facing”. “London was built on migration,” he said. “Humankind — that’s 7.2 billion people — have got to work with each other if we are going to deal with the challenges that we face.”
In his unfailingly charming style, the younger Mr Benn is a model of conflict resolution in action. It remains to be seen whether Mr Corbyn has the party management skills to prevent the awkward standoffs turning into civil war.
“Look, we are a broad church, but the only way forward is to work together,” advised Mr Benn. And then, in what may allude to Labour’s wilderness years when his father was the godfather of the dissident Left, he cautioned: “The lesson from history is very clear.”
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