22/06/2014 The Andrew Marr Show

After a week which has been pretty tough for the Labour leader

Ed Miliband, at last, an Opposition policy which seems genuinely popular

Under Labour, every adult in the UK would get a free owl.

The more you think about it, the more sense it makes.

There has been a scandalous suggestion that the owls for all

policy is a hoax, a practical joke, caused by an internet hacker.

I, for one, don't believe it - do you?

Reviewing the papers with me today, my own two wise owls,

Isabel Hardman, assistant editor of the Spectator and the BBC Security

If there's one thing President Obama and David Cameron have decided

We may be days away from the fall of Baghdad and though nobody wants

to be sucked in to a bloody civil war, this is the biggest potential

threat facing the world at the moment and according to this

I'll be talking to the former Defence Secretary Liam Fox about it,

and I'm sure about David Cameron's problems in Europe too.

Ed Miliband once said it's a good idea not to read the

He's had an awful press over the past few days and weeks.

I'll be asking Chuka Umunna, the Shadow Business Secretary,

and one of Mr Miliband's earliest and most fervent supporters.

We'll hear some forthright views on Europe, Russia,

the Ukraine and how we should treat Polish migrants here, from Poland's

Talking of forthright, the redoubtable Baroness Trumpington

explains how she got away with straight-talking to Mrs Thatcher.

I didn't give a dam. If I decided I had to be true to myself, and if it

wasn't like, too bad. -- wasn't liked.

And finally, the violinist Nicola Benedetti -

going back to her Scottish musical roots - performs for us live.

But first, the news, from Naga Munchetty.

There's a warning that the conflicts in the Middle-East

will have long-term effects on security in Britain.

The head of Counter Terrorism at the Metropolitan Police says

young British Muslims who have fought in Syria may return and

It comes as the Sunni extremist group ISIS

Leading figures in Baghdad have warned that the country's army is

struggling to repel the attacks as Simon Clemison reports.

He is one Briton to travel out to Syria, but one among many. This man

ended up in a video where a group of men talk about going to fight in

Iraq in an apparent attempt to encourage other Western Muslims to

join a holy war. But he did not leave the UK alone. It's been

revealed that he went with two other men, also from Cardiff. The pair

returned home but were arrested on suspicion of receiving terrorist

training. They were later released without charge. Police believe about

500 British people have gone out to the two countries. The departing

head of counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police has told the BBC

that they need to be alert to the possibility some might return to

commit acts of violence here. I am afraid that I believe that we will

be living with the consequences of Syria, from a terrorist point of

view, let alone the world geopolitical consequences, the many,

many years to come. -- for many years to come. None of the men are

Nvidia referred to bringing the fight home, but Downing Street says

there have been 65 arrests related to Syria in the last 18 months. In

Iraq itself, there have been a series of mass rallies, called for

by a Shi'ite cleric in a show of force against the insurgent group,

ISIS. But Sunni militants have seized a border crossing which could

help ISIS seize weapons and other equipment to Iraq. Another two towns

are said to have fallen, and there are serious concerns about the

ability of the army to resist the advance.

And earlier, the BBC's World Affairs Editor, John Simpson,

said he had been speaking to Western diplomats and senior members of the

Iraqi government who told him the situation in the country is bleak.

The Americans have been warning about ISIS for probably around 18

months, and they saw the rise of the movement. But it's only in the last

two weeks, 14 days, that they have been using surveillance techniques

either from drones or satellites or planes or whatever to watch what is

happening with ISIS. It's quite extraordinary that it is such a

short space of time that they have been watching them. There are other

things that are really quite disturbing as well. The Iraqis have

been given hellfire missiles by the Americans, which they use planes to

fire, but the Hellfire missiles also ran out two weeks ago and the

Americans don't seem to be in any hurry to replace them. Not only

that, but all sorts of other important equipment which the

Americans have promised hasn't yet been delivered. Now that is partly

because the training takes a long time, but it is quite disturbing

that the Iraqis won't get sophisticated fighter jets September

at the earliest. David Cameron will call

for a vote among EU leaders on who should be the next leader

of the European Commission. The move has been described

as "unprecedented". It comes as nine left-wing leaders

from across the EU have agreed to back the former Prime Minister

of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker. is too much of a Brussels insider to

push through reform. Police in Essex say they cannot rule

out a possible link On Tuesday, Nahid Almanea was

found near a nature reserve with 16 stab wounds, while James Attfield

died after he was stabbed more than Extra patrols have been scheduled

in the area, while officers from seven different forces have

been drafted in to help. I'll be back with

the headlines just before 10:00am. Most newspaper editors have decided

that the threat of jihadist is coming back to the the main story.

MI6 are saying that 300 fighters from Syria are already back. The

Mail on Sunday talks about a schoolboy jihadist, before and after

pictures. Similar to the Sunday Telegraph. Two brilliant brothers

who left a British suburb for jihad. The Sunday Times has done in a

different direction, talking about business bosses attacking the Prime

Minister for his failure to curb EU measures that they say will threaten

competition in this country. And a Wimbledon picture, World Cup fading,

Wimbledon coming. I have just dropped Scotland on Sunday on the

floor, incompetently, and there is a story about yes campaign is getting

rid of the Queen. There will be a new constitution after the yes vote

and they think Scotland should become a republic. We will talk

about that and the other stories later with Isabel Hardman and Frank

Gardner. Frank, starting with you, and Iraq. You have chosen the

Observer newspaper. There is a big spread here, which has rebranded

Shia insurgents gaining the whip hand in Baghdad. These are the

people who are going to save Baghdad if ISIS, this big and powerful

insurgency, decides to take on the capital. The Iraqi army, frankly, is

not up to the job. They melted away in practically all of the places

where ISIS had been taking ground, but this is why everyone is worried

about it being a sectarian, Sunni versus Shia Muslim thing. These

people are much more motivated than the mainstream Iraqi army. A hard

question to answer, but is the Shia militia able to take on ISIS? Lots

of pictures of small kids holding guns bigger than they are. It all

depends where ISIS decided take them on. If they attack the big Shia

shrines in Samarra, Baghdad, these are holy sites. They are holy not

just do Iraqi shears, but to Iranians, Lebanese, Saudis who are

Shia Muslim. If they decide to take them on, the Shia militia will fight

until the death, and some of these people are fanatical. The cleric,

his people bought the British Army to a standstill in the south of

Iraq, and some would even say that they won. So they are pretty

hard-core. There is another Shia militia, the ones who kidnapped the

five British people, the bodyguard and Peter Moore, killing four out of

five of them. They are pretty fanatic. They are considered to be

heretics by, so if you put the forces together... It's like the

civil war in Europe at the time of the Reformation. Exactly. That is

the worry in the middle east. That this will balloon beyond Iraq and

Syria. You get Saudi Arabia coming in, and Iran on the Shia Muslim

side, and then the countries are toe to toe. To some extent that has

happened already in Syria where Saudi Arabia has ineffectually been

supporting the Sunni rebel groups. The Iranians have very effectively

used Hezbollah. The big question is, will this bounce back to the UK?

What are we going to do about it? Isabel, you have chosen a story

about the Cabinet agonising over it. This is the second page of the

Sunday Times with the Cabinet split over military action. It's a split

between the Hawks, George Osborne, Sajid Javid, Michael Gove, who think

we should be involved. Then the dogs like Kenneth Clarke and Andrew

Lansley -- the dogs. There is an unnamed hawkish minister who say

that if American planes take off they might use British sovereign

bases and that there is a British engineer or pilot or navigator as

part of the team even if they are not taking offensive action. The

point is we will be involved to a certain extent anyway, it is how

robust we are. It is busy Mobley British bases in Cyprus. --

presumably British bases. Also Fairfield in Gloucestershire, that's

a potential staging base. The point here is, although the British

government have said they won't get involved militarily in Iraq, we are

fooling ourselves if we are going to be immune from a backlash. The West

is seen as being all part of one thing by the jihadist groups. We are

all dirty non-believers, and we are all going to get it, if we are seen

as taking sides as competence. The front page of the Sunday Telegraph

talking about the jihad, but how serious a threat is it now? Nothing

has changed on the ground in terms of the threat in the last two

weeks. What has changed is the psychological war, with the videos

coming out, the revelations of these people going out there, but this was

happening anyway. The numbers haven't changed. The numbers are

tiny percentage terms. There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world

and the vast majority, 99% and more, they want nothing more to do with

ISIS. They see it as alien and as much of a threat to them as anyone

else, but in absolute terms, because of the Iraq and Syria situation is

so dynamic, so violent and continuing, the number of the

jihadist groups, making their way out is growing. The Observer, no,

the Sunday Telegraph there. I wanted to point this out in the Sunday

Telegraph, and it shows the route that people take in the case of the

Cardiff people from the video, going out to Istanbul, cheap flight to

Istanbul, then making their way overland to the Syrian border. Most

people go via Turkey. It's incredibly easy. This is very easy

jihad. These very -- videos have a wide appeal. They put them on

Twitter, other social media. A lot of really bored and in adequate

people enticed by this type of thing, but that's the truth of

Western society will stop its a bit more serious than that. The sort of

people they get taken by this are often alienated from their families

who are very often quite pious Muslim families, but don't share the

younger generation's resentment of Western society, so they get drawn

into this and go down this pipeline. What also worries ministers is how

low down the agenda Iraq was in meetings until very recently, and

the fact that we seem to have lost track of one in four who have

travelled to Syria, so we have no idea if they are going to come back

and when. That is an alarming thought. I want to move on to the

other big political story, which is Ed Miliband's problems. Lots of

coverage in the press today, the most disobliging all is the on

Sunday. This is a fabulous piece called inside red Ed's head. This is

what you get if you pose with the Sun newspaper and then apologise.

I'm still not quite sure what he thought the benefit was. But

whatever Benedict he thought was in it -- benefit he thought was in it

was mishandled and he's infuriated the Sun newspaper. The infuriated

the people of Liverpool and now the editor of the Sun. It basically

lists all of the problems he has had recently. This is a sort of fun

attack on him, but it voices the attacks from inside the Shadow

Cabinet from inside his party on the leader as well, that he is weird and

does not have a strategy and is not human. A more substantial attack on

the Sunday Times. Not properly reflected by the headline. A more

nuanced piece. What I think is really interesting is that this

paints a picture of disorganisation and too many strategies,

paints a picture of disorganisation recipes trying to make one broth.

paints a picture of disorganisation next year so some think Ed

paints a picture of disorganisation next year so some Miliband cannot

get a majority so they are aiming for largest party next year.

Although Ed Miliband himself is unpopular, the Labour Party is still

on course to win a majority if you believe the polls so this is still a

successful opposition leader if you believe the polls. Yes, but his

personal ratings are incredibly bad for somebody who wants to win next

year. There is always the fear voters will look at him and try to

imagine him as Prime Minister in the next few months, when that is a real

question, and they cannot imagine it and start to move away from the

party in general. Frank, and start to move away from the

Cup, there are lots of and start to move away from the

England with tattered English flags. It has been few grim days. The

saddest sight on the streets of London as the flags still

fluttering. We all had so much excitement. I am not a massive

football fan but I shared in the excitement of this, there are so

many matches and you start making dates in the diary. The article says

that the economy will suffer to the tune of ?300 million. That is a lot

of beer not being drunk. And a lot of barbecue sausages that will not

get cooked as a result of it. Who devised that figure? I think

somebody very bored sitting in their bedroom! The other big story around

at the moment is David Cameron's struggle with the rest of the EU

against Juncker taking it over. Everybody seems to agree this is the

right fight to have but everybody also agrees that he will lose it. He

has decided to make this fight about continuing the fight rather than

winning it. He has said that he will hang onto this to the bitter end,

and it has been interesting as a political journalist charting that

language. I was speaking to government sources recently who were

very confident they were going to block Juncker, but now it is David

Cameron standing up and making the right argument even if no one

listens. It will be given some consolation prize, presumably. That

is what he hopes, and that is the way that John Major said the EU

works. On that cheerful note, thank you, and now we move on to the

weather forecast. Yesterday was a fine day for much of the UK, let's

get the prospects for fine day for much of the UK, let's

get the prospects for today and the start of Wimbledon tomorrow. Another

fine day to come foremost today, yes it might be slightly shorter but if

anything slightly warmer as well. Most of us will continue to see

spells of sunshine, there are always some exceptions. Some cloud across

eastern England is melting away, but this cloud across Scotland is more

stubborn, and providing outbreaks of rain. Cloudy at times across

southern Scotland, Northern Ireland. The small chance of some showers

here, but across England and Wales cloud will bubble up at the

temperatures will jump up when the sun is out. It will be cooler around

the coasts and cooler with the rain in the north-west, which persists

overnight. It is a damp night for Scotland, elsewhere a dry night. A

dry start of the working week. The increasing risk of some showers

across eastern parts of England and Scotland but it will still be warm.

As we go through the week ahead, we start off with sunny spells but

there is an increasing risk of seeing some of those showers

breaking out, so we may need the roof at Wimbledon, particularly by

the end of the first week. Poland's urbane and anglophile

foreign minister, Radek Sikorski has been visiting Britain.

He's a contemporary of Boris Johnson and David Cameron at Oxford

university, and a one-time euro-sceptic.

But he's changed his mind, and is not a supporter of Mr Cameron's bid

to stop the federalist Jean-Claude Juncker from becoming President

of the European Commission. Mr Sikorski told me why.

The main parties in the European Parliament announced in advance who

their candidates would be, and Mr Juncker is the candidate of the

party that won the election so here's having the first chance to

form a winning team and a winning coalition. That seems to me to be

the more democratic procedure and it is just unfortunate that Britain

does not have a representation in Europe's ruling party. David Cameron

would argue that he does not have what it takes to drive the reform in

Europe that is urgently necessary. I would say that if the Tories were

part of the European People's party, he could have made that argument at

the Dublin summit when EPB chose their candidate and he may have

prevailed, but he made his choice. So it was at least a mistake not to

be in the European People's Party from your point of view? I wouldn't

dream of commenting but the rules are that the largest party gets the

top job. Does this mean that David Cameron's request for greater reform

in the European Union is doomed, do you think? I think Britain can gain

a lot of support and allies on the continent for sensible British

proposals to allow nation states the decision-making power, would call it

the subsidiary are two principal, and then do together the things that

we gained by working together, on energy and I would argue on defence.

On the question of reform, I guess the biggest question at the moment

is about the free movement of people. The first great movement of

people into this country were Polish, do you understand the fear

that free movement of people across Europe has engendered in many people

in Britain and other countries too of course? I understand that Polish

is now the second language of the British Isles and up to 10% of

children at British schools are Polish. Let me put it like this, I

was an immigrant into this country a while ago, I went back. We are

hoping that Polish people will also gain experience, learn English, gain

some capital both cultural and financial, and return home. We are

encouraging them to return. Coming back to your earlier point, we have

no problem with Britain making its social security system less

generous. For example on the continent, in particular in Poland,

we wouldn't pay you benefits or housing benefit from day one. You

would have two earned that right and it would take you some months. You

are changing your social security system to be more continental and

the European Union is not interfering in that. As long as you

make it non-discriminatory, we will not criticise you. One of the

statistics that was thrown at me before this interview was that in

terms of remittances back of welfare payments, polls send more back to

Poland than any other group put together. Do you understand why

British taxpayers may think this is a strange way to spend their welfare

bills? No, they pay in taxes something like 35% more than they

receive in benefits but it is true that recent immigrants tend to keep

strong links with their mother country and send remittances abroad

but this is their earned taxed income, not benefits. Welfare

tourism is a figment of some politicians' imagination. You

mentioned defence, because the old days when you look to America should

go now, Europe needs to defend herself? We have the largest economy

on earth and we cannot count on the generosity of the United States to

fix our security problems for us. We have to draw lessons from the

debacle of the wars in the 1990s and we now have a whole arc of

instability around us, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and the Ukraine. Do you see a

European army with a big British component looking ahead? We have

been told in no uncertain terms that Britain will never fight under the

EU flag but there will be conflicts on which the United States takes a

pass. Because of conflicts in the Middle East. Then sometimes we will

need to act as Europeans and we should be capable of doing so. The

concept of EU battle groups was a British concept and I think it

should be deployed. Poland shares a border with Russia and Ukraine, too

many people it seemed as if there is now Civil War opening in the

Ukraine. How seriously do you regard what is going on there and what is

the mood in Poland so close to it all? There is some version with

elements of regional separatism but it is very much fat from outside.

There is heavy weaponry, multiple rocket launchers, tanks,

anti-aircraft missiles coming across the border that you

anti-aircraft missiles coming across the shop. What do you think Vladimir

Putin is up to? Mr Putin is the shop. What do you think Vladimir

his union and he would like Ukraine in it. If he cannot get all of

Ukraine in it, he is trying to get parts of Ukraine in it,

Ukraine in it, he is trying to get is a sovereign state. If Russia

Ukraine in it, he is trying to get pushing back to the old USSR

boundaries, do you fear for other boundaries, do you fear for other

parts of what was the Soviet bloc? The Baltic states for instance and

even parts of Poland? They fear for it, and they are members of NATO and

we should make sure the security guarantees that have been extended

are credible because if they failed once, NATO itself would be... Its

credibility would be endangered so I think it is high time to correct the

last 15 years' negligence. We all thought Russia was a partner, but if

history thought Russia was a partner, but if

competitor, we have to draw the conclusions. It needs to be amended.

Thank you for joining us. Radek Sikorski there.

Mr Sikorski told me why. Ed Miliband has been on the front

pages for all the wrong reasons lately - underwhelming election

results, poor opinion polls, anonymous quotes from colleagues

questioning whether he can win the general election,

questioning whether he can win the leaves the stage if he doesn't.

And on top of what's been called the Ed problem, those polls also suggest

that the Tories are more trusted to run the economy than Labour.

So what's to be done? Chuka Umunna is Shadow Business

Secretary and one of Ed Miliband's staunchest supporters.

Good morning. Firstly, I want my owl. I hope

you're not going to do a U-turn on that. I don't know where people get

these ideas from. If you are going to hack an account, do something

better than an owl. Anyway, the IMF and everyone else has praised the

British economy now, the fastest growing and unemployment is falling

fast, as the Labour Party going to carry on saying everything is

terrible or are you going to change your tune on the economy? We are not

saying everything is terrible but we are saying more people get to share

in the recovery as it settles in and we know that not just between

regions, say London and other parts of the economy, but within regions

too there are far too many people not sharing that. I look at my own

constituency in Streatham, not typical seat, but we have seen the

unemployment falling but on the other hand I have a situation where

my constituency -- my constituents are earning less than in 2010 and

one in three children are living in poverty. I think many of our

businesses and people who work within them would say the reason we

have weathered the storm is because of our businesses. If you ask many

of our businesses how they weathered the storm, it is by reaching

agreements for pay cuts and reduced hours to get through the very

difficult choppy waters we have had over the last few years so I think

our businesses and our employees working in them, they are the reason

we have got through this. What we need now is much more longer-term

sustainable growth. The problem we have had in the past, it has been

too fast buck and not been properly balanced across the different

regions in our economy. So you are going to announce some big changes

to economic policy, how is that going to work? There are two things

to this, as Lord Adonis has been looking into how we can give the

regions and the cities to be masters of their destiny. This is building

on the proposals Lord Heseltine, who talk sense in this area. He said

central government should evolve about ?40 billion of spending to the

regions to let them spend how they see fit. That would go to Birmingham

City Council, Manchester City Council, and so forward? We would

say we will devolve ?20 billion for the same purpose, but in addition to

ensuring we empower the cities, we have do empower the people. The BBC

has carried out some interesting research on this -- we have do. One

in five people in our economy cannot do the full basics online of sending

an e-mail, filling in a form, and browsing. We talk about community is

disconnected from the global economy, and those were the ones

voting for UKIP in the European elections, and in that mass of

people who cannot do the things that all others take for granted, a very

large number of them are from those communities. -- that all others take

for granted. The next Labour government will be focused on

connecting people in the global economy so they can realise dreams

and aspirations. We have Maggie Philbin, she's helping us with this.

Labour is not trusted on the economy. Business does not trust

either. You are meeting business leaders this week. Is there anything

you can give them to cheer them up? I disagree with what you just said

about business leaders. Let's be clear, we will have to make some

tough decisions. People should be under no illusions about the

decisions we have to make and we are clear we will get public-sector

finances back in balance. We want to have it on a downward trajectory by

the end of the next Parliament. We said there would be no borrowing to

fund expenditure, and we said we would take as the starting point the

spending limits from George Osborne. One thing we are asking for, and

there will be a vote this week in the house Commons on Wednesday, is

for George Osborne to stop being a coward and allow the office of

budget responsibility to audit the Labour plans at the general election

-- the House of Commons. That is the best way of determining this. You

are daring him to audit you? He is running scared, because the head of

the budget responsibility office say they think it's a good idea. He is

running scared. He is petrified that the Obi are will give Labour's plans

the clean bill of health we expect. You have seen the polling in the

last week or two, and Ed Miliband is in trouble with the voters in terms

of his image, and there was a phrase used, to be a successful leader you

need two things, a long-term strategy and an idea, which Ed

Miliband perhaps does have, but you also need to be able to deal with

the passing celebrity culture, the passing trades and ability to dance

around and persuade people, and that he does not have at all. I don't

agree with that. In some respects, that belittles politics. We are not

playing celebrity Big Brother, we are talking about big issues that

affect different communities. How can we pay our way in the world? How

can we ensure that everybody achieves their dreams and

aspirations? If Ed is guilty of focusing on the issues that people

really care about taking a serious, deep look at what needs to happen in

the economy to change it, then, fine, because that is what he

seriously is what he seriously as bogus. Why do so many Labour

supporters see him as a poor leader? If we spent all our time obsessing

about polling surveys, we wouldn't be doing what we should be doing,

which is winning back the support we are already winning back. Under

Ed's leadership, the real polling that matters is voting. We have seen

the Labour Party put on 2300 councillors in the marginal seats we

need to gain a majority. In the last lot of local elections, everybody

said if you got 500 or 600 councillors, you would be on course

to win, and you 300. No they didn't. They said we needed 300, and we got

about 150 lives, and we got 300, and now you say we should for 500. -- we

should aim for 500. The bottom line is we went down to the second worst

defeat in our history in 2010. If you asked people in 2010 we could

have done that in one term of opposition, they would have laughed

you out of the pub. A Labour government next year, is it in the

bag? No, it's not. We are aiming for more than that. We are hearing a lot

of talk about this and it's nonsense. We want to build a big

electoral real coalition of people in the country to deliver a Labour

government, because that is what will make a difference. And you

think the strategy you are using now is absolutely fine? Steady as she

goes? There's no steady as it goes. We have announced a big policy

changes in respect of how job-seekers benefit is paid to 18 to

21-year-olds, and the nonsense of a young person being penalised if they

undertake more than 16 hours of education or training in a week. All

of these policies have come out that the polls have not shifted. Ed

Miliband surely has to raise his game. You will have to raise your

game, including him. We are all doing very well, in my view, and we

need to build on the successes to date to make sure we get that

majority. That sounds like adopting the brace position. It is not

adopting the brace position. I saw the chat with the papers earlier,

and if you look at the fundamental qualities of Ed Miliband... He is a

very serious man, but he's not connecting with the public. He is

seen as very trustworthy. He is considered a man of great beliefs.

In this day an age when people lack confidence in the BBC, the police,

in different institutions, you can't dismiss those qualities -- day and

age. What I am saying is, is for whatever reason, he's not connecting

with voters and you say there is no problem? He is about the big issues.

People can have the parlour chat game. This is about voters on

doorsteps and opinion polls taken outside of the Westminster village.

People in Streatham don't ask me about the latest polls. They talk to

me about the education of their children. They talk to me about

jobs. They talk to me about the continuing tragic youth violence in

my constituency. We should not belittle politics, because this is

about people 's lives. Absolutely right. Chuka Umunna, thank you.

The House of Lords contains many independent and original characters,

and none more so than Baroness Trumpington of Sandwich.

A former minister in Mrs Thatcher's government, now in her nineties,

Jean Barker - as was - has had a colourful career.

She spent time in the women's Land Army, at Bletchley Park,

in advertising, was a headmaster's wife, and a local councillor.

She recently became an internet hit when she was caught

on camera, flicking a rude gesture at her colleague in

the Lords, Tom King, when he dared to refer to her senior status.

Baroness Trumpington has been telling me some of her life stories,

starting with how she encountered Lloyd George:

My family had been rendered homeless because of the Army taking over our

home, and they were desperate to know what to do with me. The whole

family were great friends with my family. So, desperation, and Lloyd

George took me in, and very decent of him. Very decent is not the most

commonly used phrase about Lloyd George. Did he make a pass at you?

There is a stupid story and I wish I had never told it, I think he just

had nothing better to do and seized a tape measure and said, go and

stand against the wall and I will measure you. And that's exactly what

he did. I can assure you I was much too scared. If he had tried anything

funny, I'd been out of there like a shot. The war years were wild years,

in a sense. We think about them being terrible years, but the you

they were all excitement at Bletchley. No, you are wrong, there

was no excitement at Bletchley, it was solid work in one room. Not

talking to anybody in any other room. Not going anywhere, apart from

the people you work with. But there was misbehaviour at Bletchley,

involving you being thrown into a laundry basket and rushed about at

one point. You know, if you do 9-6, four to midnight, midnight to nine

o'clock, we in, week out, for years, there are times in the middle of the

night where you get fed up. After all, I did quite get happily into

the laundry basket, so it is my fault. I was then pushed a great

speed down the corridor and I did not end up in the gents cloakroom,

as people said, I ended up in the Commander's office, where

unfortunately he opened the door as I shot in. You came from a very

wealthy family who lost manager in the depression, but you never went

hungry until you ended up in America after the war -- who lost their

money. I just loved it. I arrived with ?2 in my pocket. And I have a

job, but I had forgotten, or didn't know, that I had to wait two weeks

to get paid, and my brother had arranged all of his friends to be

kind to me, including finding me somewhere to live. I had no money at

all. I had to go through the somewhere to live. I had no money at

all. I had to go dustbins, and I had a couple of very nice handbags out

of those dustbins, and I lived the life of a Rover, but I had a lot of

fun. You mentioned your brother. Of all of the mistakes you recount in

your book, the least comprehensible is your brother turning down a girl

called Jacqueline because she had dry hair. Tell us about her. I had

seen these two girls, the two sisters doing a tour of Europe, and

I had all of these people coming in for a drink in the house, and they

came. After everybody left, I said to my brother, she was jolly pretty,

did you make a date question mark over no, she had dry hair. Well,

he's never gotten over the fact that that was Jackie Bouvier as she was.

Then Kennedy, then an as is. Exactly. -- own as is. You had you

say the happiest years of your life as a headmaster 's wife in

Cambridge. He once jumped completely into the pool in your clothes on a

great occasion -- you once jumped into the pool. I'm afraid I did. For

17 years I presented the swimming cups and the Polo cups on speech day

at the edge of the pool will stop I was always in my best close. I had

just had my hair done and I jumped -- best set of clothes. Half of the

school jumped in to save me. My husband would not speak to me that

three weeks. Why did you do it? Just for the hell of it. I was leaving,

just the hell it. You became a Conservative councillor in Cambridge

almost by accident but it launched or political career and you became a

minister under Margaret Thatcher. Lots of people found Margaret

Thatcher as intimidating, terrifying, difficult but you

clearly got on well with her. What was the secret? That I did not care.

I had to be true to myself. It wasn't like -- if it wasn't like,

that was too bad, but it was better to stick to your guns. I think it

was usable to her because it gave her something she could remember

when other people spoke as I did. There are a great many questions to

be answered... At the age of 91 you are an active Conservative peer in

the House of Lords. What worries you most about what is going on in

politics at the moment? There are too many peers, no doubt about it.

Too many lords. Something has to be done. I do hope it doesn't mean that

I have to go. That is the danger of saying that. It is a dangerous

thing, I know. There are a hell of a lot of liberals who don't really add

up to much. Purge the Liberals? They don't actually add up to much.

Baroness Trumpington, speaking to me at her home in London.

And her autobiography, Coming Up Trumps is out now.

And there's huge reluctance on the part of America

and our own government, to get involved in what's clearly

President Obama has made clear that Iraq's Shia prime minister,

Nouri Al-Maliki, must reach out to the Sunnis and other minorities.

Is the country on the brink of collapse?

In a moment, we?ll be speaking to the former Defence Secretary, Liam

Fox, about what he thinks we can, should, or might have to do in Iraq.

But first, Zuhair Al-Naher is a close associate of the

Do you have the resources in Baghdad to fight off ISIS? The Iraqi army

has halted the advance of the ISIS fighters, however, the Iraqi armed

forces need support. What do they need? They need intelligence

support. This is a good step that the US has sent 300 experts. They

will advise the Iraqi army and improve their strategies, but we

also hope that if there is needed to be surgical strikes based on

intelligence information, on centres of terrorists, we will get that

support from the US in order to allow the Army to move. John Simpson

was saying you no longer have the missiles are needed. Is that true?

-- that you needed. The army and air force need more support in that

aspect. Absolutely. Almost everybody from Tony Blair to President Obama

said that the Prime Minister had failed, and made Iraq a more

sectarian place. She over sunny, and he has to reach out very fast and

then go. That claim is exaggerated. The Prime Minister has reached out

but he has faced challenges, the challenges being suspicion between

the parties. Some Sunni elements have been linked to the extremist or

former Saddam Hussein months, so there is suspicion but there is no

question about it. Iraq is going through a process now. The results

of the elections have been endorsed and now the political parties and

the newly elected MPs will get together. Is there going to be a new

coalition government? Absolutely, and Prime Minister Nori monarchy,

his platform was to join a government that was inclusive of all

of the sectors. Thank you very much for joining me. And so to Doctor

Fox. The Sunday Times has Niall Ferguson the historian asking the

question, as the West Brom wobbly. Is the answer yes? I don't think so,

but given the political fatigue that set in after the long involvement in

Iraq after 2003, I think there is a reticence by politicians to get

involved again. I think that is a mistake because if you look at what

ISIS represent in terms of threats, the threat of jihadists coming back

to threaten us at home and more potentially lethal, a clash between

Saudi and Iran by proxy or directly, we have to recognise that inactivity

is not an option. If Britain decided to come in alongside America, what

could we offer in practical terms? If the US is asked to comment, there

will be reconnaissance, possibly air strikes. There is nothing we have in

specific assets that the Americans don't have but the Americans might

want to use British basis -- bases and share intelligence. If we allow

the situation to get out of control, the risks are horrendous.

It is already close to being out of control, if Britain was asked to use

British planes in surgical strikes against ISIS, could we do that? We

could, I don't think we would because the Americans have a greater

capability. Remember the west is seen as a single entity. There are

those who say if we don't get involved, if we hunker down there

will be no backlash, that is utterly wrong because the jihadists don't

hate us because of what we do, they hate us because of who we are. It is

our values and our history that they detest. A lot of the jihadists are

coming back to Britain, what can we do about that? Can we take away

their passports? We can technically do that, and we can remove

citizenship. We have the security services to ensure that they are

watched and that they don't pose a greater threat. Not enough perhaps?

That is a question we are going to have to ask, whether the security

services have adequate authority, but also do the powers that they

have reflect increasing need? You have people at the moment in light

of Edward Snowden saying the state has too many powers. What kind of

powers should we be giving, in your view, to the security services to

deal with this? The whole area of intercept for example needs to be

looked at. It is a genuine debate between the libertarians who saved

the state must not get too powerful and pretty much the rest of us who

say the state must protect us. So more manpower and more money as

well. If required. If I am a jihadists and I have had a great

time beheading people in Iraq and Syria and I arrived with my passport

at Heathrow airport, what can be done to stop me coming home and

spreading my poison here? There are limits to what we can do. In a free

society, we have the ability to move. I can move back to Cardiff

suburbs or wherever? Yes, and we have to decide what state powers we

can use to make sure you are watched so that you don't pose a greater

threat to the civilian population. I suppose practically we couldn't

deport people into ISIS territory because we couldn't get there. It is

a real worry and it is a problem that will be with us for a very long

time. We have to win the ideological battle as well and that takes you

into areas of diversity in our society and how we deal with that.

Do you think we should bring back control orders? Only if we think it

can provide a positive benefit without some sort of counteracting

disincentive to do so. Let's turn out of the other political story

which is David Cameron's fight to stop Mr Juncker becoming leader of

the EU in effect. It is clearly a fight many people in the

Conservative party would agree he has to take on and yet he will lose

it. How will that affect his standing in the party? It is a real

pleasure to watch the Prime Minister doing what he thinks is right. If

the Juncker agenda is wrong for the people of Europe, then the British

Prime Minister is right to stand up against it. He may not win the

battle but it is so much nicer to see a Prime Minister willing to take

a battle and get a bloody nose than not doing so. But a European Union

led by Juncker will presumably not give us the changes that we want in

order to stay in. There has been a sea change in Europe, it's just that

the bureaucracy and European leaders don't seem to have noticed that

there were major inroads made by anti-European parties just a few

weeks ago in European elections. The question is will they take notice or

continue on the same direction? What will our changes the EU believe it

would convince you at the time of a referendum to stay in? I want us to

have a much looser relationship, back to a common market. I want to

see lots of powers coming back to the UK. The end of free movement? I

think if you can get free movement to be related just the labour

market, then that's where I would like to go. I don't believe in ever

closer union because the logical in point of that is union. If David

Cameron is unable after the Juncker fight to use that phrase, if he is

unable to do anything about so-called benefit tourism, your view

would be that we should leave the EU? The first thing would be that we

will have to win the general election so that we can have the

referendum. So we are now in this referendum territory. Some people

have said Liam Fox will referendum territory. Some people

renegotiation. I have told you I want a looser relationship. Being

out holds no fear for me but if we are able to get a relationship

closer to the won the British people voted for in 1975, a looser

relationship, that is fine and dandy. Sounds like a potential

leader of the no campaign to me. Now the news headlines.

Good morning. There's a warning that

the conflicts in the middle-East will have a long-term effect

on security in Britain. Speaking on this programme the

former defence secretary Liam Fox suggested the security forces might

need more resources and powers to deal with any threat to Britain.

David Cameron will call for a vote amongst EU leaders on who should be

the next leader of the European commission. The move has been

the next leader of the European described as unprecedented and comes

as nine left-wing leaders from across the EU have agreed to back

Jean-Claude Juncker. David Cameron has argued strongly against the

move, saying Mr Juncker is too much of a Brussels insider to back the

reform. The next news is on BBC One at one o'clock.

reform. The next news is on BBC One after this programme. Comedian and

chef Hardeep Singh Coli, and June Brown.

on security in Britain. Since winning the BBC Young Musician

of the Year competition ten years ago, the Scottish-Italian violinist

Nicola Benedetti has had a stunningly successful career.

She's performed all over the world, including at the Last Night

of the Proms, and recorded a string of albums.

She's also a passionate advocate of music in schools,

and involved in a BBC project to introduce children to ten essential

pieces of classical music. She has

a new Scottish-themed album out. And she can be seen next month

at the Cheltenham music festival. Nicola, welcome.

You have a scheme to get classical music out to schoolchildren in

Britain. Yes, I will be advocating for it. You play lots of classical

music on your album but also lots of fast Scottish fiddle music, how

difficult was that? It is difficult to adjust, it is such different

mental and rhythmical style, it is a lot of adjustment for me to do but

the community around the folk scene embrace everyone and they are

wonderful. And you will be giving me some burns, which is as it should

be. Nicola, welcome.

That's all we have time for this morning.

But for now, appropriately enough, we say farewell with Nicola

Benedetti and Auld Lang Syne.