20/12/2015 The Andrew Marr Show

2015 has been David Cameron's year confounding his election critics,

but as it lends the Prime Minister confronts his biggest gamble by far

over Britain's future in the European club.

I'm joined by the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, and we'll

hear from a Tory Euro-sceptic, Liam Fox, with a rather different message

for his party this morning. And, fresh from a person triumph in the

Commons, Labour's most senior frontbencher after the leader,

Angela Eagle. Our paper reviewers today with a

political trio, Ukip's Suzanne Evans, one of the SNP's new cohorts

at Westminster John Nicolson and Joan Bakewell, journalist and

broadcaster but also a Labour peer. And to really get us into the

Christmas spirit... Back by popular demand, the harpist

Catrin Finch is here, but first the news with Naga.

The Prime Minister has ordered a review of police officers' use

of guns, following the terrorist attacks in Paris last month.

The BBC understands the Home Office and Ministry of Justice will assess

whether the law goes far enough in supporting officers who may be

forced to make a split-second decision to open fire.

Our Political Correspondent Chris Mason reports.

Just over a month on from the terrorist attacks in Paris, there is

soul searching here, both within Government and police forces. How

would they cope if it was to happen in the UK? Fewer than one in 20

police officers in England and Wales are trained to carry guns. The

Government wants this number to increase significantly, but there

are concerns about more than just numbers. The country's most senior

policeman, the Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe,

has told the Prime Minister he's concerned armed officers don't have

the clear, legal and political backing they need to work with

confidence. So, David Cameron wants to check whether the existing law

goes far enough in allowing officers to use reasonable force if necessary

shooting to kill if they have an honest, instinctive belief that

opening fire is appropriate. The review will be conducted by the Home

Office and the Ministry of Justice and will examine whether the people

who 're asked to protect us from possible terrorist attack have the

freedom to make a split second decision which may mean taking a

life. Motorists who use handheld mobile

phones while driving in Britain could face tougher

penalties if they reoffend. The Government's proposing

to increase the fine from ?100 to ?150 and the number

of points issued from 3 to 4. It's part of a new road safety plan

being published next week. An Air France plane has made

an emergency landing in Kenya after a suspicious package

was found on board. Kenyan police say the plane,

with more than 470 people on board, was on a flight from

Mauritius to Paris. It landed in Mombasa

after the package was discovered In case you weren't watching

yesterday, I'm about to tell you who won Strictly Come Dancing.

The former boy band star Jay McGuinness and his partner

Aliona Vilani have won this year's Strictly Come Dancing.

Despite coming bottom of the judges' score board,

the band member of The Wanted won the phone vote and beat soap actors

Georgia May Foote and Kellie Bright to take home the glitterball trophy.

It's been one of the most special things I've ever done with the most

special person. If anyone that helped us to get here and watched

and enjoyed what we were doing, I'm really happy that you liked it

because it was the best thing I've done. Congratulations to him.

That's all from me, I'll be back with the headlines just before Ten.

There's the Sunday Telegraph, women soldiers very shortly are going to

go into combat for Britain, the Israelis and Russians have done it

and we'll be doing it. There's Strictly again. Lots of interesting

stories again here, the Sunday Times, and Strictly again. The most

interesting political story is Liam Fox who's now going to come out we

think to campaign for a British exit from the EU and that will, of

course, lead to the question of how many Cabinet Ministers will follow

and will they be allowed to do it and stay in the Cabinet. Lots to

talk about there. And you have taken the Observer?

Yes, Euro-sceptics. You are rubbing your hands with this? We are

journalists, we are going to enjoy this and we want everyone to engage

with the issues. I'm for staying in, but what is interesting is that the

Euro-sceptics are out of the traps quickly and attacking and they are

attacking Cameron's rather mild success in Brussels which I think is

a very steady and dignified holding operation. They are saying the

living wage will lead to a migrant boom. It's logical isn't it because

as wages come up, more people will be encouraged to come in? But wait a

minute, is the lodge thank you we abandon the living wage? For

heavens' sake, it will prop up the lowest earning people in our

society. We can't abandon that because the speculation is that

immigrants will be drawn here by our benefits. That is an issue to be

resolved but to claim that the living wage will lead to a boom and

therefore to descale it is not... Yolk is suggesting that we are going

to abandon it. The some point that someone from the former Eastern

European communist countries in Europe can come here now and earn up

to 400 times the wage that they might get at home. And my colleagues

in the European Parliament, my Ukip colleagues, tell me that this is all

part of the EU's push for more integration, so they are talking

about wage harmonization and tax harmonization. How on earth can you

run a huge superstate, if you like, with the current economic

differences that they have? What they do is engage in conversation

about it. Stay with the news if you don't mind because I thought it was

interesting the Observer led with the Euro-sceptic story, perhaps more

expected is Nick Farage you have chose none the Express, one of the

other big European stories of the week? That's right. People are

talking about Cameron's renegotiation in trying to keep the

status quo, he's banging with table with agitation to keep that. You

will not be voting for the status quo if you vote to stay in the

European Union, you will be voting for goodness knows what. Before the

European elections a couple of years ago, Nigel Farage debated Nick Clegg

and Nick Clegg said he was scaremongering, dangerous fantasy

about the creation of an EU Army but we have got the creation of a 2,500

strong army to secure the Schengen area borders and this new proposele

will give considerable power to the EU to take control of the nation.

Keeps going, keeps going, keeps going... I must ask you, an

interesting spat between Douglas Carswell and Nigel Farage this week,

Nigel saying Douglas has to put up or stand up if he wants a new fresh

face leading the party, he has to stand himself, what do you make of

this? It's a shame it's detracted from the key aim which is to leave

the European Union. Maybe they could both agree that you were the person

to take it? No. Not a thorn between two roses but a thistle. John, you

have chosen another John? Yes, John Rental has written a story

predicting that the Prime Minister will be successful in his

negotiations. We can all predict that the Prime Minister will come

back from Brussels waving a bit of paper saying triumph in our times, I

don't think he'll say, I've failed miserably. The question is what

he'll actually get. John says that, he calls David Cameron the exam

essay Prime Minister, basically the person who doesn't really focus very

much until the last moment, but the last moment concentrates and works

hard and delivers what his teacher wants. I don't know who the teacher

is in this particular context. Very interesting. Charles Moore wrote an

article in the Telegraph predicting two things; one that David Cameron

would come back waving his piece of paper successfully as you said and

also that it would not change fundamentally the EU or Britain's

relationship with it? I think he's going to get almost nothing from the

leaders. The things he said he wanted like reform policy and

agricultural policy, he won't get it. He said he was going to focus on

these. I'm very much in favour of staying in the European Union. Just

the old journalist in me feels a bit suspicious of politicians who

promise one thing then change the promise and try and massage it. It's

called naughtion. It's an absolute climb-down isn't it. The problem is,

he's marched the troops up the hill, there is no battle to be won here

particularly but he's got to claim victory. We'll talk more about this

with Liam Fox himself, there is an article in the Sunday Times. Always

been anti-Europe. But he is going to campaign for us to leave openly, he

says. Let's turn to another moment. A Labour Party moment Joan, your

leader Jeremy Corbyn giving an interesting interview to the Sunday

Times in which he's disBliging by those who clapped Hilary Benn after

his pro-intervention speech? Quite a dull article, this. OK! I'll look

forward to it then. He says the nice things you would expect. He's

holding a ring with some dignity I think. He's got a massive support in

the country and his Parliamentary MPs opposing him. He's holding

dignified position and he's entitled to say when he's angry with them not

agreeing. He is saying, they should recognise I was elected with a very

large mandate from a very wide variety of people. There's no

position of any mob, what there is is a developmental of Parliamentary

participatory democracy. Well, I think we are seeing that in action

and I think there is to be no submit. What is there going to be?

Discussion. There's always discussion. Everyone's in favour of

lots of discussion, Joan. I'm always in favour of discussion. I think you

are absolutely right. It's enormously disrespectful the way the

backbenchers treat him because he's won a stonking great majority of the

popular vote and they just can't come to terms with the fact that

he's won. But they are his MPs. He's not good in the chamber. They think

he's oldie worldy? They do. I heard Jeremy Corbyn say, and of course

we'd like to congratulate major Tim who is not on the planet at the

moment. And, as he said it, I thought, you are walking into a

trip. Hundreds of Tories start jeering saying, you are not on the

planet either with some singing major Tom in the grown-up way our

Parliamentary democracy works! Moving on to the real space cadet,

it's major Tim and the good news for all of us is that major Tim, who has

really excited people's interests in space travel I think, is going to

get a stocking and turkey on Christmas Day, but the Express, adds

for those who're not completely on the ball that, the turkey will be

hanging up side down because we are in space and turkeys are up side

down in space. The tree will be hanging up side down. I think that

was last year's craze, having your tree up side down. But not in space.

No. I always wanted to be an astronaut. What happened? I went to

my first careers lecture in school and the teacher said, write down

what you would like to do. There is probably a few people that would

like to send me on a one-way trip to the moon. The teacher said write

down something sensible, not astronaut orring in stupid like

that. So you wrote you quip? I wrote teacher which never happened either.

We don't like to be personal in this paper review, but Joan there is a

story which affects you personally? There is and I haven't got it to

hand but I know about it. It's the issue, you were speaking about the

House of Lords. Lord's reform? Well, there is an interview in which the

headline says that Piers should retire at 80. That is age im. Im. --

ageism. There are peers over 80 who don't turn up, we are different one

from the other. What should judge us in the Lords which needs reform is,

are you any use, do you turn up and do a decent job. Far too many peers,

there are more peers than anywhere else in the world apart from China.

Every day new peers are appointed by David Cameron. They don't vote and

don't turn up. We want peers who are alert, sharp, turn up and have had

real-life experience. That is true. About 500 turn up every day. I don't

believe in the House of Lords at all but I think it's wrong to sack

people simply because of their age. That's outrageous sexism and, of all

the Lord's reforms that need to be enacted, that would be lowdown in my

list. A lot need re-enacting, we all agree. So tonight is the BBC Sports

personality of the year award. A certain MP has been very outspoken

about Tyson Fury being included with his traveller background and

nonpolitically correct ideas but very good at boxing, hitting people?

The fact he is a traveller is irrelevant. Tyson Fury has been

added by the BBC under controversial circumstances. He sent out the most

homophobic tweets, he thinks gay people should be shot dead, he has

talked about going home to break his wife's jaw. This is not just for

sporting prowess, this is for people who are role models...

Personalities. Exactly. The key is in the name - personality. The BBC

is not very good at saying we have done something wrong. I suspect when

they put him on the list, they didn't know about these tweets, but

what they should have done was saying, we have made a terrible

mistake and we will withdraw him. He is the World Champion. It is always

a difficult balance between how important is somebody's sporting

achievement versus their private views. Can you imagine him surviving

on this list if he had said, "I want to shoot all Muslims dead." The BBC

at senior levels must take Islamophobia more seriously... Do

you agree with that? I suspect the people didn't know about this when

they put him forward. They had every right to put him forward, as a man

who is exemplary in his sporting achievement. Just don't vote for

him. For lots of people - he is free to say whatever he likes, no matter

how silly. For people sitting at home, especially kids, it sends out

the wrong signal. He comes from a fundamentalist Christian background,

that is where some of these ideas come from. We will end our paper

review with another Christian story, the Queen's Christmas Speech this

year is going to be the most - I know you think a lot of stories

about the Royal Family in the papers today. It is full! Every paper has a

very sycophantic Royal story with few exceptions. Most of the

population support the monarchy. This is a story in the Sunday

Express talking about how Christians in the Middle East are going to be

wiped out in the next decade, if we don't support them. The Queen is

apparently - it is all top secret, we don't know what she is going to

say. She is apparently going to raise this issue, the persecution of

Christians in the Middle East. There is an interesting comment piece in

the Mail, "Christians saved me from the Nazis, now I must save them from

an even greater evil." Who would have thought in the 21st Century we

would be seeing images of crucifixions on our television

screen? As we heard in the paper review,

the senior Conservative backbencher, and former Defence Secretary,

Liam Fox is saying this morning He joins me now, from our Glasgow

studio; good morning. Good morning. This is a big moment

for you. From now on, presumably, you are going to be a voice,

campaigning until the referendum comes for this country to leave the

EU? I am. And I took that decision because for me two things had to

happen to want to stay in the European Union. One was a

fundamental change in Britain's relationship with the European

Union, but more importantly, a change in direction for the European

Union itself away from the concept of ever closer union and towards a

much more independent and loose Association of Sovereign states.

That is not going to happen. We will all have to make up our minds,

possibly in the next few months. For me, it is clear what direction we

should take as a country. Let me ask about the timing of this. The Prime

Minister is engaged right at the moment in the toughest bit of

negotiation he has ever done in the EU. He will see this as a stab in

the back, won't he? I think that it is very clear from the discussions

that are going on in Europe, the other leaders are making it clear

they intend to move towards ever closer union. That is against

Britain's national interests. While the talk may be about accommodating

Britain's desires to have a slightly different relationship, as you

pointed out earlier in the programme, the European Union is now

talking about having a single border force to enforce Europe's external

borders for the countries in the Schengen Agreement. For me, the

critical point of that was the fact that this is a force that will be

deployed by the Commission, not by elected governments, and in fact can

be done against the will of sovereign governments. That, for me,

is the clearest possible indication about the direction of travel of

Europe. I can't accept that. We also read in today's papers that there

are members of the Cabinet who agree with you and would like to be on the

same side, at least three of them, and another Minister as well. Do you

think they ought to be allowed to campaign for Brexit from inside the

Cabinet? If you disagree with the Prime Minister, you should leave? I

would much prefer them to have the freedom to campaign from within the

Cabinet because if you remember the timing of this referendum will come

in 2016, or maybe 2017. We have an electoral mandate, we are a majority

Government, and we will have to continue to work together to govern

the country up till 2020. I think that is best done by having more

freedom for individuals to express what is effectively a matter of

conscience for them. I think that the more that we are able to give

freedom to our colleagues, and the more we treat one another's views

with respect and tolerance, the easier I think it will be for us to

come together after that referendum to continue to govern the country. I

have said very often, look, people who want to stay in the European

Union are not unpatriotic and people who want to leave are not idiots. We

need to treat one another's views with genuine respect and tolerance.

We have this strange situation, which is on the Brexit side. There

are two parallel campaigns, your campaign, and the Ukip involved

campaign as well. If you are going to be effective about what you would

see against the elite establishment stitch-up, you need to get together

on the other side. You need to stand on a platform with Nigel Farage,

could you do that? Yes, definitely. It has to become a question of the

issue and not a question of personalities. I think so much of

the focus has been on that and not the detailed debate that we need to

get away from. You are correct. Those who want to leave the European

Union need to speak with a much greater and much unified voice than

they have had up until this point. We will talk about this a great deal

over the next few months and the substance of the issues. For now,

for this morning, thank you for joining us.

You'll have noticed it's unseasonably warm out there.

I had my morning coffee wearing shorts - well, no t shorts, but you

get the idea! Something to celebrate or something

to make us deeply uneasy? I guess it depends

on your temperament. Anyway, will it be short

sleeves Christmas? Over to Chris Fawkes

in the weather studio. Temperatures will be coming back

down to normal, but it has been incredibly mild. Temperatures near

record levels yesterday. It will cool off over the next

couple of days before turning milder for Tuesday. Temperatures will

flip-flop around a bit. The showers will clump together across Northern

Ireland and Scotland later on, with a lot of cloud in the skies here as

we go through the rest of this morning and into the afternoon. The

showers moving in on a gusty south-westerly wind. We have also a

few showers for Wales and south-west England. They will push across the

south coast, towards the south-east later on this afternoon. For England

and Wales, much more in the way of sunshine. It will feel a bit

fresher. Temperatures between 9 and 14 Celsius. Overnight, the brisk

winds will continue to feed the showers in. It won't be particularly

cold, temperatures between 6 and 9 Celsius. Tomorrow, we start the day

on a dry and bright note for England and Wales, but rain in Northern

Ireland will swing into Scotland quite quickly and will spread to

England and Wales later in the day. A windy day with gales or severe

gales, and a fresher feel to the weather. For Christmas Day,

temperatures back close to normal. You might want to get yourself one

of those Christmas jumpers! We want nippy, we want frosty!

This has been bizarre year for the Labour party.

Buoyed by those opinion polls during the election campaign,

only to experience one of their worst defeats.

Then, Jeremy Corbyn - shazam - wins the leadership.

Followed by fierce internal debates, and all too visible splits,

Angela Eagle is the most senior member of the Shadow Cabinet,

after Mr Corbyn and she stood in for him recently

at Prime Minister's Questions rather triumphantly and she's here now.

Welcome. There is another Angela on the block! We will see for how long.

You had a very, very good time in the House of Commons, you must have

enjoyed that moment, having everyone at your back? I did. It's nice to do

something like that and not very many people ever get the chance to

do it. I have to say I relished it, I enjoyed myself. And a little

tickle of ambition at the back, I could do this full-time? You said

yourself it is time the Labour Party had a female leader. There will be a

female leader at some stage, of course. We have had two female

leaders in Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett. We have a leader.

We had a leadership election three months and a bit ago, 100 days on

Monday. It is my job to work with the leader that we have got, to try

to get the party position so that we can have a go at being the

opposition to the Tories and demonstrate some of the mistakes

that they are making but also get ourselves sorted so that we can put

a compelling case to the British people in 2020 to give us a chance

at Government again. He is the best leader you have got, whether or not

I'm looking at the next Labour Leader we will leave to viewers to

think about. The leader you have got has given an interview to the Sunday

Times in which he says he is going to be in place until 2020. After the

Oldham by-election, is unassailable? Our leader is of three-months

standing. Our job now is to take the fight to the Conservatives and we

have been doing that on tax credits and the climb down we had here on

that. We have been doing it on things like green industries and

some of the climb downs, the abandonment of our lead in green

technologies, we will be doing it on economic policy, that is our job as

Her Majesty's opposition. You would like to see him lead you into the

2020 election? We have our leader. My job, I am... I am smirking! I'm

Chair of the National Policy Forum. It is my job to get us into a

position where we can have a long, hard look at why we lost. We have

lost two elections. We have to remake our approach to the British

people. We have got to come up with forward-looking policies which are

all about hope, ambition and aspiration for that challenge in

2020. You have a range of policies to look at. There are still some

fundamental differences over peace and war, over the Syria bombing and

so forth, over Trident and so on. In the interview Jeremy Corbyn says, he

makes clear he was angry about the behaviour of MPs after Hilary Benn

gave that pro-interventionist speech. He talking about jingoistic

clapping in the House of Commons. Was it jingoistic clapping? I don't

think it was. It was admiration for the case that had been made by

Hilary Benn, which I have to say was far better than the case that the

Prime Minister managed to make, and can I say at this stage that we are

all hopeful that the new UN Resolution, which again was passed

unanimously, will begin to create a political process to deal with the

terrible situation in Syria, 250,000 people killed, four million people

displaced, and that is what is causing a lot of the instability in

the Middle East. A rare moment of good news... It is about time that

the world decided it's got to bring itself to deal with the tragedy that

is going on in Syria. Like you, Hilary Benn disagrees with the

leader very much on Trident. And there have been mutterings in the

papers today that he might be removed as Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Would you like to see that happen? I'm not going to speculate about any

future reshuffle that Jeremy will have. The important thing for the

Labour Party, and this is what I tried to do at Prime Minister's

Questions, is to take the fight to the Conservative Party. We have here

a Conservative Party visibly falling apart now on the European Union. You

have just interviewed Liam Fox who has basically said he thinks the

Cabinet shouldn't have any collective Cabinet responsibility at

all. We have a Prime Minister almost playing Russian Roulette... This is

the frustration for a lot of Labour Party people. There are lots of

problems on the Tory side. And in a sense, the more people focus - I

have been doing it myself on Jeremy Corbyn - the less we focus on what

is going on. The big report out saying there has been a sharp

increase in inequality because the people at the top, the well-off, the

people who have houses in the south of this country, are getting rich on

the basis of an asset bubble, so much faster than the people in the

bottom. This has become a big social problem? Inequality is a huge social

problem, but it's also a problem of economic sustainability. It would

lead to another crash if you have those kinds of imbalances. Apart

from that, what about the life opportunities and the potential of

people that never get a chance to get on in life? The Labour Party

will be doing this, we have got to look to see what we can do about

this to create a sustainable, socially just society that is at the

core of why we are in politics. We have this, we have this asset bubble

at the top. Do you think, are you attracted by ideas like thoss of

Tristram Hunt for some new graduated, more sophisticated wealth

tax to damp that bubble down and take a bit of the money from the top

and redistribute it? What we hope to do and what I hope

to do as chairman of the national policy reform so look to do what we

can to resolve this. We have got to have debates and all power to

Jeremy's elbow, he's said the Labour Party's got to discuss and have

debates about things and he's very open about that. He is. That is what

we need to do to renew our appeal to the British people. And he wants to

do it increasingly through what looks look an electronic plebIsite,

he asks what they give about guns or whatever and they give a result. We

have talked about the national policy forum which is where the

clever grandees get together and work things out. They are not

grandees, they have been elected geographically and represent

different sections of the party to be those who make decisions that

then go to conference. So you would not like that, presumably, to be

abolished? No, the committee had its meeting in November, said it didn't

want the forum abolished. What we can do with digital technology is

have platforms where we can have more meaningful debates where we can

involve party members and also wider members of the public in discussing

the way forward for our country in policy terms and that's got to be a

good thing. We need to make sure political parties reach out to the

public at large to deal with this alienation we've got at the moment

between those that believe politics are important and those who believe

it's just some kind of game that's selfish. It isn't, it's about what

kind of a society we want. Before I come back to the national policy

forum, what is your view? It seems this is a moment where the more

routine arming of police with more liberal use of guns on the streets,

it's a moment we are crossing a rubicon of some kind? There have to

be safeguards because we know what happened when people were shot

wrongly and we saw that with Jean Charles de Menezes. We also need to

give our armed police the confidence, if they are dealing with

a marauding terrorist of the sort that we saw in Paris, that they can

get that person down and get them on the ground and save lives. It's

important to get the balance right, it's got to be democratically

decided but we just can't have shoot-to-kill without any democratic

involvement. There is a good example of a policy that has to be worked

through? There is no yes or no answer to that. Is your message then

that the use of the democratic new membership, all the hundreds of

thousands of people, that is very good as an advisory thing but can't

be the final policy-making mechanism? We can't make policies by

plebiscite because there are policies that have clear yes and no

answers. But we need to have debate and decision-making after

everybody's been listened to. Democratically arrived at through

the processes and I'm determined to deliver a much better version than

we have had in the past. Angela Eagle, thank you very much.

It's 25 years since, in the most dramatic circumstances,

Sir John Major became leader of the Conservative Party,

You could say the Tories have never resolved the issue which ultimately

led to his predecessor, Mrs Thatcher's fall from power.

Namely, the party's attitude to Europe.

Sir John wrestled with it during his premiership.

He also had to deal with war in the Middle East, a recession,

Thanks for coming in. Pleasure. Let's talk about the economy. You

were a young Prime Minister, there was an asset bubble thing going on,

interest rates ticked up and we ALL: Sorts of problems with negative

equity. Interest rates are on the move up again led by the Fed, we

have a problematic asset bubble in terms of house prices in the UK,

leading to inequality, as we were talking about. I wonder about your

reflections, 25-odd years on from that, how do you see that problem? I

don't think we are going to get rapidly rising interest rates at

all. In the 1990s, we were on the back of a huge inflationary bubble.

People forget on the day I became Prime Minister we were heading into

a recession, we had interest rates at 14%. 14%? ! Yes, so totally

different background. Now, fell they had have ticked up interest rates a

little and I think this will be a very slow process. I don't think we

are suddenly going to see a huge spiral in interest rates. Mortgage

owners will be concerned about that. I doubt that is going to happen. But

I think there are some problems that we can foresee ahead. In a curious

way, the low price of oil is likely to be a problem because many of the

countries that have invested often overseas are going to be much

shorter of cash than they were. I think three large economies will

probably be in difficulty next year, Russia, Brazil and China will slow a

little. But overall, I think we'll see the world economy growing a

little faster and Europe will be going a little faster as well. You

came in as the Brixton boy from a cash-poor family in your background.

How worried are you about inequality now? I was and I am worried. It was

a great frustration to me that I had to deal with other things that the

European splits in the party and getting the economy right and I was

never able to do for inequality what I wished to and that is a lasting

regret but it exists. It's not the fault of this Government or the

immediate past Governments, it's grown up over 40 or 50 years and it

is extraordinary that here we are, we are the fifth biggest economy in

the world, we are growing, and yet we have seven out of the ten poorest

regions in northern Europe. Now, that cannot be right. It's wrong,

but what can be done about it? Well, I think some of it is starting to be

done but there is a great deal more to be done. The Chancellor's concept

of a northern powerhouse is exactly right. We need to spread the wealth

in this country more evenly than previously it's been spread. That

means necessarily large scale capital investment outside London in

the West Country, for example, to open that up to investment in the

the Midlands and in the north. That is a long job but it's necessary.

You can't talk about redistribution and taxing the people at the top

more without outrage from about the place. It's become completely

impossible to discuss? I wasn't talking about taxing people more

because if you do, you are going to make us less competitive as an

economy. We should spread out investment more wisely and we should

have more incentives to encourage people to invest outside the regions

that typically have attracted investment into the Midlands and the

north. It's vitally important. So more interventionist Government

strategy? I think we've always had a form of intervention, it depends on

how much, I don't welcome intervention into detail but I do

welcome intervention in encouraging people to invest in our country and

particularly in the parts of our country where people are falling

behind. It isn't acceptable. If you have the degree of inequality that

has built up over so long, it's not acceptable. I'm delighted we have a

Chancellor seeking to reverse that. You must have had a bit of deja vu

over the last few days watching David Cameron, I don't know how many

shirts he carried with him for the negotiations, it was in Brussels,

not Maastricht, but do you think this is a negotiation in which he's

in a sense too trivial, sort as some people on the Euro-sceptic side say,

meaningless? Isn't it curious, the sceptics say it's meaningless and

trivial and it embraces many of the things they have asked for for a

long time. Consider what the Prime Minister is trying to negotiate.

He's trying to negotiate an end to our commitment to have a closer

union. I think he'll succeed in that. Is that trivial? If it is, why

have the Euro-sceptics been asking for it for the last 20 years? He's

trying to negotiate more come forgettiveness set out clearly in

his letter to Donald Tusk and trying to set out things that matter to us,

like might rancy, seeking to intervene, do so now if you wish.

The specific prom theys he was going to end in-work Ben by thes for four

years for EU migrants -- benefits. That is something people are

determined we'll not get and, in a sense, has he not created a problem

by saying, I'm going to get this. If he doesn't get it, it may not be the

most important issue, but he'll be crucified over it? It's a sub set of

the might rancy issue, of course. Whether he'll get exactly four years

I can't say, but the whole ethos of the European Union is compromise.

The European Union are not going to wish Britain to leave, they are not

going to wish Britain to leave because we tend to look here at what

our position is. Consider Europe's position were we to leave the

European Union, what would Europe lose, forget what we'd lose for the

moment. The European Union would lose... A big export market of

course. That's not a huge argument as you might think. They would lose

the best-performing economy in Europe, they will lose the economy

that in 20 years is likely to be the biggest economy in Europe, they'll

lose the country with the longest, most historic foreign policy reach,

they'll lose one of only two countries with a military capability

and a nuclear capacity. Now, if Europe was formed, as it was, to

look America and China and the big countries of the world in the eye as

equals, if Britain comes out, thatment bigs's gone. So it will

have to be something substantial? They would be imminencely diminished

and they know it. Everybody is setting out situations, it's classic

European situations on both sides, setting out positions and they'll

meet, a compromise will be reached and the compromise won't just deal

with trivial issues. Subsidiarity isn't trivial. Germany and Britain

put that in in Maastricht, meaning things were only done at European

level if they couldn't be done at national level that. Was agreed at

Maastricht and then by passed by the then Commission. Well, if it's

reinserted again, it will be reinserted in a way that they'll not

be able to by pass. That's essential? Very important. That's

one of the things that's caused so much frustration with the European

Union and there is frustration right the way through the country. In the

end, they are not going to change their spots, Charles Moore, I'm not

sure he's your favourite columnist but he said something very

interesting, two things are going to happen, one is, the Prime Minister

will come back with something he's able to say, this is a successful

renegotiation, look what I've got, but the second thing he said is that

this will not fundamentally change either the direction of the EU or

our relationship with the EU, on the fundamentals it remains the same.

The European Union's already changed with the Advent of the eurozone.

What we are heading towards is a European Union that has a eurozone

and non-eurozone members. One thing the Prime Minister's seeking to

negotiate is to protect us from paying for the policies of the

eurozone members. Now, that is significantly different. Allie that

to an end to ever closer union and you do begin to see a rather

different relationship. Add to that subsidiarity and you have a very

tink relationship. So the argument that the Euro-sceptics have been

advancing since before the Prime Minister set out his aims that it

would be trivial is a good negotiating, arguing point for them,

but it's essentially bogus when you look at the detail of what is

actually being discussed. Sticking with that detail, the business of

transitional in-work benefits coming into the UK, the big problem for the

Prime Minister is discrimination between one citizen of the EU and

another of the EU. Do you think that can be overcome? It's an interesting

word discrimination isn't it? We are saying there's discrimination if

people don't get exactly the same benefits, you could argue that it's

a discrimination that people who're watching this programme have been

paying into our national insurance system for 40 years and someone

arriving on day one gets exactly the same benefits. I think that's an

equal form of discrimination. I think we are going to have to

recognise that and I don't know what the outcome will be but I think

there'll be a compromise. There will be some kind of compromise? I think

so. What about the issue of open borders? This has produced and

extestential crisis, an overused word, but this Europe of open

borders, the Schengen Europe, people being able to move from one country

to another quickly, Liam Fox raised the issue of terrorists being able

to use this as well. People will be worried? The question is whether

we'll be able to stop that in anything we did. If we look at the

question of freedom of movement, there are several things, freedom of

movement is said to be sacrosanct because it's one of the four

European freedoms. That's a totally phoney argument. Another four of the

European freedoms of movement of goods and services, Germany, France

and other countries block our banking, insurance, technology

services, so the belief that that is absolutely fundamental. You are

beginning to sound like Liam Fox at this point? Well, they do, and that

is the sort of thing we are going to have to change. The bigger issues is

why I'm convinced we have to stay in for our future. On the question of

the sheer flow of people coming here, here is a matter where we

should move away from rigid positions and look at the reality.

It's not common-sense to sweep into countries more people than we can

provide for if they are sick than we can house or we can educate. And we

need a common-sense position. Let us accept the principle of free

movement, but it has to be mitigated to deal with the number of people

that can be accepted in any given period and that again is a piece of

common-sense negotiation that ought to be accepted to our partners. If

we left, we'd get control of our borders back period?

Consider what that means. We would have control. Just a moment. We have

been letting more people in than most of the people objecting to us

being in Europe would like. Without them, we wouldn't have a transport

system, we probably wouldn't - we certainly wouldn't have a national

health system, so let's not assume immigration per se is a bad thing,

it isn't. Neither is it per se a bad thing from Europe. It's the sheer

total of it. Now, if we had control of our own borders, I wonder what

would happen with all the people who had got into Calais, to France.

Would the French keep them there? Or would they say this is no longer our

problem, Britain is outside the European Union. We are no longer

going to hold them at Calais. Do we want that situation to arise? We do

believe that, in an open world, that we have at the moment, that we can

opt out and become a closed nation? I tell you, Andrew, it's a fantasy.

Is it? A lot of people would say that the French are allowing as many

of those migrants to go to Dunkirk, and they are coming into the

country. If we had a hard border of our own, we could stop them coming

in? Do you think that is so? I have no idea. Do you really think all the

implications of that would necessarily be right in terms of our

international reputation, our international trade and all the

things that go with it? I don't think that is the case. We are

better able to deal with this problem collectively rather than

siphoning ourself off, cutting ourselves away from the biggest

single market in the world and seeking to negotiate a new

arrangement with that single market which would be less convenient and

less good for us. Of course, they are selling us much more in goods

than we are selling them? There is a fallacy in that argument. Many of

the things that they sell to us, they would continue selling them to

us because that's covered by wider treaties than the European Treaties.

The converse would be that the things we want to sell to them,

services and other things, can be blocked by the Europeans. So it

would be very much to our overall disadvantage. One final... There are

27 of them, there are one of us. So the beliefs that Europe is going to

collapse if it loses the UK market is a bit wide of the mark. One final

question on this. You have intervened in this argument today.

How big an argument is it for the country? Alan Johnson, who is

leading the Labour campaign to stay in Europe, was on the programme, and

he said he thought it was a once in a lifetime, a 30-year kind of

decision, do you take the same view? It is a long-term decision. The

argument we can have a referendum, say no, go back and renegotiate is a

fallacy. If we come out, we are out. That is it. It's not politically

credible to go back and say we have reconsidered, let's have another

referendum. If we vote to stay out, then we are out and we will have to

get on with it and face the consequences, which will be many and

varied. Of course, we will survive. We are a big and a powerful nation.

Of course, we will. That is not the point. The point is, would we be as

safe? No. Would we be as well off? No. That is the point that is at

issue. Thank you very much for joining us.

This has been an extraordinary year, for domestic politics,

I have a nasty feeling I say that every year -

but 2015 has seen the further implosion of Syria, the migrant

And here we've had the dramas over Europe, and the Labour leadership -

all flowing of course from the outcome of

Let's take a look back at some of the most memorable moments

from this show, over the past 12 months.

# I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet.

I'm going to give you an interview in a minute.

I think this is election is still going to be a close

and a hard-fought election and I'm going

Both these two men would happily do a deal with David Cameron and put

Are you going to borrow an extra ?8 billion?

Are you going to borrow an extra ?8 billion?

If you have a sensible plan to balance your public finances,

you have a stronger economy and you have

I keep asking you very straight questions where

I'm giving you very straight answers.

No, you keep saying sensible and balance

We're going to see who else wants to be part of that.

It is one of the scariest interviews I have heard for a very long time.

Are you the same creature... Don't get rattled. Is there some... Come

on, Boris! We're 23 seats short

from a majority Government. I can't see how you

are going to get them. I'm not going to talk

about anything other than winning Nicola Sturgeon has been talking

to the Prime Minister by phone, The key point to make to him,

and did make to him, He cannot act now as if it is

as business as usual in Scotland. Scotland voted for change

and I think that has to be heeded. I'm not expecting laying on of hands

here, but he is the kind of candidate who is saying the kind

of things you were talking He has a little way to go, but I

think he'll get there. Do you think it is right at this

point for the Labour Party I have seen the Labour Party

written off, come together, come back into Government, and that

is what we need to do again. Only one story today and the

predictable split. This is a huge change

for the Labour Party. There is no point in denying

this is a huge political But Jeremy Corbyn has got a huge

mandate from our members. Those people already talking

about a putsch or a coup against him, what is

your message to them? There is zero chance

of that happening. Labour Party members

will not accept that. Is it the view of the Shadow Cabinet

that becomes the Labour Party view whipped in the House

of Commons, or is it the view of Conference that becomes

the Labour Party view, whipped in the House of Commons,

or is there no whip at all? You are asking the most fundamental

philosophical question So, what is the fundamental

philosophical answer? The fundamental philosophical answer

is we will have to discuss it and debate it and come

to a philosophical solution to it! We have a leader

of the opposition who says quite openly he would never

press the nuclear button, It would worry me if that thought

was translated into power Well, there's a couple of hurdles

to cross before we get to that. # She said shut up and dance with

me! # 99% of what they do

on that show is not real. You could never get an Education

Bill passed that fast. Are you tempted by

public office yourself? You have resisted the vast

magnetic pull of Hollywood. I think they have

resisted me as much What is your advice

to the kind of younger generation that haven't been able

to handle it so well? You can live a clean life

and don't do as I do. This is totally different from

Charlie Hebdo attacks, this time it We stand absolutely shoulder

to shoulder with the French We are both very clear

that the terrorists will not win. Well, Sir John Major

is still with me - and we've been joined

again by Joan Bakewell. John, we have got potentially three

members of the Cabinet who want to campaign alongside Liam Fox for

Brexit, should they be allowed to stay in the Cabinet and disagree

with the Prime Minister while doing so? I spent the best part of seven

years trying to keep a party at civil war over Europe together. And

I think it would be extraordinary if anybody decided to campaign against

Cabinet policy, at least until the negotiations are completed. When the

negotiations are completed, I would hope that they would not wish to

campaign against the Cabinet. If they did, should they be allowed to

stay? That is a big if, if is the longest preposition in the English

language. I would hope afterwards, that they would not wish to because

the unity of the argument for the sake of the country, this is bigger

than the Conservative Party, the argument for the sake of the country

is very important and people deserve to hear a clear-cut argument, not an

piece of party strife. Joan? This is clearly Cameron's opportunity for

leadership. This is going to call on leadership as never before. And if

he is going to come back with a negotiation that satisfies him, he

has got to be able to sell it to the Cabinet. He has to sell it to the

country, of course. But he must - it is going to lead the stay in

campaign, which he wants to do... If he can't convince his own Cabinet,

he is unlikely to convince the country? I personally believe he

will come back with a satisfactory deal and he will be able to convince

the country. The trouble with the European debate, ever since it

began, it's often conducted at the extremes. People who will never

really be persuaded that we should be in and people who are utterly

convinced that we should not leave. In the midst of that, in the middle

of it, is the rest of us. It is the rest of us, the great mass of the

British people, whom David Cameron will have to convince it is better

for our future, their children and their children and our international

influence that we should stay in a world that is drawing together

rather than exclude ourselves and become an offshore island, a big and

a powerful one admittedly, but an offshore island of the biggest

continental market in the world. Joan Bakewell, a youthful member of

the House of Lords, Sir John Major, thank you for joining us.

That's almost it for this year - thanks to all my guests today,

and over the past 12 months, and to you for watching.

We're taking a break now for a couple of weeks,

but I'll be back on 10th January, when I'll be joined

by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, in the first

of a series of interviews with the main party leaders.

Until then, we leave you with Catrin Finch and some music

to get you in the festive spirit - Happy Christmas!