18/12/2016 The Andrew Marr Show

Well, what a year it's been for British politics -

and the big division wasn't between the parties so much

as over our European future, or lack of it.

This week, we're in reflective mood, looking back at 2016 with a couple

This time last year, one of these men was the all-powerful Chancellor,

the other just a former Cabinet minister exiled to the back benches.

Liam Fox joins us in his first TV interview since becoming Secretary

And in his first TV interview since leaving the Cabinet,

George Osborne reflects on the future of liberal Britain.

On the sofa today, Labour's Angela Eagle,

John Nicholson of the SNP, and UKIP's Suzanne Evans.

We'll also hear from Doctor Who himself, Peter Capaldi,

You know, sometimes I walk into a room and there'll

be some kids there and they'll gasp.

And as it's almost Christmas, we'll have a carol.

Yes, the BBC Singers will be live, later.

Before all that, here's the news, read today by Ben Thompson.

Holders of public office, such as civil servants

and council officials, will have to swear an oath of allegiance

to British values in an attempt to tackle extremism.

The Communities Secretary, Sajid Javid, says people can't play

a positive role in public life unless they accept values such

as democracy, equality and freedom of speech.

The proposal follows a report that warns of growing ethnic

The UN Security Council is to vote today on whether to send observers

to the Syrian city of Aleppo, where thousands of civilians

One charity has told the BBC that a deal has been reached to restart

The process collapsed on Friday, leaving many stranded in freezing

and dangerous conditions near the front lines.

The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has said he wants to be a "bridge"

between Britain and the incoming Trump administration

But Mr Farage told BBC Radio 4 that Downing Street didn't

want to acknowledge him and claimed Cabinet ministers had been banned

China is set to return an American underwater drone that its navy

The US craft was captured in international waters on Thursday.

The Pentagon said the drone was being used to carry

out scientific research when it was taken.

The US President-elect, Donald Trump, took to

And if you didn't catch Strictly Come Dancing last night

and don't want to know the result, look away now!

The BBC's sports presenter Ore Oduba and his partner Joanne Clifton won

the trophy in last night's final - beating fellow competitors Danny Mac

Last night also marked Len Goodman's last appearance as a judge.

As to the front pages, as usual, there is the Sunday express and

relentlessly optimistic mood. Brexit fuels festive shopping extravaganza.

The Mail on Sunday is talking about foreign aid being misspent. The big

papers have the same thing on the front page, they all have Strictly

and they all have the unions. In this case, a fight inside the main

union about Len McCluskey's role in the Observer. And the Sunday

Telegraph, pressure on Theresa May as unions run rampant, it says, and

the picture of the Queen and the Prince of Wales and Strictly at the

top. And the Sunday Times, rail union boss vows to topple Tories.

There is that loyalty oath story that you saw in the news. The

question is whether a loyalty oath about British values is itself a

British value or not. But we're not going to start on the front pages,

are we? We are going to start with Aleppo, which I think, John, user is

the most important story in the papers today. It clearly is, given

the unfolding tragedy of Aleppo. And here we have on page four and on to

page five in the Observer a harrowing account of what it is like

to be in Aleppo and it struck me, I think it struck us all, how

extraordinary it is that as this unfolding tragedy happens in Aleppo,

not a single newspaper has put Aleppo on its front pages and

another of the papers have round-ups of the year, including editorial

round-ups -- pictorial round-ups and this, for me, is the picture of the

year in all the newspapers and magazines and it is the wee boy who

was rescued by the white helmets, these heroic people who run towards

the barrel bombs to rescue civilians. And he seems completely

out of it, completely disoriented with no idea of who he is what's

going on. And what is extraordinary is, you have a picture like this and

you tweak it, which I did early in the year, you have all these trolls

who say that it is staged, that the little boy is a CIA plant. It is

extraordinary. There was a lot of Russian propaganda involved in the

Aleppo story. False news. What struck me is the fact it is not on

the front pages but I was struck by this piece in the Observer, which

talks about the stampede now, almost, to get out of the city, for

the evacuees to get out. We've heard so many horrors throughout the last

months and years about Aleppo but this got me in tears this morning,

the struggle to actually leave the city. People started to run like

they were mad. They lost luggage, money, I heard more than one lost a

child. I don't think any parent can read that without feeling that tug

heartstrings about how desperate it is now that it is over, effectively,

at least we hope so, but now that dreadful struggle to actually leave

to safety. It is awful to see this going on on our watch. We've all

read about these kinds of scenes in history and we have an international

rules -based system at the UN and its been paralysed by Russian veto

after Russian veto so what can we do to bring together the world

community, so we can prevent the rule of the strongest always

winning? We've got George Osborne coming later on. A speech in the

House of Commons this week, saying we had chosen to be bystanders.

There are no easy answers. What would we have done? Exactly. Theron

easy answers. If you're going to have a rules -based international

system, you have you have to have enforcement methods. But the

alternative to that is much, much worse and it is the rule of the

strongest. The last thing Syria needed was more bombing and the

rethink by some people seems to be that we should have been engaged in

military action and I'm not sure that was the answer. Let's moved

back to the front pages, if we could. Angela, you've chosen the

Sunday Telegraph story about the union is running rampant. Do you

think they are? Lots of strikes over Christmas. I think there are a

couple of difficult strikes going on. We know that the transport

system is often close down over Christmas for engineering works. I

think the issue with Southern is an ongoing one. The franchise was

actually given back to Southern without a proper competition.

They've run a chronically bad service and part of having a good

service and gaming lots of public subsidy, let's face it, surely ought

to be to have reasonable industrial relations. If Labour was in power,

do you think you would take Southern back into public ownership? Our

policy was to take the franchises back into public ownership as they

came due but the important thing at the moment is to have a decent

service. People pay thousands of pounds for season tickets and prior

to the industrial action, they've been left standing the trends that

never turn up and it means they can't get to work. Let's remember

that these companies are milking billions of pounds of subsidy for

providing this kind of service. We're talking about people who are,

by any standards, not very well paid. Let's talk about people who

are very well-paid. I mentioned the aid story and you have chosen a

spread inside. The scenes we've seen in Aleppo, people expect the foreign

aid budget to be spent on people in need, particularly in times of

emergency, but the Mail on Sunday has, for a long time, been running a

campaign showing how foreign aid money, which is set at about ?1

billion a month in the UK, has been utterly abused. I was very pleased

to see that international development secretary Priti Patel

has now been warning firms... She's put a freeze on certain aspects of

the foreign aid budget and has been saying that there has been a

top-level investigation launched into how taxpayer money is being

spent and what payments and expenses are being taken by some of the fat

cat charities who receive this aid money, and it is absolutely

astonishing. One organisation was given ?10 million by DFID to tackle

starvation and their executive was paid more than ?600,000 a year.

Another, marry Stopes international, got ?1 million over two careers for

their Chief Executive. Let's remember that foreign aid is a good

thing and stops states failing. Nobody is saying it is not a good

thing. It educates children, helps to deal with mothers giving birth in

areas where that is tough. The strangest Christmas political story

is the Christmas karaoke meltdown, as the Mail on Sunday describes it.

It is surprising to see the male running an anti-Corbyn story but

apparently there was a lovely Labour Party karaoke last night for Labour

MPs. They started singing anti-Corbyn songs, which are...

Things Can Only Get Better. I got a ticket for this event but I was too

ill to go. But I can tell you there is always karaoke at the PLP

Christmas do. It is where Ed Balls's talent for the limelight first

became evident. But all I can say is, where Labour MPs gather and MPs

and party members gather, Things Can Only Get Better is often so because

it is our 1997 and then. You've had a terrible year in the Labour Party,

2016... I think we will be glad when this year is over. I'm looking

forward to New Year's Day. What about 2017, is going to get better?

Diane Abbott last week said the polls would turn in the next 12

months. Do you agree? They've begun to turn and we have to hope that we

can begin to remake our appeal to the electric. It is no good denying

that we've had a bad year but it is the same for social Democratic

parties across Europe. We have to talk about how we can ensure that

people who work burden a reasonable income so that all of the profit

doesn't go to all those who own. -- earn a reasonable income. It is

creating more unequal societies and that is not good for democracy. In

terms of the big Brexit argument, is your expectation that once the

details of what we are going to do as we leave the EU come to the House

of Commons, things get much tougher for the Tories? I think they do. I

think "Brexit means Brexit" is a holding pattern while the Tory

aeroplanes look for somewhere to land. I think as soon as Theresa May

starts to define what she means by that, her party splinters in all

different directions. Looking back on 2016, John, a difficult year for

the SNP because you had wanted to be part of the Brexit conversation with

the rest of the EU all the way through and you've been, by and

large, kept out by the Government. Is that going to change? You say

that but I think one of the interesting things is just how

different the reaction we get on the international stages from the way it

was during the independence referendum. During the independence

referendum, we were the bad boys he wanted to break up unitary state and

the leaders made a very clear they did want to deal with us. That

narrative has now changed. You are the ones that wanted to stay. We are

the good Europeans who many European leaders want to report all --

reward. 48% of the UK wanted to state it wasn't nearly so big a

result and we've got to think about how to bring the country back

together. I think I'm a good European as well, I just don't like

the European Union. Ukip, officer, was part of the winning side in the

referendum and that has been a big part of the story but it leaves the

question, what's the point of Ukip now? You've done what you wanted. If

I had ?1 for every time people say, "We've reached a peak Ukip," I would

be a reach one -- rich woman. We just keep on getting better and

better and we've got a new leader now and are looking to a particular

target of people who don't recognise the Labour Party any more, good,

decent, working class people in this country who don't see in Jeremy

Corbyn the way forward for them under Labour. I think we've got a

great future ahead. We have to wrap up in a moment but the political

awards of the year in the Sunday Times for 2016... They are

extraordinary, the political awards. Angela features in them, you'll be

glad to see. There she is for the press conference. The politician of

the year is Theresa May but one of the stories that is not mentioned in

this, which we could perhaps mention, is the Jo Cox single, which

politicians of all parties are supporting. Here we have it on the

BBC website. All our friends and colleagues from MP for. It is a very

good cause and the Rolling Stones have just announced that they are

going to waive the royalties for the Jo Cox single. It is at 24 in the

charts at the moment, so we wanted to be higher. Before we wrap, one of

the pictures of the year, there is Nigel Farage and Trump and there is

possibly the scariest picture of the year. All I can say is, we've got

Nigel Farage and Trump. He's trying to become the independent

ambassador, even though the Government have disowned him and he

doesn't represent the country. He's stood for election seven times to

Parliament and never succeeded. It's been almost Dickensian

this week - a good, I don't suppose there's any chance

of old-fashioned snow on the way? That would be too much

to hope for, wouldn't it? Jay Wynne is in the BBC

weather studio. Wind and rain will be more of an

issue as we head into the Christmas weekend. At the moment we have got a

lot of dense fog out there. It is slow on the major roads and there

could be some delays at airports. For some that will linger well on

into the afternoon. Elsewhere it will stay pretty great for most

places. But the winds are light and it is dry for the vast majority.

Single digits pretty much across the board. On the western side of

Scotland the wind will be picking up and more persistent rain will drift

towards the western isles. Overnight tonight the fog will be quite dense

and it will be chilly as well. The chilly, Grace start to Monday and it

will stay grey for most places. A bit of rain drifting in from the

North Sea into the South East of England. It becomes more patchy as

we get on into the afternoon in western Scotland. Still single

figures for most places. The fog will be an issue over the next

One of television's annual traditions is the Doctor

Last week, Peter Capaldi came in to the studio to tell

Sophie Raworth about this year's seasonal outing for the Time Lord.

He reflected on how the role had transformed his own life and how

Doctor Who has acquired an unexpected fan in the highest

It's set in New York and features a real superhero.

I think it is the first time we've ever seen the Doctor deal

with somebody else who can save the planet.

Superheroes nowadays seem to be rather dark characters,

in films that end up in kind of CGI orgies of destruction.

I think this hankers more back to the Christopher Reeve Superman

kind of movies that were funny and ironic and witty.

It does seem to have a lighter touch than some of the past episodes.

Lucy Fletcher, reporter from the Daily Chronicle.

No-one will believe that - this is America.

Special agent Dan Dangerous from Scotland Yard, Scotland.

I think the Christmas Day episode has a special role to fill.

I think a lot of the time, a lot of people watch it who don't

normally watch Doctor Who, so it becomes rather

I think it provides a nostalgic reminder to people who, perhaps,

don't watch the show but it's still around and it reminds

them of their childhood, because there's still the Tardis

and there's still monsters and there's still a mysterious man

It's a tradition but it's quite a responsibility,

You've even got the likes of the Prime Minister,

who says she's really looking forward to seeing it.

You've got plenty of famous fans, no doubt.

That was quite a surprise, that she was so keen on it,

so I hope she takes his message of tolerance and kindness

You talk of responsibility and it is a huge responsibility

playing the role that you are playing, isn't it,

and you've been doing for three years now?

I mean, I was in Doctor Who for all of 15 seconds, reading

I couldn't believe the number of letters I got as a result.

People saying, "You were in Doctor Who -

Can you send me this, that and the other?"

So to be the Doctor, I mean, the attention you must

You know, it's a really unique position to be in.

There are only 12 people who have played this role and you become

the focus of the affection for the role and you stand

on the shoulders of everybody else who ever played it.

And they've done all the work, really, so I just turn up and look

alarmed or be excited and blow up a Dalek here and there.

It must be quite intrusive as well, though, because you must...

You're so distinctive and you must get people coming up

No, I don't mean that at all, I just mean very distinctive.

But you must get people coming up to you the whole time and...

I think it's something about the character.

The Doctor is a good thing in the world.

I think people feel a deep affection for whatever Doctor it was they grew

up with and so you sort of are kind of like the Wizard

Sometimes I'll walk into a room and there'll be some kids

Can you imagine how lovely that is, to have such affection

They just like to see you and for you to say hello

There was a report I saw last year that said you literally had to move

house because you had people on your doorstep.

Well, I lived next to the park and the ice cream van used to park

right outside my house and so there used to be a huge queue

We moved just before my Doctor Whos came out but I knew it was going

We moved just before my Doctor Whos came out but I knew it wasn't going

My attitude about it is that I didn't want it to change my

But in as much as my private life goes, it remains much the same.

But when I go out into the world, I can't...

You know, I don't want to escape the idea that I'm Doctor Who.

So there will be a day when people don't come and say hello.

The last time my next guest was here he was at the height

of his powers as Chancellor ahead of the budget in March.

The arch tactician except, of course, that he then came

a terrible cropper as the British people ignored his blood-chilling

warnings of economic apocalypse and voted to leave the EU.

There's been, as you'd expect, a period of reflection,

Is this a slightly different George Osborne done the George Osborne are

used to talk to? Well, I am learning a lot. I do not want to trade on my

experience of being Chancellor. I do not want to be 60 or 70 years of age

talking about what I did when I was 40 years old, so I am trying to

learn as much as possible about the world, get out of the inevitable

panel you find yourself in when you are doing one of the top jobs in

British politics, and try and understand what I got right, but

also what I got wrong. Talking about what you got wrong, the referendum

above all. You had all these bloodcurdling warnings, the

punishment budget, the economic bomb under the economy, 800,000 jobs

going in two years and people did not believe you listen to you. Why

do you think that was? Of course people in the end chose by a small

majority to leave the EU and I have to respect that and I have to accept

the campaign we fought was the wrong campaign, it did not work, it did

not persuade people. That is the purpose of a campaign. If anything

maybe we lacked some of the authenticity, some of the optimism

of the Leave campaign. We discovered there was not much out there in

terms of support for European friendship and we ended up talking a

lot about the economy. As Chancellor I was centre stage in that because

of the economic risks we saw and others sought in leaving the EU. Was

it a mistake? That is your characterisation. Other things that

we might have wanted to talk about, like the fact it is good to get on

with European neighbours, it is good to be part of a multilateral rules

-based system, that it is good for Britain to shape world events, all

those arguments, and I am not saying we cannot do them out of the EU, but

they will be difficult, all those arguments were falling on deaf ears,

so the economic argument came to the fore in the campaign. But I am the

first to say it did not work and that is why I am here and I am not

the Chancellor. It is reported in a book that when David Cameron said, I

have got this great idea for a European referendum, you said, we

will lose it and it will destroy the Tory party. Did you say that? I was

not a great fan for having a referendum, but I am a team player

and politics is at its most successful when you are a team. I

can look back on a happy time in Downing Street because I worked very

closely with people like David and others to achieve things and turn

around this country. Once we were in the referendum I did everything I

could to win it. I was not going to sit it out. It was an important

enough issue about the future of the country.

I felt strongly about it though I was prepared to do what I did at the

time, which was damaging my reputation with fellow conservatives

who did not agree with me. What is the point of doing those jobs if you

are not fighting for what you think is right? You also damage your

reputation because what you said at the time was not true. We did not

have the punishment budget, we have not lost all those jobs, in fact the

economy is going quite well. Do you look forward and think Brexit is

good for the economy? I hope predictions we made before the

referendum turned out not to be true. I sweated blood to turn the

British economy around. I am proud we got all these people into work

and we made Britain the fastest growing economy in the West. But

let's wait and see what happens. The pound fell sharply and we are not

going to pretend any more that the pound in your pocket is not worth

any less. Britain is Pura as a result. All of the forecasts,

including the government's own independent forecast, showed the

economy will next year. But what the future tells you at the moment and

what financial markets tell you today is that every time they think

Britain will have a less close relationship with our trading

partners in Europe, every time there is a hint from the government like

that, then the pound falls and the world is betting against Britain.

Every time you have thoughtful contributions from members of the

government saying we need some kind of drugs transition, we need to have

something more than the world trade organisation, every time you hear

something like that, the world bets on Britain. We are well placed to

make a success of this century. We have got a great work for us, we

have got entrepreneurial businesses. Let's make sure we have close

trading relationships with our key neighbours outside the EU, but that

does not mean we are leaving the trading arrangements that have

sustained this country for centuries. You mention the fact it

was a close result and the 48%. The question is what is the role of the

48% in what happens now? Do they still have a voice in the way we

leave the EU? Do you have views of how we should leave which might tend

towards the soft side of the spectrum? We cannot go on thinking

about the 48th and the 52. I was in the 48. We are part of 100%, the

referendum has happened and we are leaving the EU. The question on the

ballot paper was do you want to leave the EU? It was not about the

new arrangement with the rest of the EU. I believe it is in Great

Britain's national interest to have the closest possible relations with

key partners of hours like the French, the Germans and the Dutch.

Whether we like it or not they will remain our geographical neighbours

for time immemorial. We cannot tell ourselves out into the middle of the

Atlantic. Does that mean we should stay in the European economic area

and the I think when we come to these key

questions, there are a variety of arrangements we can have and other

countries, from Switzerland to Norway to Turkey, have different

relationships with the EU. We should do this on the basis of a

hard-headed assessment of what is in our national and economic interests.

So yes, it's true that the grass may be greener outside of those

arrangements and we may be able to conduct new free-trade deals with

Australia and the United States and so on, but that shouldn't come at a

price of giving up the existing free-trade arrangements we have with

Germany and France. You think we can keep those? That's where I would be

starting from. You can't say that we are a beacon of free trade in the

world and then the main thing you achieve is a huge act of

protectionism, the biggest in British history. We have to

understand that whilst... You know, I'm a massive fan of trade deals

with Australia, I want to do trade deals with China, quite

controversial in this country, and they will prove to be so, many of

these trade deals when they come to Parliament, but there is no point

saying you want all of that trade but you don't want to do the trade

we already do with countries like Germany and France which are central

trading partners to us. Do you think the House of Commons should be able

to look at the detail of whatever deal we do as we leave the EU in

time, in other words not at the last minute but before it is finally

agreed? I have to say, personally I think it is all a bit of an odd

debate. We live in a Parliamentary democracy. Theresa May is the prime

minister because Conservative MPs, myself included in her case, chose

her to be the Prime Minister and, of course, Parliament is going to have

to be central to these discussions because our government comes out of

parliament. That doesn't mean the executive shouldn't show a lead,

that we don't expect and would like our government show that lead, and I

think they can but, in the end, all of these things are going to be

debated in Parliament, whether government likes it or not because,

in our system, Parliament itself can insist on debating things next week,

next month, next year. So we are going to get proper Brexit debate in

the House of Commons in 2017? I think we are, in fact the Brexit

debate has started in the House of Commons and are already proving that

the numbers are Parliament do want to have a say in these things and

Government is going to have to listen to Parliament. To do that, do

you think we need to see a proper plan from the Government before

Article 50? The Government have no promise that plan, partly because of

Parliamentary pressure, and what you need is that realistic assessment.

Let's take the example of a customs union. If we leave the customs

union, we can do our own trade deals, that's the argument, so let's

do an assessment of how much those trade deals bring, how realistic is

it that we can pass them through Parliament, for example, in return

for what we blues from leaving the customs union. I want to see those

assessments. I'm very open-minded about what the best arrangements are

for Britain. I'm a passionate believer in free trade, free markets

and access to a global trading system, but let's stopped having

assertion and in 2017 start getting into a real debate about the numbers

and arrangements that best suit Britain because Parliament is about

peoples jobs, the factories, the services that people provide in this

country. On the services, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, you saw

the tax revenue that came in from the City and the service sector. How

worried are you about the future of the City post Brexit? Well, it is

not just the City. In Britain's ten largest cities, financial services

is the biggest employer and two thirds of all jobs in financial

services are outside London. It is massively important to our country

and you already have, for example, Lloyd's of London for the first time

in its 300 year history saying it is going to have a European operation.

You have my successor, excellent Chancellor in Philip Hammond, being

told that Japanese banks are concerned. The decisions we take

about our financial services operations will have a material

effect on this country and by thing we can do a deal where we are the

financial services centre of Europe because in my view, the jobs will

not simply go to Dublin or Frankfurt, they are much more

likely, in my view, to go to New York if we get this wrong. If we

have to compromise, for instance on free movement of people, to get that

deal, is that worth doing? I would not go into this negotiation

necessarily drawing redlines. I would say, we are leaving the EU,

that is the only red line I would draw, let's go in and get the best

deals are people in Britain, address people's concerns about immigration,

which I think are around the fact the people come here and don't work

or assimilate into our society. Sajid Javid has a plan today in that

respect it up people see that the board is an secure and there are

migrants jumping out of lorries at Calais and Dover and so on. There

are concerns about immigration which can be addressed but let us not

throw out the baby with the bath water and let's not lose the massive

contribution that immigrants have made over many centuries and

continue to make to Britain's prosperity and society. You've

talked candidly about making mistakes in office and how it is

different to row back from something you've said. Surely the tens of

thousands promise on migration is the single one of those? I think in

the end, setting a target we were unable to hit obviously damaged us

in the referendum because we didn't really have an answer on programmes

like this too, you set this target - how are you going to achieve it,

because you've tried all the other levers you've pulled? The problem

with any target is, within it are all sorts of different types of

migrants. There are people who are coming permanently, for reasons, for

example, to be with their family but may not make an economic

contribution to the country, and they're coming to be with us for the

rest of their lives. There are also students who turn up, our only there

for three or four years, and education is one of our biggest

exports. It is one of the biggest exports in the world and creates

links around the world of affection to Britain. Should they be counted

in the figures? When I was the Chancellor, I thought it was not

sensible to include them in the figures but that's got to be a

collective decision. Two very quick once. Once we get this deal,

whatever kind of deal we get, do you think it should be put to the

country in a second referendum? Well, the first referendum... No is

the answer? The first referendum was enough for me. One question about

you yourself. I guess your lowest moment was being booed at the

Paralympic Games. Did that really hurt? Well, it hurt partly because

my children were in the audience at the time but it made me think again

as Chancellor that you can't just hunker down in your bunker. You have

to go out there and understand the country you are trying to govern and

that's what I'm trying to do now, whether with the northern powerhouse

work I'm doing, when I'm travelling to these cities to understand why

people feel the systems don't work for them, trying to understand how

the politics in our country is shifting, and when you are

Chancellor of the Exchequer you take difficult decisions and have to live

with them and people judge you by them, but sometimes those moments to

help change you for the better. And you want to, as it were, relaunch

yourself and you are very welcome here but you are on the wrong show

and I wonder whether the makers of Strictly have been in touch. This is

one thing where Ed Balls is definitely better than meet it up I

watched it last night with my daughter... Have you been asked to

go on? I'm sure I have but I have turned it down! I think it is a

brilliant piece of television and it is a great success story and well

done, or a. Thank you very much indeed.

2016 is a year where that over-used word "extraordinary" feels

appropriate, so before we talk to our next guest, let's remember

some of the political and cultural moments that kept us going on Sunday

mornings during 2016, with a little help from some

of our musical guests over the last twelve months.

We awoke to the news on a Monday morning that he had died

and it was a very sad day, a very eerie day.

He had managed to turn his final chapter into art.

It's not easy, it's painful to resign.

I don't want to resign, but I'm resigning because I think

If you lose the referendum, do you stay as Prime Minister?

The renegotiation is now complete after exhaustive work travelling

right across Europe, meeting every single

People are beginning to put two fingers up to the political past.

The opportunities for people living here in the UK

will be more secure, will be better, if we are

It's not the Boris Johnson show, it's the Andrew Marr show.

A huge torrent of verbal audio has poured on your head

The governor will be significantly regretting getting

I don't think the UK will be able to stop Turkey joining.

There is no possibility of Turkey joining in the near future.

The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be

You kind of want it thematically all in the stew.

I've just been doing a lot of that lately.

# Tell me if there's something I should say.

Do you ever look at your agent and say can you bring me someone

who is gentle and motherly and slightly herbivorous?

Are you going to be happy with Donald Trump

# When your heart is broken down, down, down.

Jo was this unbelievable bundle of energy and joy and enthusiasm

and she would never rest in peace when she was alive and she would not

We can now say the decision taken in 1975 by the country to join

You're jumping several steps ahead of me.

I'm a young gazelle, that's what I do.

This morning it does look as if a full-scale coup

against the Labour leader is under way.

He's a good and decent man but he's not a leader

Well, Hilary confirmed to me in a phone call that he had indeed

been collecting signatures for some days.

The purpose of being engaged in politics is to secure democratic

Let me just say this to Labour Party supporters,

Labour members, members of the Parliamentary Labour Party,

Project smear, Tories battle to stop Boris, Tories at war.

You brought down David Cameron then you brought down Boris Johnson.

Some people are saying you are a kind of political serial

If you turn to that camera and say something sinister,

Well, as I said earlier, there are all sorts of people

who will say disobliging things about me.

# And after all that's been said and done...

That line between public and private life is almost nonexistent any more.

Obesity costs more globally than all conflict on the planet.

You were the favourite to win, there seems to be no medical problem

Yeah, I really struggle in that period.

June and July is the worst period for that.

# One more night, one more night till the morning...

Another Sunday and a new Prime Minister.

# One more night, one more night till the day.

I'm not going to pretend that it's all going to be plain sailing.

We will trigger before the end of March next year.

Terrible things were said on all sides, people said

They certainly did, I've got a list of them.

You've only got half an hour on the programme.

All politicians are the same, you hate to say that was

a mistake and we get a degraded political discord.

It is easy to sit on the sofa and pretend there are no difficult

But not on the backs of these people.

I'm the person who saw the elephant in the room which was there

You should actually be my biggest fan because I've just created legal

certainty so that Theresa May can now, rather than appealing, go ahead

TRANSLATION: Marine Le Pen being elected French president.

Let's turn around and look forward now.

If you're confused about the shape of things to come after we leave

the EU, my next guest is here to help clear things up.

I'm joined by the International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox.

A year ago I had you on this show and you were going to campaign to

leave the EU and you were clear about what that meant. You said no

more paying money into the EU, control of immigration and no

involvement in the customs union. Is that still your view? We have to

take back our own abilities to make our own laws and get control over

migration and determine what was good for Britain instead of having

our policy set elsewhere, and to have control of our money. Those

three messages resonated. I watched George Osborne said there should be

no lines. Do you agree with that? He said there should be negotiation,

but the public have made it clear they do not want to see uncontrolled

migration and they do not want to see as being controlled by the

European Court. We have to listen to what was an instruction from the

voters. If we want control over migration, we cannot be inside the

European Union. What about the customs union? One of the things

about the Theresa May government is it is very methodical in its

approach. What we have decided is we all come to these arguments from the

referendum campaign with different views, but we have decided to look

at the data. We need to have a fact -based decision said George Osborne

and I agree with that. Does that mean staying inside the customs

union? I want to put this in a non-confrontational way. If we stay

inside the customs union we can do international trade deals that your

department was set up to create and there is no point in Liam Fox. There

are limitations on what we can do in terms of tariff setting which would

limit what kind of deals you would do. That is correct. But we want to

look at all the different things. It is not hard Brexit and soft Brexit

as if it was a soft boiled egg, there are different gradations.

Before we make final decisions, we have to look at the costs. It is

interesting to hear Liam Fox talking about the possibility of hybrid

arrangements because you have always been the arch free trader in terms

of government ministers. You want to go out into the world and create

free trade deals, but inside the customs union we cannot. Liam Fox

accepts that is a possibility. The government will come to a view on

this once we looked at all the issues. We cannot go for a quick

result, we have to get the right result. Whatever result we come to,

we have to put in front of the British people the reasoning for

coming to that result. You are open to the possibility of staying inside

the customs union? I will argue my case inside Cabinet rather than on

the TV. You have always been outspoken about this. I remain as

George Osborne said an instinctive free trader. In the global economy

at the moment the rate of growth of trade is slowing down and it is

slowing down below global GDP. We have to have a more open global

trading environment and at the moment the only place where people

are talking about imposing impediments to trade and investment

that do not exist at the moment is the European Union and that does not

make sense. In September you talked optimistically about the joys of

being out of the EU and in the World Trade Organisation environment. Do

you accept that would mean tariffs between our farmers and our

businesses and the EU as it exists? Quite substantial ones. That would

depend on the choices we make. It is important to have continuity in our

trade. It makes no sense to pose tariffs across the European

continent. To lose advantage would it be to have tariffs against French

goods. It does not help the farmers or our businesses. You said you were

in favour of continuity. There has been a lot of talk about

transitional arrangements so we avoid the cliff edge between being

in the EU and outside the EU. Are you also in favour of transitional

arrangements? It depends what the arrangements we come to with the

European Union and the timescale we implement it and there are many

variables within that. People are saying every day this could happen

and this might happen until we get a clear plan. But you have to look at

the business we have, nationally and internationally and the impact it

will have on International trade to minimise disruption on that. But you

cannot buy back into so much of the European Union which is what some

people have told us to do. You have got a strange job because you are

talking to people in the world about what might happen after we leave the

EU, but you cannot yet say what situation we will be in. Do you have

any basic assumptions about the state we will be in as we leave the

EU which will inform conversations you have with the Australians and

the Americans and the Koreans? First of all we have to get Britain's

exporters up. We had a successful trip with the Prime Minister India

where we got billions worth of orders. We have got direct

investment into Britain and also British investment elsewhere so we

can help mature other markets which then become an opportunity for us.

On the trade policy element we have got the Brexit discussions which

will have an impact elsewhere. But there are other issues about how you

liberalise global trade. In particular it is not just tariffs

that are the problem. It is nontariff barriers that we should be

talking about liberalising. We should be thinking about it more

because it is one of the best ways of taking people out of global

poverty. You can have conversations about nontariff barriers, but you

cannot have conversations about Peter trade deals until you leave

the EU? We are not allowed to negotiate trade deals until we

leave, but it is rational to have discussions about trade

liberalisation in general. You can prepare a lot of ground work. Does

that mean on the day we leave the EU you could be ready to sign

free-trade deals between America and others? The first thing we want to

do is maintain the continuity of agreements we have. We have 35

free-trade agreements with other countries. We want to maintain the

stability of those and market access. We have had some good

discussions with South Korea in London a couple of days ago. It is

important to stress we want the European Union to be successful, we

want it to be a strong trading and economic and security partner for

the United Kingdom. If we can come to an agreement that minimises any

trade barriers, it is good for the people of Europe. It is worth

pointing out because there has been a lot of talk about people's in and

how far you go and when you get restrictions on trade it hurts the

poorest the most. We have got to ensure they are not the victims of

politics. When you launched the Vote Leave Campaign, you are sure we

should not be paying money into the EU after we leave. Is that still

your vision? There might be things outside the European Union. ?5

billion a year that Mark Carney was talking about. I would expect things

to continue through the Dutch and the French and the German elections

and my job is to help us prepare for what happens once we have left the

European Union itself. Do you think once Article 50 is triggered it is

revoke a bull? Once we get there is not a matter of legality, it is a

matter of democracy. As we get into 2017I hope the people accept the

public have given us an instruction. We said we would ask the public to

tell us what to do about the European Union. When people try to

undermine the result I say, what do they not understand about democracy,

referendum or binary? People did not vote on the deal you will eventually

get. That is hugely important and it is important that House of Commond

have a proper chance to vote on the detail of any deal that you do. The

House of commons will have endless opportunities to debate on these

issues. We have a debate coming up quite soon. There will be ongoing

scrutiny. Including a vote? The public voted to leave the European

Union. Constitutionally it is the job of the government to carry out

the public's instruction and it is Parliament's job to scrutinise. And

to vote on that. The public did not vote as to if we should be in the

customs union and other issues. You can have a referendum on all those

things, but the public were clear, we were to leave the union as it is

now and no going back on that. Of all the leading Tories you are the

closest to the Americans and the Republican party and you now have

Nigel Farage offering himself as a bridge. He says that people like you

have to them not to speak to him. That is pretty petty. We have had

long-standing understanding things about how we deal with an incoming

administration in this country. We have a full diplomatic team that was

close to both the Hillary Clinton and the Donald Trump team is

preparing for the relationship we would have. They are working on that

at the moment. The administration is not the only part of the American

government and we have strong links with Congress. We need to work on

all of those. We do not need anything that is an adjunct to what

the government has done successfully in the past. If Nigel Farage has

this good relationship, and he clearly does, and he is offering

himself as a go-between, is it small-minded to turn him down? We

have got a perfectly good ambassador at the moment and the last time I

looked there was no vacancy. And do you have a good relationship with

the administration? I have not met Donald Trump. I know the likely

Defence Secretary in the US and there are strong links and we will

want to pursue those and we want to ensure our trading and economic

relationship with the United States, our single biggest economic partner,

will be fruitful in the future. If in 2017 you take these details to

MPs and you lose important votes, should you go back to the country

for a Brexit referendum next year? The last thing we require is

political uncertainty. We will have elections in the Netherlands and

France and Germany and that is quite enough for 2017.

Andrew Neil with the Sunday Politics.

He'll be speaking to the former Conservative MP Stephen Dorrell

who's calling for a second EU referendum, the Australian High

Commissioner, Alexander Downer, on the opportunities of Brexit,

and he'll be asking John Sauven of Greepeace if the air we breath

is really "disgusting, dangerous and deadly".

We'll be back on the 8th of January at the usual time of nine o'clock.

For now, as promised, some jolly music.

This Thursday morning on Radio 3 the BBC Singers will be performing

the winning carol from Radio 3's Breakfast Christmas

In the meantime, they're here with something a little more

traditional to close the show in a festive mood.

# Ding dong! Merrily on high in heav'n the bells are ringing

# Ding dong! Verily the sky is riv'n with angels singing

# E'en so here below, below, let steeple bells be swungen

# And i-o, i-o, i-o, by priest and people sungen

# Pray you, dutifully prime your matin chime, ye ringers

# May you beautifully rhyme your evetime song, ye singers

You are charged with the murder of Mrs Emily French.