ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

SOPHY RIDGE: Well Theresa May gave an emotional resignation speech this week saying that being Prime Minister had been the honour of her life and we can speak to someone who perhaps knows Mrs May more than most, the former Deputy Prime Minister and university friends of the Prime Minister, Damian Green. Thank you very much for being with us this morning. As a friend of Theresa May, how was it watching that speech that she gave when she announced her resignation?

DAMIAN GREEN: It was very sad. As she said, it was a huge honour to be Prime Minister and she regarded that, I think everyone has commented on her sense of duty which was there literally to the end and we saw it was a fairly emotional end to that speech and any decent person would have thought that’s very sad.

SR: Did she speak to you before she made the announcement?

DAMIAN GREEN: No, I haven’t spoken to her in the last few days but I think to some extent it became inevitable that the deal as devised wasn’t going to go through Parliament so her Prime Ministership had reached the end of the road.

SR: How do you think she will be feeling now? Obviously she said it had been the honour of her life and she was talking about the things that she felt she’d achieved in office, it felt to me watching it that there was perhaps a tinge of regret that she hadn’t had enough opportunity to focus on some of her domestic agenda.

DAMIAN GREEN: I think that’s right and I share that feeling. We all remember the speech she made when she went into Downing Street, the attack on the burning injustices, it felt like a different type of Conservatism, one that was reaching out beyond the Conservative core vote, beyond the heartlands to the whole country and that is a very attractive vision and because Brexit came to dominate everything she wasn’t able to make anything like enough progress on any of those things that she really cared about.

SR: How do you think she will be remembered?

DAMIAN GREEN: I think it’s too early to say. I think to some extent it depends on the next leader because if we can get Brexit through and then move on to a new modern agenda that looks to the future, then it will be seen as a tough period that we had to go through so in an odd way the success of the next leader will I think help define her place in history.

SR: Well let’s talk about that, who do you think should be the next leader?

DAMIAN GREEN: I think the next leader should be Matt Hancock, I do think we need a fresh start, I think we need somebody obviously getting Brexit through is the immediate task but we’ve got to start thinking and caring about more than that, looking through to the 2020s and I think it’s important for the Conservative party now which has done, is doing so badly among young voters in particular, to have somebody who can speak the language of those who grew up in the digital world, who evidently is competent and on top of issues of technology and how it applies to people’s real lives. As Health Secretary he’s shown that having new advanced technology in the NHS actually improves healthcare so you can apply this knowledge to a wide range of the key public services that we as Conservatives have got to show we’ve got answers to.

SR: Listening to what you’re saying, and also to him yesterday, it is clear that he is trying to position himself as a leader for the future but realistically is he ever going to win with the membership? If we can have a quick look at a poll of members, this is back in January but if anything I would say that the no deal support has grown, 57% say their Brexit preference is no deal. I mean are they really going to back someone who supported Remain in the referendum?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well I think one of the, if you like, the most dangerous pieces of analysis for the future of the Conservative party, is simply to keep people in aspic saying what you did in June 2016 is all that matters.

SR: I can see that that’s what you would like the situation to be but in reality, we are fighting on Brexit now aren’t we?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well we have got to get Brexit through, that’s absolutely clear but the problem with no deal, as we all know, is that you won’t get that through the House of Commons so if you have people who are promising a no deal Brexit, the extreme likelihood is that various people will find ways of stopping it going through the House of Commons and therefore you’ll have to go for a general election and I think the country certainly doesn’t want that, the Conservative party …

SR: Would you lose?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well, put it this way there has to be the possibility that we would see Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street and clearly no Conservative wants that so we have to approach the Brexit conundrum in an intelligent way.

SR: You have written today in a piece in the Sunday Times, “The future survival of the Conservative party is at risk, a polarising leader would be the final straw.” The future survival is it risk, is that what you think?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well I feel like that very, very strongly. You have seen the figures now that the average age at which people are more likely to vote Conservative than not has gone up to 51. We are talking about young voters, we are talking about anyone under the age of 50 here so it is absolutely key and it’s one of the reasons I’m supporting Matt Hancock. I think the combination of the policy ideas he has and his approach and style to politics can actually expand the Conservative vote in a way that is of supreme importance to the future of the party.

SR: And the end part of that quote, “… a polarising leader would be the final straw.” Who could you be talking about?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well I’d be talking about any of the candidates who go down that route. We are at the start …

SR: But only one who is talking about leaving with no deal at the end of October, is that what you define as polarising?

DAMIAN GREEN: I define as polarising somebody who says that some Conservatives are less good than other Conservatives when one of the other things I say in the article in the Sunday Times is that the Conservative party is at its best, and the Conservative party I joined many years ago was a party where Dan Hannan and Dominic Greave can feel equally at home because actually we agree on lots of things. We don’t agree between ourselves on Brexit and that’s why we have got to get out of the European Union, we’ve got to respect the referendum, it will be much better to do that smoothly with a deal and then get on to the many other things that people really care about in their daily lives.

SR: Okay, I’ll stop skirting around it, you are talking about Boris Johnson, right?

DAMIAN GREEN: No, I’m not talking about Boris Johnson, I think it’s very, very important that particularly at the stage where we have got many candidates in this election that we set out the principles.

SR: Would he be a good Prime Minister?

DAMIAN GREEN: I think many of the people who are running would be good Prime Minister’s, there’s actually a wide field but also a good field and I think the best of that field is Matt Hancock and one of the rules I’m going to operate through this campaign is I’m not going to diss colleagues. Ronald Reagan had this famous rule that you should never be rude about another Republican in public and I’m going to apply that to the Conservatives as well.

SR: Okay, we’ll see if you’re the only member of the Conservative parliamentary party to follow that rule. Thank you very much for being with us this morning.