ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well a week ago David Cameron was on a high after summer of seemingly good polling for the government and some pretty bad headlines for Labour and its leader, but of course you don’t need me to tell you that a week is a very long time in politics and Thursday night’s vote on Syria left MPs on all sides stunned. So where does that leave Syria and what does it say about British politics? Let’s say a very good morning to the Shadow Defence Secretary, Jim Murphy joins me now from Glasgow. First of all Mr Murphy, President Obama’s decision to consult Congress, do you think indirectly this is Mr Miliband having an effect on what goes on across the Atlantic because it is unlikely he would be doing this if the vote hadn’t gone that way here on Thursday.

JIM MURPHY: I think it showed what Mr Miliband was suggesting, what Ed Miliband tried to make happen, which was that Parliament should be consulted about votes on matters of military deployment is the right way to do things, as there was let’s remember on the Iraq War vote in 2003 when of course Parliament had a vote on that as well. But I’m left with the sense that if only Mr Cameron had taken a similar approach to President Obama then perhaps the events of the past few days may not have occurred and Mr Cameron may not be in the difficulty he is this morning. Your viewers will know this, Parliament returns as in its normal timetable after the break tomorrow but the Prime Minister decided to recall Parliament on Thursday and he created the impression that military intervention was imminent, possibly even this weekend, the impression was allowed to go and in the absence of the compelling evidence and while the UN Weapons Inspectors were still in Syria, Members of Parliament were just unwilling to give their assent to that deployment without that evidence having been provided first so without getting into too much of the partisan politics of it, it now seems a couple of days later that while we thought Mr Cameron had mishandled it, he’s also misjudged it now we seem to realise after what Barack Obama has done.

DM: Seeing that you touched on it there, Mr Murphy, I just wanted to ask you about Labour’s position on this because yes, Mr Obama is consulting Congress but he is four square behind the fact that chemical weapons were used and that of course they were used by the Assad regime. Mr Cameron thinks the same thing but Labour still have a scintilla of doubt about it.

JM: No, our motion was pretty clear in the House of Commons on Thursday. We wanted the evidence to be produced which meant a UN process, which meant the inspectors to continue carrying out their work and for me it wasn’t an issue that I didn’t believe that Assad had the capability, the willingness and the sense of moral horror that he could carry out these attacks but a sense that you want to build as much of an international coalition as possible and that was why the inspectors would want to allow them to continue and conclude their work. It wasn’t that I was in any doubt that the Assad regime was responsible, I don’t believe that rebels gassed their own people, but it was to build that international coalition that Labour wanted to help ensure that the evidence preceded the decision rather than the decision preceding the evidence.

DM: So what is the Labour position now, that amendment you mentioned which was of course defeated, that if those conditions that Labour laid down are met potentially you could support military action.

JM: Well first of all Syria is complicated, the region is complicated and there is no military exclusive solution. It is about diplomacy, it is about development policy and it is for some countries about the deployment of military force. The fact is that you can’t just focus on aid policy which is why renewed diplomacy is really very important because if it is just about humanitarian aid and Assad is able to continue with what he’s been doing in recent weeks, all that will happen is that children will continue to be gassed but they’ll be gassed on a full stomach and that’s not the type of politics we want and that’s not a solution in Syria. So a renewed effort by the Foreign Office on diplomacy, yes continued humanitarian aid but our view remains that Parliament came to its opinion, came to a judgement, you cannot simply rerun Thursday’s vote but of course if Al Qaeda was to get their hands on those chemical weapons, if there were to be really significant developments in Syria and the conditions that we set in our motion on Thursday about it being legal, about the evidence being available, compelling evidence about a UN process, then of course the Prime Minister has the right to bring that back to Parliament but it would appear at the moment that he has ruled that out and he did rule it out on Thursday evening.

DM: And what about relations between the parties and the leaders and indeed yourself and senior government figures? It’s been reported that you had some pretty explicit exchanges with Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, words I can’t use on a Sunday morning programme. Is that a poison that will linger?

JM: I think there was passion on Thursday evening and yes, you’re right, on a Sunday morning with children watching you probably can’t repeat what Michael Gove and I said to one another. All I would say is that I used industrial language that my priest wouldn’t be proud of but the fact is on these issues of military deployment, you have to try and build consensus where possible and that means putting party political points aside, as I have tried to do in our interview this morning, and try and do what we think is right for our country. That’s what Ed Miliband said in his speech in the House of Commons on Thursday and he was absolutely right to say it, not just because we are talking about issues of life and death in Syria but because we’re also talking about our armed forces, those remarkable men and women in the armed forces, and putting them once again in harm’s way. Now that has to be done where possible in a bipartisan way if it in any way can be done and that’s the importance of this. So we’ll continue to have these conversations and I do think that is important.

DM: Okay Mr Murphy, thanks for your time, Jim Murphy there, Shadow Defence Secretary.