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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So this week Conservative members of the government could vote against their own Queen’s speech. Around 100 Tory MPs are preparing to rebel over Europe as the party heads towards familiar in-fighting territory. Joining me now from Somerset is a man whose views on Europe are no secret, the former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, very good to talk to you. So if it comes to a vote, which way will you go?

LIAM FOX: I’ll vote for the amendment. I don't think it’s such a big deal as people are saying, what it tells us is that there is a difference of emphasis inside the coalition and remember the Prime Minister is Prime Minister of a coalition government and not a Conservative one and we know that the Conservatives are much keener on having the paving legislation for a European referendum than our Liberal Democrat partners are, so there’s not a great surprise in that and it is a little bit of a shame that the Westminster bubble story about a vote that doesn’t really matter that much is a little bit overshadowing the wider, more important debate about our actual relationship with Europe itself and also letting Labour off the hook because as was quite clear from your interview this morning, the Labour party have no intentions of giving the British people a say on this most fundamental issue.

DM: What would you do if you were still a minister? Would you obey Number Ten and abstain?

LF: Well if that’s the instruction then I think you are bound by collective responsibility and that’s not a yoke I’m labouring under at the moment but I do think it is very important that we make it very clear to the public that the Conservative party will give a referendum on European Union membership and it looks now as if we are going to a general election with only the Conservative party offering that choice of the mainstream parties, that I think is a very important defining moment in our politics.

DM: What do you think of the Education Secretary Michael Gove saying this morning that if there were an in/out referendum now he’d be on the out side, would you vote for out as well?

LF: Well I made clear more than a year ago that if the choice was between ever closer union, the path that we’re on at the moment and leaving, then I would reluctantly choose to leave, so I’d be with Michael Gove in that but the whole point of the Prime Minister’s renegotiation is that that will not be the choice. I would like to see us renegotiate a position back to what the British people voted for which was a Common Market. I think most people want to have an economic and trading relationship with our European partners, what they don’t want is to be dragged towards ever closer union, they don’t want interference in our courts, interference in our labour laws, interference in our social policy and I think that the Prime Minister’s policy to renegotiate first and then offer a referendum is the best one for the country and I think that most people would regard the slogan for the Conservative party of ‘Back to a Common Market’ as an election winning one.

DM: I just want to focus it back on this vote, if it takes place, you say it’s a Westminster bubble story, there is that element but isn’t the wider and more important implications here for the Prime Minister’s authority, the way that Number Ten have handled this, initially saying that they were relaxed and therefore raising the possibility that Cabinet Ministers, even the Prime Minister himself, could vote for the amendment but are now saying that Ministers have to at the very least abstain.

LF: Well whipping is a decision for the government and it is a matter of fine judgement. I think it is very clear what the basic issue is here, that is that most Conservatives, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that included the Prime Minister, would lie to have seen some sort of paving legislation for a referendum to be held after the next election, that would not have been a split inside the Conservative party. It would however have probably have provided a split inside the coalition government and the Prime Minister is the Prime Minister of the coalition. I think that what we’re now seeing is that it is the Conservative party that represents the desire of the British people to have a say and the other two main parties are not going to allow that. For me that’s a very happy dividing line to have as we move towards a general election.

DM: But if you and a hundred or more of your Conservative colleagues vote against the Queen’s speech, I mean it almost looks like a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister and his policies.

LF: No, it’s not and it’s very clear what this issue is about, it’s the fact that many people would like to have seen something in this parliament to enable us to provide the legislation that we need before a referendum is held. Remember, one of the reasons that we can’t have an early referendum in this country is that we need that paving legislation to give the legal authority for a referendum and neither the Labour party nor the Liberal Democrats would vote for that in the House of Commons so this is, if you like, is an element of frustration about the fact that we don’t have a majority Conservative government and therefore we can’t give the British people the voice that they want as early as we would like and that the Prime Minister, with his renegotiation, is setting out a properly sensible timetabled approach for us to try to recalibrate that relationship with Europe.

DM: It all highlights the wider question, doesn’t it, for the Conservatives in how you respond to the UK Independence Party. Do you respond by ignoring them, clearly you are not going to respond by moving your policies on to their territory or do you actually do a deal with them?

LF: No, you don’t do a deal with other parties. Margaret Thatcher used to say ‘I was born a Conservative, I’ll die a Conservative and I’ll fight my battles inside the Conservative party’ and I think that’s what needs to happen so we don’t need to be rude …

DM: But you have done a deal with the Liberal Democrats.

LF: That was a coalition that was done as a result of electoral arithmetic not out of political convenience and I think what we need to look at here is the fact that we shouldn’t be rude to our political opponents, we should conduct our politics with politeness but we need, as the Conservative party, to recognise that UKIP were picking up some votes from disaffected Conservatives. The downside of that is they are most likely to deliver a Labour government that won’t give them any choice at all but we need to make UKIP irrelevant by dealing with some of the issues that the public clearly don’t think have been properly addressed so far such as immigration, such as the issue on Europe and I have every confidence that the Conservative party can do that and I think what we are seeing this week is that the Conservative party is the party that is representing the instincts and the wishes of the British people when the other two main parties are casting them aside.

DM: Dr Fox, great to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed.