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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Let’s continue discussing that issue of the debate between Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and Nigel Farage. They challenged each other, well I think Clegg challenged Farage to a head to head debate on whether Britain should leave the EU. Mr Clegg is of course unashamedly pro-European Union and has described himself as the leaders of the Party of In but what about the pro-EU Conservatives? Yes, they’re still around but are they a dying breed and are they happy for Nick Clegg to be their standard bearer? Well I’m joined now by one of the most high profile Europhiles in the Conservative party, he is of course the former Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Heseltine. Very good to talk to you, Lord Heseltine and can I put that question straight to you, are you happy for Nick Clegg to be flying the flag for Europe in this debate?

LORD HESELTINE: Well I wouldn’t do it if I was him. I think that it’s a misjudgement frankly to equate the leadership of a party which is part of government with a protest group, particularly a protest group which is frankly more about immigration than it is about Europe. There are things that are worth doing about UKIP, the first of all is to tell people what UKIP is really about and the way to do that of course is to stop talking about the United Kingdom Independence Party and start talking about the United Kingdom Isolationist Party. That’s exactly what we did with CND in about 1983 I think it was, we stopped talking about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and started talking about one-sided disarmament and everybody realised then what it meant. The idea that this country can be isolated from Europe just spits in the wind of history. We have never been isolated from Europe, our politics have always been absolutely interwoven with Europe and God knows, if you look at the last hundred years or so, just look what that means and it’s still the same today. We are the financial capital of Europe, we are the very important political influence in Europe, we have an enormous interdependence with Europe economically, we are one of the biggest recipients of foreign inward investment. The idea that you can sort of cut us off, there are lots of things that should be done about improving Europe but giving up and leaving Germany as the dominant European partner, frankly spits in the wind of English foreign policy over centuries.

DM: In that very powerful argument you deploy, Lord Heseltine, would you like to see more current Members of Parliament, Conservative Members of Parliament, making that, standing up and being counted or do you feel they are a little cowed at the moment?

LORD HESELTINE: Well politics goes in winds you know and there is undoubtedly a strong Eurosceptic element in the Conservative party but I think also there is such a division in all parties frankly and there is a judgement to be made. To what extent do you exacerbate divisions with your own party, the only beneficiaries of which are the other parties? So I think at the moment there is almost a sort of lull in the debate. It may get a bit of a flurry over the Euro elections but those elections are frankly just a sort of protest. If you look at the polls, Europe is way down in public interest. Immigration is high but Europe, as a subject, is relatively, I think about ninth but personally I would be very happy to see a debate but the debate is about how we can improve Europe, not leave Europe behind and let it take over frankly the dominance of our part of the world. DM: But do you not feel that you are being rather dismissive of UKIP as a mere party of protest? After the European elections do you think you might change your tune, particularly if they push the Conservatives into third place?

LORD HESELTINE: No, it won’t make any difference to my judgement. I go back to CND, I mean CND was seen as an all-conquering protest group, they had one of the biggest demonstrations in London of all time, I think it still is the biggest of all time and that was in early 1983. A few months later in the General Election of ’83, the existence of CND and the damning relationship of that with the Labour party, enabled us to have a massive victory so it’s very important to understand what the underlying politics are and once people realised that unilateral disarmament, a very nice benign sort of cosy thing, was actually one sided disarmament, then the whole thing fell apart and it’s the same I believe and when the great argument comes about Europe and suddenly people realise that UKIP is saying we’re going to opt out, we’re going to pack it in, we’re going to leave the Europe that now exists, 27 countries dominated increasingly by Germany, and we’re going to sit on our bottoms on an island offshore and think the world is going to say, whoopee, look at good old Britain, they are independent and free – the fact is we would just be an offshore island. The Americans would immediately start switching their priorities towards Europe, inward investment would start changing its emphasis towards Europe, the City of London would come under great pressure because the Europeans would start fixing the rules. People have got no sense of history, we tried all this stuff, we tried to keep out of Europe in the 50s when they started on the journey and then we tried to compete with them, there was the European Free Trade Area and that all fell apart as members of ‘our club’ joined Europe. If you look at the euro crisis, the whole reporting in this country was all about the imminent disaster, it’s going to fail, it’s going to be an economic wreck – actually it isn’t a wreck, it is beginning to work. The fact is that the democracies of Europe, those members of the eurozone, when they vote they vote to keep the disciplines and the truth is we need those disciplines. It may be a bit of a muddle and a mess and there are certain harsh economic consequences but the idea that the French and Germans are sort of silly amateurs playing at politics and we’re the great clever ones who know how it all works, frankly it doesn’t make any sense and no one on the continent of Europe believes that stuff even if there are some newspapers that can’t give up.

DM: Lord Heseltine, thank you very much indeed for your time, very good to talk to you there, the former Deputy Prime Minister.