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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, what’s bothering David Cameron at the moment?  UKIP must be near the top of the list and they’re set to cause him a real headache in the next month or so for the European elections and of course the Newark by-election, so it is time he at least considered doing some kind of deal with Nigel Farage’s party?  I’m joined now from Somerset by the Conservative MP, Jacob Rees Mogg, he believes there could be a deal to be done with UKP. Here in the studio we’ve got David Campbell Bannerman, a Conservative MEP who defected from UKIP and by the UKIP councillor, Suzanne Evans, who used to be with the Conservatives, a very good morning to you all.  I want to ask you first of all Jacob Rees Mogg, what kind of deal do you envisage being done?

JACOB REES MOGG: Well I think the details need to be worked out but I would be happy to have a deal with UKIP stood in some seats on the condition that they didn’t oppose the Conservatives in a lot of other seats. 

DM: Suzanne Evans, what’s the UKIP position on this? 

SUZANNE EVANS: The UKIP position is very firmly, no.  Why would we want to be doing a deal with the Conservatives?  We don’t share policies with the Conservatives, we want to cut taxes, the Chancellor has put them up.  We are in favour of grammar schools to help kids who haven’t got the privileged education that Jacob Rees Mogg has had to get on in life.  We want to abolish the bedroom tax and …

DM: Or that Nigel Farage has had. 

SUZANNE EVANS: Nigel Farage has also done his work extremely well but the fact is he wants to help other people and other kids get on with the meritocracy as well.  We are poles apart from the Conservatives today, I know that people like Jacob Rees Mogg seem to think that we are a sort of Tory vote in exile but that simply isn’t true.  The Conservative peer, Lord Ashcroft’s own polling shows that only 22% of people who voted Tory before in the Eastleigh by-election voted UKIP.  We’ve got 19% of the vote from the Lib Dems.   It is just based on this myth that there is this Tory vote that can be clawed back and people need a real choice and that means a choice between all …

DM: But do you believe that, David Campbell Bannerman, that really there is a lot of Tory support in the UKIP vote but that it will come back, it’s only being lent to them? 

DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: Well I’ve been campaigning for a month in the European elections and yes, I do feel that, I think the vote will come back to us in the general election.  It’s a protest vote, UKIP, it’s a protest party.  I was party chairman, I was deputy leader and it is very Conservative by the way.  Okay, it is leaning, trying to get more Labour votes, not very successfully …

SUZANNE EVANS: It is doing extremely well. 

DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: No, it is a protest party and really what the battle is on the streets now is between a referendum from the Conservative party or a protest vote from UKIP.

SUZANNE EVANS: David, can you show me a political party that hasn’t been invented initially as a protest party which has then gradually grown and developed into its own particular phenomenon.  Let’s face it, UKIP is now the third party in Britain, it might have been a protest party a few years ago but not anymore.

DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: It is a very successful pressure party and….

DM: Let’s go back to Jacob Rees Mogg, could deals be done on a local basis then?  Pro referendum Conservatives – well they all must be pro-referendum, the Prime Minister is, but those that would say that they would vote no in a referendum, do you think that they could encourage local UKP associations not to stand against them?

JACOB REES MOGG: I think local deals are very difficult, I think it would be better as a national deal and it is tremendously important because actually UKIP and the Conservatives both want one big thing in common and that is a totally new relationship with the European Union and the current feeling in parliament, from the Sun on Sunday, UKIP is getting about 30% for the European elections which falls to about 15% for the general election.  If UKIP gets 15% at the general election the Conservatives will not be able to win and that means that we will have more Europe from the socialists and the Liberal Democrats so both our interests are allied in doing some sort of a deal.  We get that one big thing that both of us want. 

DM: But UKIP have made up their mind, that’s the very basis of the party, they want to leave the European Union, the Conservatives are meant to be, the position is meant to be, well we’ll renegotiate and then we’ll see.

JACOB REES MOGG: That’s a minor difference because it allows the British people the choice as to whether to leave or not and it is perfectly possible that we won’t get a great deal from a renegotiation at which point the Conservative position would be the same as UKIP, that we would want to leave. The difference is a cigarette paper thin and yet compared to the other parties we would get policies that both of us deeply oppose and I think to focus on the minutiae of differences between UKIP and the Conservative party and lose that big picture is a grave error because it will give the country socialist government.

DM: Okay, a lot of that is tactical, David Campbell Bannerman do you see first of all there just being a cigarette paper between the two parties?  From what you were saying there is a huge gulf. 

DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: No, I don’t, I think Labour are becoming more extreme.  You’ve heard today about rail re-nationalisation and rent control, they’re going that way.  I still believe as a Conservative in leaving the European Union but the only way we are going to do that is not with UKIP …

DM: So you’ve made up your mind, you agree with Jacob Rees Mogg about renegotiation?

DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: Let’s see what we get back from renegotiation, it might be fantastic but to be truthful I lean towards leaving the EU but the only way we are going to do that is through the Prime Minister’s referendum and he will deliver on that, so that’s what we should be backing.

DM: So Suzanne Evans, why don’t you – I mean there are an awful lot of openly anti-EU Conservative MPs saying exactly what we’re hearing here, whatever is renegotiated it won’t be enough – why don’t you smoke those out, those who say it openly and those who think it anyway, and do a deal with them?  It would make sense, some of them are well-established and you would easily win the seat.

SUZANNE EVANS: Dermot, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said there is a lot of tactics going on here.  At the end of the day I don't think the Conservatives want to save Britain and that’s UKIPs aim.  The Conservatives want to save the Conservative party. 

DM: You can’t really accuse the Conservatives of not wanting to …

SUZANNE EVANS: The only reason they are talking about any kind of pact is because they see their vote disappearing, that’s the only reason. 

DM: Good point, Jacob Rees Mogg, that’s the point I put to you, this is just electoral tactics, the public will sniff it out.

JACOB REES MOGG: I don't think it is, I think we actually are very close and I think your guests in the studio show this, that one was UKIP and now Tory and the other was Tory and now UKIP.  There’s a lot of musical chairs between the Conservative party and UKIP at the moment of people who basically hold the same views about what they want for the destiny of their country and in a first past the post system, if we oppose each other we are just destructive, we are like Sampson in the temple, we pull it down upon ourselves, whereas if we unite as broadly small c conservative activists, then we can win an election and do what we all want to do.

DM:  Well it’s a winning point, Suzanne Evans, isn’t it?  You might get quite a few seats if the Conservatives agreed not to stand against a UKIP candidate. 

SUZANNE EVANS: I don't think that would happen.  What would happen, I mean how would this pact work in principle, I think that’s a very serious question. I think how it would work in principle is that the Conservatives would want to take all their marginal seats and say UKIP, go away, don’t stand here and I’m not sure that they’d be giving us any kind of plum seats back.  I don’t trust them, that’s why I left.

DM: David Campbell Bannerman, I’ve got to ask you, why did you leave UKIP?  You say you share many of the views and principles, you say they sit easily within the Conservative party now, why did you leave it?

DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: Well because I believe that UKIP doesn’t have a plan, I mean how are you going to leave the EU?  You don’t have any MPs, you may get a few, it’s possible at the next general election but it’s down to Conservatives …

DM: But let me say, you don’t need MPs necessarily to leave the European Union.  You need a referendum, you need to have enough influence [all taking at the same time] and the British public will tell you you can leave.

DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN: The European Communities Act, you have to get rid of the European Communities Act if you wish to leave the EU and that’s Ted Heath’s Act, 1972.  For that you need MPs.  Legally that is the way to do it but the point is, whether you want to stay in or leave, the referendum will sort it out.  The British people will get a choice and a vote on this, just as the Scots have got a vote on it now on staying within the UK but only the Conservative party can deliver that. If you put Labour and the Lib Dems into power then you are going to get a federalist pro-EU government … you may laugh, I don’t think it’s funny.

SUZANNE EVANS: I’m laughing because you and I both know, you and I both know that the Lib Dems are finished.  If there is going to be another coalition government in 2015 my [theory] is that it will probably be between the Conservatives and UKIP or Labour and UKIP but either way UKIP will be holding the balance of power and it will be UKIP therefore pushing forward that referendum and making …

DM: Okay, I just want to get Jacob Rees Mogg on this, it looks like it is not going to happen so your predictions for the general election are a Labour government by default.   

JACOB REES MOGG: I’d wait and see as to whether it will happen until after the European elections. I  think the idea of UKIP holding the balance of power is fantasy land, that they simply cannot get the number of seats in one go to do that and in terms of the offer, David Cameron in 2010 made a big and generous offer to the Lib Dems, it is up to the Conservatives to be generous and then to see if UKIP is willing to fight for what both sides want and that is a small c conservative government that res our relationship with Europe.  

DM: Okay, well all very interesting to see how it all pans out, thank you very much indeed there to Jacob Rees Mogg in Somerset, here in the studio David Campbell Bannerman and Suzanne Evans, good to see you all.