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DERMOT MURNAGHAN:  Now then, yesterday the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn raised some eyebrows by attending an Anti-Trident rally while his party held a day of campaigning about Europe.  It’s added fuel to the suggestion among some that the Labour leadership’s heart isn’t really in the campaign.  Well I’m joined now by the Labour MP Chuka Umunna, he was the Shadow Business Secretary you’ll remember until September and is now a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee.  He’s supporting the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign, to make that clear and a very good morning to you.  Do you get that sense, and this is an analysis from some of your colleagues in the party, that Mr Corbyn’s heart isn’t really in it and there he was highlighting I suppose Labour’s divisions over Trident when he should have been highlighting the Conservative’s divisions over Europe.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Well I think on Trident there’s a range of views in the Labour party …

DM: Well that’s one way of putting it!

CHUKA UMUNNA: I have to declare an interest, I’m a member of both the GMB and Unite unions and they have been very clear that we must maintain the deterrent.  For me it’s a national security issue, I think it goes beyond party politics and I will do what I think is the best thing in my own constituents interests and I think that’s how people treat this.  In the end what unites us is I think everybody, whether you want to maintain the deterrent of not, wants a nuclear future, a nuclear-free future and the question is how do we get there, that’s where the disagreement is.  On Europe, I actually spoke to Jeremy this week, I had a conversation with him about Europe this week and his heart absolutely is in keeping us in the European Union, he is an internationalist.   He wants to see greater prominence given to the dimension of Europe, the social Europe dimension which helps protect people’s rights at work and ensures we build a fairer, more equal and more sustainable world.  He is very clear that you can only do that say for example when we look at the unfolding environmental catastrophe which knows no borders, we can only do that by working on a supranational level.  But look, there have been other people talking about Europe today …

DM: Yes, we’ll get on to that in a moment but the idea that Jeremy Corbyn’s heart isn’t really in it, it was just that contrast between something which he cares passionately about and you described there Labour’s internal divisions on Trident and the nuclear issue but if he really does feel passionately, as you do, about Britain remaining in the European Union, people say he should roll his sleeves up and be a bit like the Prime Minister.  The Prime Minister has been tweeting that he’s talked to 4000 people in the last week about his view that we should remain and Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t done that.

CHUKA UMUNNA: I’m not sure I’d want Jeremy Corbyn to be like our Prime Minister.

DM: More active.

CHUKA UMUNNA: But he will be more active and he’s already doing that by trying to get the Labour party taking more of a leadership role with our other sister parties in Europe for promoting that social Europe dimension of what the European Union brings and the idea that somehow the European Union is some Merkel inspired project is nonsense.  We’ve got centre left and socialist governments in Italy, Matteo Renzi is doing a great job in Italy; we’ve got the Swedish Social Democrats and of course we’ve got Francois Hollande in Paris, in France.  The idea that the EU is some neo-liberal construct is a load of garbage.

DM: You wanted to get on to what we’ve been hearing from Ian Duncan Smith this morning, obviously a prominent campaigner to leave the European Union.  I mean it’s a broad position but what it comes down to is sovereignty and control and I’ve just been talking in my newspaper review about things like weak kettles and toasters and that, which illustrates a broader issue, the meddling by the European Union in affairs that it really shouldn’t have anything to do with, should they?

CHUKA UMUNNA: This notion that somehow the European Union controls our affairs is a complete load of nonsense and you need only look at some of the things that Ian Duncan Smith has been doing himself that we’ve been campaigning against for the last five to six years – imposing the bedroom tax on some of the most vulnerable people in society, cutting people’s benefits, changes to ESA, working with the Chancellor on …

DM: And your point is that he was allowed to do that without the European Union?

CHUKA UMUNNA: My point is that in the last parliament there were 121 Acts of Parliament and just four of them were to implement exclusively EU legislation.  A domestic government here, as many people in my constituency will tell you because they’ve suffered because of it, can do a whole load of things and controls our affairs.  Now where we do pool sovereignty in the European Union, where we can achieve more by working together than on our own, in nine out of ten times we’re on the majority side of the argument.  We can usually marshal a majority on the European Council behind the UK’s position so I do not understand why the likes of Ian Duncan Smith and others continually talk down our country, talk down what we’ve been able to achieve and talk down what we can achieve in the future by using the what the EU brings us to amplify our …

DM: But we saw in Labour’s manifesto in last year’s election, there are things that irk even keen Europeans like yourself about the European Union and in particular the issue of immigration.  Now the Prime Minister has come back from Brussels with something which was pretty similar to what was in your manifesto about restricting benefits for EU migrants but Jeremy Corbyn said that he was tinkering and that that was irrelevant.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Well I don't think that the renegotiation was irrelevant.  Granted I would have been arguing for us to stay in notwithstanding the renegotiation because I do think the European Union needs reform, I don't think we just want the status quo but I think you’re best placed to get reform if you are round the table actually influencing things and not being like say Norway is where they are part of the EU free trade area but have no say over the rules.  But on the immigration, what people want is a fair immigration system, not a free for all and I do believe for example having people contribute in for four years before they can take out benefits from our social security system is something that will weigh with people and be attractive.  But this idea that we have a free for all, the idea that when you arrive at Gatwick or Heathrow you just walk through and it doesn’t matter who you are, look whether you’re from the EU or not from the EU we have proper border checks because we’re not part of the Schengen passport free area so this notion that somehow anyone can just walk in and out, I’d invite your viewers just to think when you arrive at an airport do you just walk through and go and get your baggage without going through any checks?  Of course you don’t and there is another point here which is those who argue for us to leave often talk about the Norwegian model, they want us to carry on trading like Norway and I met with the Deputy Leader of the Norwegian Labour Party this week and she was absolutely clear that from her country’s point of view, if they were in the European Union not only being in the EU free trade area they might have some influence over the rules.  They have no influence over the rules so what is the model that people like IDS, Nigel Farage and all these other people want us to do?  

DM: I know how passionately you are putting these points from the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign where you are rubbing shoulders with prominent Conservative supporters, members of the Conservative party and there are, and you must accept this, members of your very own party who would feel at the very least uncomfortable to be doing that.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Well to be frank on both sides of the argument people are doing that.  My Lambeth colleague, Labour colleague, Kate Hoey, is one of the leading voices in the Vote Leave campaign but what I would say is, look, I think that the British public are fed up with the kind of yah-boo Punch and Judy type of politics where we just oppose each other for the sake of opposing each other. What we would be the point of me pretending I don’t agree with the Prime Minister that we should say in the European Union?  For once I think it’s nice to see us working across party lines in the national interest, I think it shows that we will actually put principle and …

DM: Could it apply to other areas after this referendum is done and dusted?

CHUKA UMUNNA: As it happens, after the referendum is done and dusted I am absolutely clear, I am clear now, I’d rather not have a Conservative Prime Minister in Downing Street, I’d much rather have a Labour occupant of that post but I think ultimately you have more authority when you disagree, when you aren’t shy of being clear when you do agree and when there is some consensus.  One of the things, like I am going to be leading a debate in the House of Commons on Thursday on the youth violence which is unfolding in inner city areas in particular in the UK – that isn’t a party political issue. My constituents would take a very dim view if I started trying to score party political points on that issue that last year saw the deaths of 17 teenagers in London.

DM: It has been fascinating talking to you as ever, Mr Umunna, thank you very much indeed.  Chuka Umunna there.