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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now we’re hearing that as many as 50 Labour MPs could vote against Jeremy Corbyn against military action in Syria.  It would be the first major challenge to the new leaders authority.  Well David Blunkett is Labour’s former Home Secretary, soon to be Lord Blunkett when he is formally introduced as a peer.  This week he joins me now from Derbyshire and I can for the last time then, a very good morning to you Mr Blunkett.  Tell me this though – David Blunkett will do won’t it – tell me do you think, a very serious issue this is, do you think that Mr Corbyn could and should be embarrassed by these 50 or so Labour MPs?

DAVID BLUNKETT: Well I think we should take Jeremy at his word and his word is that this is new politics, he is much more relaxed than leaders have been in the past.  He will know of course that there will be dissenters on the Conservative benches so there is going to be a difference of opinion in both major parties when the vote comes, should it come on Syria and what the terms are of what David Cameron intends to promote.  You see last time when we voted there was no game plan, there was no answer to the question ‘And what next?’, in other words where are we going from here and I think that’s what David Cameron will have to answer and it is down to the government of course.  The Opposition have a clear responsibility to act responsibly but the government have an absolute imperative  to lead.    

DM: I mean you are, as we would expect, incredibly well-informed on the issues here, do you think there are grounds that could be put forward by the government that Labour should support for British action in Syria against IS?   

DAVID BLUNKETT: Yes, I think now there is an overwhelming case that if we are assisting in Iraq to deal with ISIS and their main base is in Syria and the Russians are taking action in relation to the Assad regime, then why we shouldn’t join the Americans is a mystery to me because we should be saying we are dealing with a common enemy, we’re dealing with them on both sides of the border.  Okay, the Iraqi government invited us to help from Iraqi soil but this is not a war with a clear border, this is a war which is about saving people from the genocide and the horrors of what ISIL is actually promoting so we’ve got, I would have thought, a clear understanding of what we need to do.  The terms of engagement are a different matter, I think those need to be debated and spelled out much more clearly in what circumstances we use the RAF and how we deal with the back-up services that go with it.  

DM: From Labour’s point of view, you’ll understand it and you’ll know better than many that this generation of the Labour party are scarred by the actions of your generation in particular to join George W Bush in actions against Iraq in 2003.  Labour never wants to go through that again.  

DAVID BLUNKETT: Well I think we were scarred originally by not taking action in Rwanda in 1994, we then eventually took action in south-east Europe in terms of what was happening in Bosnia and against Serbia.  We claim and we keep pronouncing we are scarred by what happened in 2003, obviously with what we know 12 years on and the circumstances now we might have voted differently.  I would vote exactly the same again given the knowledge I had at that time with the arguments at that time, with the belligerence of Saddam Hussein at that time however let’s be clear, many of the new MPs who thankfully did get elected on May 7th and in my own experience of campaigning around the country in the election, people were not raising Iraq.  This is an internal Labour party argument and whilst a lot of the new members who joined and those who joined to vote were interested and if you like were committed against taking any kind of military action outside this country in the future, many other people across the country are not and I think we just need to distinguish and I think it’s a challenge for not just Labour MPs but for Labour party members now – are we actually saying that we would never take action outside this country again unless our country itself was directly under fire?  Because if we are saying that, that’s adjusted policy in a way that we haven’t seen since the arguments before the First World War.  

DM: Can I just ask you, Mr Blunkett, about your overall view of how Mr Corbyn’s doing?  It occurs to me that isn’t there a part of you as a man who used to run the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire – I know you didn’t term it that but isn’t there a part of you that quite likes the cut of his jib, that likes some of the things he’s saying and the way he’s doing it?

DAVID BLUNKETT: Well if we hadn’t gone through what we went through 35 years ago, there’s no doubt that I would have had a great deal more sympathy.  In other words if we hadn’t already run this course and been down it and seen the consequences then quite legitimately people could say, well let’s have a go.  Actually I think times have moved on, we’re dealing with modernity, we’re dealing with the challenge of ever rapid more globalisation, we’re dealing with issues around where power lies across the world and how we use states-craft to actually deal with that to mobilise the forces of consumerism and boycotting the trans-national companies that don’t pay taxes here, that’s the kind of agenda I think that Jeremy should be pursuing rather than the old-fashioned let’s nationalise, let’s centralise, let’s pretend we can do things from the benches in Westminster whether in the Commons or in the Lords and frankly that would be a new sort of politics.  I hope Jeremy, because we still have got to find out four weeks on, precisely what the cut of his jib actually is to be honest with you, I hope that Jeremy will develop that new politics but I also hope it will be the open politics that he’s preached because we don’t want organisations setting up like Momentum which has been established, being a party within a party and I think that’s the challenge for Jeremy Corbyn.  If you mean it Jeremy, then practice it.  

DM: Do you think it’s an issue if he goes to see the Queen or not, to join the Privy Council or is it a bit of a storm in a teacup?   

DAVID BLUNKETT: No, I think people have made this point before, it’s sometimes the way you do things and not necessarily what you do.  I don't think there was a real problem at all in him not going to take the oath at this moment in time, it might have been phrased more carefully.  I remember in 2005 when we won the election, I was back in Cabinet and I had to go to take the oath, to take the new Secretary of State’s job at Work and Pensions and I couldn’t go the first weekend so I went a couple of weeks later, I don't think anybody made a fuss about that then and I honest think that we need to get on with debating the big issues around which policies the Labour party is adhering to, what our offer will be in four years’ time, what kind of Britain we want to see and above all are we in the real world of modernity or are we still hankering after a nostalgia of the past which sadly for some of us has long gone.  

DM: Great talking to you as ever, Mr Blunkett, thank you very much indeed.  David Blunkett there.