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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: You might imagine the Conservatives would be rubbing their hands with glee at the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader but if Mr Corbyn represents some sort of anti-politics sentiment is there a danger that David Cameron and the rest of them could underestimate him?  Well David Davis is a former Minister and former Chairman of the Conservative Party of course and joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Davis.  Does that encapsulate the dangers for the Conservative party?  

DAVID DAVIS: Oh it does entirely.  I think the odds of us winning the next election after yesterday are higher but I don't think it’s an open and shut case by any means, I think complacency would be absolutely the daftest thing to go in for now and you’ve just had Frank Field on talking about how Jeremy in other circumstances is able to work with other people.  

DM: You’ve worked with him haven’t you?

DAVID DAVIS: I have, I worked with him on the Shaka Aamer case, on a Guantanamo Bay case and he is very polite, very courteous, listens to arguments so we’ve got to be a bit careful.  We certainly don’t want to go in for ad hominem attacks, that would be a disaster but we should also recognise something else and it’s come up a bit in your programme already.  He is part of a world-wide syndrome going on here, people are saying we don’t actually like conventional politics, it hasn’t done us very much good, we’ve lost money, we’ve lost our jobs, we’re suffering from austerity.  That appeals to a lot of people many of whom probably didn’t even vote in the last election.  

DM: A lot of people did say that sort of thing about Nigel Farage and UKIP got a lot of votes didn’t they?  

DAVID DAVIS: They did but we were saved from Nigel Farage by the electoral system, he got millions of votes and no seats or one seat, so I think it’s not just here, it’s Podemas, it’s Tsipras, it’s all those things and so we’ve got to look at it very carefully.  Now I don’t think this is, and one or two of my colleagues have tweeted this morning, this is not a reason to go to the right, that is absolutely right.  We’ve got to worry and think about our policies to make sure we don’t give any avenues for Mr Corbyn and his people to go down.  You heard Dave Prentis earlier this morning talking about  the Trade Union Bill, up tomorrow.  I agree with most of the Trade Union Bill, I think it’s very sensible but there are bits of it which look OTT like requiring pickets to give their name to the police force.  What is this? This is not Franco’s Britain, this is Queen Elizabeth II’s Britain, you know.  So we’ve got to be very, very careful in how we manage policy, in how we take Corbyn’s Labour party on, we take it on on topic and issue, issue by issue, not ad hominem and we’ve got to be not complacent about the meaning of this.

DM: The Conservative party remembers what it did to Ed Miliband and revisited that experience of exactly five years ago when you frame the public perception of that leader and the public perception of Labour and the public perception of Ed Miliband were framed by and large – and perhaps you don’t agree with this – by the Conservative party, it was on their ground.  Is that what the Conservative party should do now about Jeremy Corbyn?  We’ve heard this from the Defence Secretary already, he’s a threat to national security, he’s a threat to the national economy.

DAVID DAVIS: The risk of that is, and the risk that happened with Farage actually, lots and lots of personal attacks on Farage completely bounced off and they were far more personal actually than some of the things we’ve heard about Jeremy Corbyn, and they just bounced off.  They bounced off because he is seen as an anti-Establishment non-conventional figure so you have to be a bit careful of that.  I think we go directly for the issues.  If he is going to be anti-NATO then we take him on in being anti-NATO.  If he is going to be pro-Hezbollah or whatever, then we take him on on that.  I don't think the public will pay much attention to us bleating or whining or complaining or crowing about his history.

DM: Is there a part of you, as the politician, that thinks my goodness me, I wish we had an energised base like that?  The Conservative party, the membership is dying out and there we’ve got lots of young people signing up, it happened with the SNP – I’m just talking about in our own country – it happened with the Green party as well, not with the Conservatives.  

DAVID DAVIS: Well that of course is the observes side of our risk, that if we’re going to get if you like a new idealism – and remember, you say we attacked Miliband, to a very large extent it was Nicola Sturgeon that took Ed Miliband out of calculation altogether and what was that?  That was an idealism.  It is not an idealism I agree with, I think it’s mad but it was an idealism that swept an entire country.  We’ve never seen a result like that and that’s a risk, that’s why we have to somehow combine the one nation approach to politics with some sense of an ideal that we stand for.  Actually Peter Mandelson has been writing about that in the papers this morning saying one of the side effects of Blairism, bear in mind and don’t forget the negative aspects of this, the Blairites, the more Blairite you were in this Labour leadership election the fewer votes you got, it was really very simple and very obvious.  Liz Kendall, a really good candidate, but wiped out completely.  So we’ve got to somehow tie together an idealistic appeal, freedom, economic opportunity, social mobility, all those sorts of things with a sense of practicality that we are actually the best and safest for the country.

DM: So the public and not the people who voted in this Labour election, the vast majority of the public don’t know an awful lot about Jeremy Corbyn.  They’re going to see him on Wednesday in Prime Minister’s Questions.  What would your advice be to your leader about how to treat him?  

DAVID DAVIS: Be courteous, be polite, be specific and go straight to the questions he raises because actually I think although Jeremy is a nice man and on some things, on the vast number of things, we’ve got a much better argument so rely on the argument.  Absolutely nothing ad hominem, people will not like a personal attack on Corbyn.  Again, and I repeat, a bit like Farage, they’ll bounce off and he comes across, even the people who hate him and there are some, even the people who hate him say he is a polite decent gentlemanly person.  Ironically another public schoolboy of course.  

DM: Well indeed.  But this wider discussion about the lack of an opposition, the Labour party has been going through electing its leader so it really hasn’t been on the pitch at the moment but George Osborne has been talking about this, for the good of democracy we need strong opposition to any government even if it is a party you’re part of.  

DAVID DAVIS: I agree with that, a government is typically as good as its opposition, if you’ve got a really good opposition you get a really good government, it raises the game.  Actually the dynamics of the House of Commons will favour strong opposition because we’ve got a majority of twelve, SNP and Labour on many things are going to be on the same page, issues like Syria, issues like drones coming up in the last week or so, civil liberties issues, they will be the same issues so we’ve got a fight on our hands.  

DM: Very good to get your take on it Mr Davis, thank you very much indeed, David Davis there.