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DERMOT MURNAGHAN:  Now a fresh legal challenge has been launched today by anti-Brexit campaigners seeking to ensure the UK remains in the European Economic Area and I’m joined from Central London by the former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, he is a supporter of the Open Britain Campaign, a very good morning to you Mr Grieve, thank you very much for joining us.  Well my goodness me, you can tell us all about it then, another legal challenge potentially, tell us how this one would pan out if it goes forward.

DOMINIC GRIEVE: Well I have to say I’m not very sure about this legal challenge at all, I don’t know the details, it’s certainly not one of which I understand what’s intended.  It’s possible that what they are trying to do is to argue the way leave the single market has to be separate from leaving the EU itself but I must say I have some doubts as to whether that would work.

DM: I put this question to Ken Clarke and it is about the number of legal spanners that can be thrown into the works, was that just the first of them when we’ve seen with Article 50 there are so many complexities in the years ahead.

DOMINIC GRIEVE: There are undoubtedly a very large number of legal complexities but at the same time I think the issue of triggering Article 50 is fairly simple.  Even if the government loses the Article 50 challenge in the Supreme Court, I still believe that it will be able to get the necessary parliamentary majority in order to trigger Article 50.  Other things may come down the track later on and I have no doubt that disentangling ourselves from a relationship with the European Union is going to be complicated, it’s 50 years of enmeshed legal obligations and rights.

DM: You mentioned on that, okay, even if the Supreme Court say yes, parliament is sovereign, you must have legal authority to trigger Article 50, haven’t we seen following the vote after Wednesday’s debate where the whole House authorised the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50 by the end of March, that we know which way that vote will go?

DOMINIC GRIEVE: Yes, I think we do know which way the vote will go, I think we know there is a majority in the House of Commons that is going to respect the clear indication of the United Kingdom electorate on the 23rd June that they want to initiate the leave process and the only thing that would stop that process is if the electorate changed their mind on that subject and at the moment there is no sign of it so it’s quite clear to me that we have to get on with the process of leaving the EU and having some fresh relationship with our EU partners but from outside the EU, that’s the issue that is now going to dominate the politics in which we’re involved and it’s on that I think that you’re going to see the debates.

DM: But it’s that phrase you used there, ‘if the electorate changed their mind on that’, the only way you’d know for sure if the electorate had changed their mind, you can do all the opinion polling and sampling you like but the only way to find out for sure is to hold another referendum or perhaps have a general election and there are those on the leave side who are saying right, that’s what is going on here, the remainers are trying to spin this all out so something bad on the economy happens and people change their mind.

DOMINIC GRIEVE: That’s simply not the case but equally you can’t just close down all debate forever.  After all we had a first referendum on the EU in 1975 and arguably we then had a second one just recently.  Ultimately the public will determine what they want and politics will be influenced and politicians will be influenced by what the public say to us so what I’m not prepared to accept is because there was a referendum on the 23rd June that somehow closes down debate forever more about the relationship we are going have with the EU and our EU partners. It can’t do that and common sense immediately when you look at it makes you realise that it is impossible and wrong to do that but at the same time nobody is trying to sabotage Brexit and that’s the point I was trying to make in parliament this week because some people seem to have got it into their head that there is an attempt to sabotage it and frankly it’s just not there.

DM: But do you think there has to be a vote on the deal that is hammered out whenever that might be, that the people have to have a say on that?

DOMINIC GRIEVE: Well it’s possible, there certainly is going to have to be a vote in parliament, I think the government has acknowledged that.  If at the end of the negotiating process there is a package to put before the country it will certainly have to be put before parliament and there’s at least an argument that it should be put before the public as well in a referendum but that’s something that we are not going to come on to for some considerable time.

DM: And your sense, if you could turn your mind to – and I know you have already – the issue of post-triggering Article 50.  I know the Supreme Court have been considering it as well, is it reversible in your view if that change of mind came from the electorate.  A bit if I know but if it happened in between the triggering and the end point, is it revisitable?

DOMINIC GRIEVE: There’s different legal opinions on this, I have to say I think there is quite a lot to suggest that it is reversible and that at any time until the date that we leave we could change our mind and decide, if we wanted to, to remain but I think one has to emphasise that at the moment there is no sign the electorate has an appetite for that but of course what we need to keep in mind in this process is what’s going on in Europe and what’s going on here.  Everything is taking place against a moving background and for those reasons that’s one of the arguments I’ve always put forward why you should keep your options open, you shouldn’t close down ideas whilst at the same time we should be proceeding to give effect to the express wishes of the British electorate.

DM: Dominic Grieve, great talking to you, thank you so much.