ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Welcome back to Westminster after a week in whichthe new Brexit Secretary was slapped down by the Prime Minister for saying thatBritain may leave the EU single market, the new International Trade Secretarycalled British business fat and lazy and this morning the new Foreign Secretarylaunches a campaign group calling for a so-called ‘hard Brexit’.  Well Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary and ShadowBrexit Secretary, Emily Thornberry, accused the trio of delivering emptyplatitudes and of making it up as they go along but what does her party wantfrom the EU?  Well she is here to tell meright now and a very good morning to you, Ms Thornberry.  Is your party in a little bit of a mess onthe attitude towards remaining or not within the single market?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  No, I don'tthink so.  We believe that the Britishpublic have given us their instructions and we have to proceed on thesenegotiations in good faith.

DM: Butwhat about access to the single market, everything seems to be pivoting aroundthat at the moment.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Yes, I thinkthat one of our red lines must be that we must have free access for our goodsand services through the free market and that is really important to us.  There are some of the regulations around thefree market that we have always had questions about and we continue to questionand that must be part of the negotiations, so for example we are concerned thatit could be an interpretation of some of the regulations that we wouldn’t beable to renationalise the railways, we think that is something that it isn’tfor Europe to decide, it’s something for the British to decide.

DM: Sois that something that Jeremy Corbyn the leader was hinting at when he talkedabout those elements of the single market, that is what he was talking about?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Yes, yes.

DM: Theidea of being able to support industries I suppose and does that go for thesteel industry and things like that?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Yes, I thinkthat when public money is in such shortage we want to make sure that we getmaximum bang for our buck, we want to be able to spend public money in a way thathas a ripple effect and we want to make sure that we support our industries andare allowed to do so.  We need to be ableto spend public money let’s say with a public authority that has a contractwith a  sub-contractor, we want to beable to say you must pay a living wage, you must have local apprenticeships andthere is an argument that that might be contrary to European laws as they areat the moment, so we need to think about those.

DM: Whatabout controls on immigration, as you say this is one of the main thingsflowing from the Brexit vote?  We knowwhat the government is now saying, well we know they are saying there won’t bea points system, do you agree with that?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  I think that withouta doubt during the referendum this issue was raised and many Labour MPs havespoken about it, from all sides of the Labour party they’ve raised this with meso I think this is something we need to look at and we need to be able tobalance some form of realistic and workable controls on migration along withaccess to the free market.

DM: Wellthere is talk today that the other members, the remaining members of the EuropeanUnion, once Britain does like are looking at some kind of ESTA system, this isthe system that applies to citizens from the UK and indeed from Europe going tothe United States at the moment, where you fill in a form, you pay some moneyand you are pre-authorised to go there. Is that something that you would see as acceptable as a quid pro quo?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Listen, I thinkit is too early at this stage. Would that system work in terms of ourrelationship with Ireland, what would that mean in terms of a border in Irelandbetween the north and the south and one thing that the Irish from the island ofIreland do want is they don’t want to have a border, so we do have to be verycareful about whatever solution we come forward allows us to continue to have freemovement across Ireland.

DM: Let’sfocus in on the man you are shadowing, Boris Johnson the Foreign Secretary andthis announcement today that he is joining a newly formed so-called Hard Brexitgroup, he wants to cut a lot more of the ties than perhaps some people want.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Well, okay,it seems to me is what Theresa May has done is she has set up these three guys,they are all failed leadership candidates. She has given them so-called responsibility for being involved in Brexitand yet she still seems be completely in charge so they can go out and saywhatever they like and she’ll slap them down. I think we’ll see a lot more of this, I think we’ll see quite a lot ofposturing with them playing to various factions within the Tory party andTheresa May saying yes, yes, yes boys, stop fighting, I’m in charge.  And that really doesn’t help, can I just say,that really doesn’t help. I was in Brussels last week talking to people inBrussels and they were saying, Emily, do you have idea what it is that theBritish want?  And I was saying, don’task me! 

DM: ButI wanted to ask you what you were doing on the shadowing then because one ofthe first things that he did and Theresa May did, was going to see some of thekey players in the European Union.  Whatwere you doing in Brussels, who did you meet?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  So I met someof the commissioners, I met people from the European Parliament and I essentiallysat down and started talking to them and permanent representatives and I had acouple of quite full days of just going through and sketching out some of thethings that are preoccupations of the Labour party, the sort of things that we wouldwant to see in terms of negotiations, reassuring them that I’m afraid thatBritain has decided we are going to leave, we need to go into this in goodfaith and we need to get the best possible deal that we can and also saying tothem there are sensible people within Britain who do want to negotiate a properdeal and these are the sorts of things we would like to talk about. 

DM: Haveyou had access yet to your counterparts or would-be counterparts if you getinto power, particularly the French and the Germans?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  I have seendelegations of the French, I have seen quite a lot of the Norwegians and I’vebeen talking to them, not their Foreign Ministers, I’ve seen my equivalent whois the Shadow Foreign and Defence Minister and talked to her and they weresaying you don’t want a Norwegian model, honestly you don’t, the Norwegian modelis that we do as we’re told.

DM: Haveyou called the French Foreign Minister for example?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  No, but theyare in the process of arranging for me to go to France and to Germany.

DM: Doyou know who he is?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Don’t startpub quizzing me, Dermot. 

DM: TheFrench Foreign Minister, do you know his name?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  No and I’mnot going to start answering questions on this. Do you know what really upsets me about your attitude to me is you dothis with me, I don’t remember you doing it with anybody else?  Have you ever done it with David Davis?  Do Sky journalists have a go at Boris Johnsonon this basis, how about Liam Fox?

DM: Ihave had discussions with David Davis, I’ve had many discussions with Liam Foxbut quite seriously …

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Why don’t wetalk about some serious stuff?  Why don’twe talk about Syria, how about talking about North Korea?  Do you really want to spend this time pubquizzing me?

DM: Iwon’t then, let’s talk about North Korea, let’s talk precisely about … Well thefact that you don’t know the French Foreign Minister’s name, what about theSouth Korean President then, if you want to talk about North Korea, do you knowthe name of the South Korean President who has been talking about nuking Pyongyang.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Let me talkabout North Korea because with these tests going on at the moment clearly it isa huge threat to the area and it is a real challenge to the international community,what are we to do about North Korea? What’s clear is at the moment they don’t have the power to be able to doballistic missiles, they have a bomb which is larger than Hiroshima but at themoment they are not able to deliver it but we do have, we think, about five andten years which gives them the time to be able to develop the technology necessaryto threaten America or to be able to …

DM: Butit is quite a powerful argument isn’t it for countries like our own to keep thenuclear deterrent when you have got rogue nations like North Korea around?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  I have totell you, I think we can assure the British public that North Korea will not befocusing on Britain.  As and when theyare able to develop nuclear weapons they won’t be and do you know what, when wepublish our defence review it will highlight the fact that when you make noprogress on nuclear disarmament, as we haven’t done for decades, this sort of thingwill continue to happen and it won’t just be North Korea, there will be othercountries who think that it is fair enough for them to develop nuclearweapons.  Unless and until we startreducing nuclear weapons in a proper and serious way, we continue to be atthreat.

DM: Thisidea, not fully fleshed out yet but we are hearing some reports saying thatSouth Korea – obviously cheek by jowl with North Korea – are worried aboutthese developments and have contingency plans for a pre-emptive strike onPyongyang.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  I think thatwe need to … Yes, I think that their anti-missile system is something which theChinese are very worried about because the Chinese worry that it might encroachon their territory as well so I think that all these things need to be put intothe mix.  I think that we need to becareful, I think it is right for the United Nations to be talking about furthersanctions but I think that we also have to be conscious that we might beplaying into the hands of the North Korean government who want the North Koreanpeople to be thinking that the entire world is against them and that they mustcleave closely to the government.

DM: Butthe call from Boris Johnson to the South Korean president whose name I guessyou don’t know …

EMILY THORNBERRY:  And the importantpoint which is about our security and world security is how we are going toapproach North Korea into the future.  Andif you want me to go with you to a pub tonight and we can do a pub quiz tonight…

DM: Butyou are the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  I know,honestly.

DM: Youare the Shadow Foreign Secretary and we are talking about perhaps globalconflict here and one nation threatening nuclear strikes on the other, I thoughtyou might have been rather …

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Yes, and I cantell you that I am extremely … I am not getting drawn by you into thisnonsense.  I am quite prepared to talk politicswith you and the threats to the country but …

DM: Andwe will but just for future reference, Park Geun-Hye, it is a she.  But we’ll move on and I want to get back toBrexit, this idea from Owen Smith, let’s get back to your party, this idea fromOwen Smith that at some point after the Brexit negotiations or maybe evenduring, there should be a second vote, be it a general election or areferendum.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Yes, I thinkthat we should start on the principle that the Tories, because they won thegeneral election on the basis of having a referendum, they don’t have a mandateon being able to take us out of Europe on whatever terms they finally decideamongst themselves they want to so I think that we have to have some form ofdemocratic, an injection of democracy in some way.  When we had the referendum going on, one ofthe things that was not clear when we were having the referendum was what ourcontinuing relationship with Europe was going to be.  We have to be clear about that and thatdiscussion was not one that we had, certainly there were lots of contradictorypromises made.  Boris can come along andsay he is going to campaign in order to deliver all these promises that theymade during the referendum but he clearly can’t do that.  Hello, what about the £350 million they weregoing to spend on the NHS?  So I think weneed to go back to the British people in some way, exactly what form that takesand at what stage I think we need to be open minded about but at the moment I thinkwe have to proceed on the basis that we are leaving and getting the best dealthat we can but we can’t just leave it on trust to the Tories to decide whatthat future should be.

DM: Lastly,can I just ask you, do you think that anti-Semitism, this row within the party,do you think it has been dealt with effectively?  We have this today don’t we, Michael Foster,one of the biggest donors, a big donor to the Labour party over the years, hehas been suspended for criticising those behind Jeremy Corbyn, he is of courseJewish and Steven Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, writing todaythat when a Jew complains about the Labour party’s attitude to anti-Semitismunder Jeremy Corbyn it’s the Jew who is purged.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Yes.  I think that anti-Semitism in society continues…

DM: Inyour party.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  No, but insociety generally, continues to be an issue and obviously also continues to bean issue within the Labour party and it is not something that we can becomplacent about and we must always make sure we are prepared to confront andstamp out whenever it raises its ugly head, whether that’s racism,anti-Semitism or sexism, I think that we absolutely must call it …

DM: Soare you saying there is more to be done within the Labour party?

EMILY THORNBERRY:  There isalways more to be done, there is always more to be done, do you know what,there is certainly more to be done by the Tories and I certainly think when itcomes to sexism some Sky presenters need to look at themselves too.  I really do, it really upsets me that everytime I come on here you do another pub quiz with me, you do not do it withanybody else.  You patronise me.

DM: Letme just say it’s not. It’s because you are the Shadow Foreign Secretary and thiswas about the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayraut, who Boris Johnson hasmet several times. 

EMILY THORNBERRY:  Let’s takethis off now because I have a lot to say to you and I don't think a lot of it oughtto be broadcast. 

DM: EmilyThornberry, for the time being thank you very much indeed, I’m more than keento have that discussion on air if you like. It’s a question way back when, I can’t ever remember now, when AlanJohnson was Shadow Chancellor we had discussions about the rate of nationalinsurance which he didn’t know and he should have known, I would havesuspected, as Shadow Chancellor, Alan Johnson. I’ll just leave it there with you. Emily Thornberry thank you very much indeed.

EMILY THORNBERRY:  I’m sure you’llhave the last word of course.