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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, opposition to Britain’s membership of the European Union has long been seen as issue of the right but with the deepening crisis in Greece, a growing number of left wingers are starting to turn against Europe so is it time that Labour embraced euroscepticism?  I’m joined now by the Labour MP Kate Hoey, the Shadow Europe Minister Pat McFadden and the Observer’s chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, a very good morning to you all.  Well Kate Hoey, you have already embraced a bit of euroscepticism not necessarily from that left wing vein of opposition within your party.   

KATE HOEY: Oh I think there is growing opposition from all wings of the party to what’s happening in the EU.  I am one of those who for many years has been critical of what’s happening, I am in favour of a referendum, I think we should have had it in our manifesto but I think what we have seen over the last month or two has been a really growing realisation that the EU isn’t this benign wonderful organisation that is going to help people on the left and give us minimum wage and all those things and I’ve seen just since a few of us got together and formed an organisation that was going to start challenging our leadership candidates as to what they wanted to reform in Europe, in the EU, because they are all saying we want reform but none of them have actually said what they really want so we are challenging …

DM: Well it’s the same as you hear from the Conservative party really.  

KATE HOEY: Well that is the problem, I don't think we’re going to get very much back but I think what we’ve seen since that, genuinely a lot of support from all over the country from, in inverted commas, ‘ordinary Labour party members’, councillors in small areas who have said thank goodness we’ve opened this discussion.   

DM: Okay and some that might have gone to UKIP as well.  Pat McFadden, does this chill you hearing this from Kate Hoey because as I mentioned, as I alluded to, you have got a fairly dormant strain at the moment from the left, the hard left within Labour party, of opposition to the European Union or the Common Market as then was, what happens if they join up?

PAT MCFADDEN: Well we’ve been here before with left wing opposition to the European Union back when …

DM: But Kate Hoey is not from there.  

KATE HOEY: And I don’t like these terms, left and right.  

DM: But we’re thinking Tony Benn and the 1975 …

PAT McFADDEN: Okay, let me call it Labour opposition, back when the last time we had such a disastrous election result, back in the 1980s, the last time we had just over 200 MPs and that election was fought  on the basis of pulling out of the European Union so it’s not new that it’s there but I think the centre of gravity has changed since then.  There are a few MPs, and Kate has been consistent on this for some years but there was some polling done by the Economic and Social Research Council just after the election which found that over 80% of Labour members would vote to stay in the European Union regardless of what Mr Cameron negotiates so I think the centre of gravity has changed and it has changed really for a good reason.  It’s changed because, I think since the 80s we’ve realised that a lot of the challenges we face we have to solve in concert with other countries and we’ve kind of come away from a nationalistic view.  

DM: Kate, what do you say to that, 80%?   

KATE HOEY: I don’t think the public accept any of these and I think what has happened is that there has been a kind of slavish devotion to the EU from our leadership since the Kinnock period and it has actually, there has been no one really challenging.  Once you start having that open debate, and this is what we need in the party and I’ve said this to Pat, we need a genuine debate that is not about scaring people but is about facts and figures and truth.  The crucial thing for me, and I think for many party members, is the democratic argument.  We have lost so much control in this country of many of the decisions that are taken that matter to people, we’ve got to get that back, we’ve got to be able to control our own borders and I want to be in a situation where if say for example Jeremy Corbyn became leader and he wanted to renationalise the railways, we’d be able to do that.  We can’t do that under EU rules.  

DM: Left and right, I’m not sure if he’d want to deal as strongly as you do with immigration if he becomes leader but this is the point, isn’t it, there’s a lot of supporters, people within the Labour party, who like what for instance has been going on in Greece, they like Podemos in Spain, they see the left beginning to rebel against Big Europe.

PAT MCFADDEN: Interestingly in Greece, even when they were voting no to the package that was put before them a few weeks ago, they were very clear – most of the population – that they wanted to stay in the European Union and in the euro so I wouldn’t say that …

DM: Okay, that is different and there are specific reasons …

PAT MCFADDEN: We’ve been told to look at Greece and the parallels there, if there is one, is that people there really wanted to stay in.  Look, I think this is ultimately about your view of Britain, your view of the world.  Do you take a view where there are a number of issues and challenges where we should work together with other countries as we have done for a number of years?

KATE HOEY: Nobody is against working together, we all want cooperation, we all want trade, the idea that we wouldn’t be able to trade with the rest of the EU if we left it is just nonsense.  We’d become a global international country, confident about our own ability, using the links of the Commonwealth with some of the growing economies, there are so many positive arguments for it.  

PAT MCFADDEN: On what terms, on what terms?  Of course we would trade but the issue is, do we have any say over the rules?  If we … I don’t see it as a good future for Britain to be the passive recipient of rules made …

DM: That is a well-trodden argument and I want to throw into the mix here the referendum itself and the problems posed for Labour by the Scottish National Party experience, by what happened in Scotland with that referendum and how do you campaign, whether you are for it or against it, who do campaign alongside?  Would you like to see a Labour figure leading a no campaign?  

KATE HOEY: The first task we have is to get the Referendum Bill through without the changes that the government wants to make which will allow purdah to be destroyed.  We’ve always had purdah coming up, that’s really, really important, that we can get a referendum that is going to be free and fair and genuinely afterwards people think that was a reasonable and right result.  Then of course we go into a situation where at some stage there will have to be designated campaigns and there will be a leave campaign and a stay in campaign rather than a no and a yes, it will probably still be no and yes but whatever. Then I think … I want to win the referendum, I want to have people from different parts of the country with different views who all feel they want to leave so there will have to be some sort of united campaign but this idea that somehow you want a leader and that’s the only way you can win, you need good people who can go on television and radio and who can communicate and that can be all sorts of people.  

DM: You presumably would be one of them.  Does this chill you, Pat McFadden?

PAT MCFADDEN: No, it doesn’t.  We’ve asked Alan Johnson to lead the Labour Yes campaign, he’s one of the …

DM: The Labour Yes Campaign, this is the point.  Will there be a Conservative Yes campaign?  

PAT MCFADDEN: There may well be, that’s up to the Conservatives to do it but I want to go back to what you asked about Scotland.  I think people are reading a little bit too much into the referendum campaign alone as the reason for the Labour party’s problems in Scotland.  Remember, the reason we had a referendum in Scotland in the first place was because the SNP had already got control of the Scottish parliament so this argument that’s put around, that arguing to maintain the UK somehow we sealed our death warrant, what were we going to do?  We are not a nationalist party, we stepped up and did the right thing and I think we should step up and do the right thing for Britain and not argue …

KATE HOEY: We all love Europe, we don’t love the EU, that’s the issue.  

DM: A debate for another programme, thank you all very much indeed.