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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, an in/out referendum on Europe was one of David Cameron’s key manifesto pledges in the election, well now he’s got to make it happen. It’s been reported this morning that the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, may call for a no vote to force Brussels to give Britain a better deal and then perhaps have another referendum.  Well the PM has been warned by senior Conservatives to give Ministers a free reign to campaign on the vote or risk tearing the party apart in the process, among them is the Tory grandee, let me call him that, Ken Clarke, he’s in Nottingham from where he joins me now, and a very good morning to you Mr Clarke.  I mean if you had your way and the PM obviously has to do it, would there be a renegotiation and a referendum at all?

KEN CLARKE: Well I think there are improvements to be made.  Personally I think they could have been gone about in a more purposeful fashion with some serious negotiations in the first place with other Europeans but that’s all too late.  I’m glad to say we have actually started formally the process of negotiation and I hope it will now go on quietly behind the scenes most of the time in order to produce something that is a visible improvement in the benefits we get from the EU in terms of political clout in the world and in trade and investment advantages and which can help all the Europeans to solve the enormous problems we have at the moment.  The trouble with the negotiations is obviously going to be that whilst David set out perfectly sensible ambitions in his original Bloomberg speech, every time it’s publicised it’s accompanied by an absurd flurry of right wing nationalist comment here, popular wild debate in sections of the media and from some people in parliament which makes it very difficult to make progress, particularly as most of them are raising demands which are nothing to do with renegotiating or improving the European Union, they actually want to leave the European Union and they are not interested in altering the terms at all.  

DM: Does Boris Johnson’s comments fit in to that category of an absurd flurry from your point of view?  He was talking about a rather dangerous strategy, if you want to stay in the EU, of voting no first time round to show the EU you’re serious and then get a better deal in a second referendum.  It’s high risk isn’t it?

KEN CLARKE: Well I get along with Boris, I will probably ask him next week, firstly was he accurately reported which you often aren’t on European things and secondly, what on earth does he mean by this?  You can’t be yes one week and no the next or people will get deeply suspicious of exactly where he is.  The idea that you reject anything that’s offered the first time round in the fond imagining that more of these extreme nationalists will get what they want the second time and then you can shut it all up is nonsense.  I mean at core some of the people who are constantly commenting, day by day, and some of the newspapers, the Murdoch press and others, plainly just want all the advantages of the treaty but none of the obligations unless we can change them when we feel like it in response to domestic pressures.  There is no point thinking you can have a sensible negotiation and then have a referendum where the public reject it and then suddenly they’ll cave in and offer us all kinds of things which will be the destruction of the EU if they gave them. I think we should concentrate on the sensible things David Cameron set out in his first Bloomberg speech – completing the single market, trade deals, deregulation, serious deregulation, not doing things in Brussels which could perfectly well be done in capitals.  I agree with that, a large number of Europeans agree with that, we’d all benefit and the British would very much benefit, those changes could be made.  A lot of the rest is sheer nonsense and some of it I am deeply opposed to such as discriminating in your tax and benefit system against foreigners.  I don’t want the French to do that against young British people working in France and I don’t want to do that against Polish people working alongside English people here.  If we get back to the common sense demands we’ll get on better, have on negotiation and then reaffirm our membership of the European Union.  

DM: Just one other issue causing great tensions between the UK and indeed other countries and EU central command so to speak, the migrants, the migrant crisis.  You spoke in Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday and I just wanted to explore, you were talking about setting up comfortable camps for the migrants, have you had any thoughts as where they should be?

KEN CLARKE: Well I think they are exploring the prospect of somewhere on the African continent.  The more you can get back to the source of this the better. Understandably the short term debate is some British people saying keep them all in France, I mean we do have control over our borders and the nonsense that we don’t is revealed by the fact that we do keep them out at Calais but we only keep some out, they eventually get in.  We tell the French to keep them Italy, that is hopeless, you’ve got to do something about the hole in Libya which is an enormous problem, through which people are pouring, you’ve got to do something about the border between Turkey and Greece and eventually you have got to do something about the state of affairs in Eritrea, Somalia, Syria, from which all sensible young people are trying to flee.  But if you are going to handle this is a civilised and sensible way you have got to have somewhere to hold them, process them, you’ve got to have a policy about where you are going to settle them because I entirely agree with everybody, you simply cannot have the world’s poor pouring out of Africa all over Europe into Britain or anywhere else.  Much as though that’s a marvellous idea we actually can’t absorb them, it’s not in their interests or ours but you’ve got to think a little more long term, you’ve got to think on a bigger scale and actually I believe there are discussions going on between the European Commission on behalf of member states like Britain with some African states to see if we can hold in civilised, decent conditions people there and decide who are genuinely needing asylum because they are politically being persecuted and who actually need resettlement in a safer place elsewhere.  Again it just illustrates that you need to think these on an international scale otherwise if you think that in totally Victorian independent Britain can handle all this on its own, I’m not quite sure how we’d do that apart from shutting down the Channel Tunnel, stopping the boats and putting fences around the coast.  That is simply not going to work and there are hundreds of thousands of these people coming here, the 3000 at the moment in a slum in Calais are just a tiny little symptom of the problem.  

DM: Okay Mr Clarke, thank you very much indeed.  Kenneth Clarke there