Murnaghan Interview with Lord David Blunkett, former Home Secretary, 14.02.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, five big beasts – as they’re called – of the Labour Party have given their backing to the Prime Minister’s negotiations with Europe.  The group who were all against joining the European Community, or staying in it, in 1975 have signed an open letter giving the case for remaining in the EU.  I’m joined now by one of them, the former Home Secretary, David – now of course Lord Blunkett, he’s in Derby, a very good morning you Lord Blunkett.  A simple question to start, why did you feel the need to write this letter?   

DAVID BLUNKETT: I think to get across the very simple message that people who were sceptical forty years ago may still be sceptical of the way in which Europe works as a bureaucracy, and I am certainly a eurosceptic, but recognised the catastrophe that would happen if we pulled out of Europe now.  Forty years on globalisation has increased apace, the whole world is much more insecure despite the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the conflict that that brought, we now have as we all know entirely new forms of terrorism, organised criminality, the massive people movements that have occurred because of conflicts elsewhere and we need to be part of the European Union to deal with those enormous issues.

DM: There is one name that springs to mind that fits the bill on what you described, the forty year journey, and he is of course the current leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, why hasn’t he signed it?

DAVID BLUNKETT: Well because we had been dealing with those who had been responsible for and held positions as Home Secretary, who has been involved actually as Home or Foreign Secretaries, the way in which you have to do business with other countries. In other words the ability to be able to appreciate – and this is quite difficult because you don’t want to patronise the people we are talking to and those who we want to persuade to vote, we are not actually saying to them, at least I hope we’re not, that we know best because we’ve been through this and we know the difficulties of negotiating on our borders, dealing with the cross border issues, the European wide challenges.  We’re not saying listen to us because we’re wise, we’re saying listen to us because we were sceptical, we’ve been won over but we’ve been won over by a lifetime of experience seeing what’s happening. Just take the border issue for a moment, if Britain is not part of and co-operating with Europe as a whole in terms of firstly protecting the wider European border and then secondly being able to be part of a European Union where we’ve put our border controls on French soil, we would have no say whatsoever and we would have no means of preventing people flooding across Europe and into the British Isles.  I think people have not really fully understood just what a catastrophe would happen if those borders were simply open to the UK.

DM: But just on Jeremy Corbyn, you rather dodged that.  Of course if he did become Prime Minister he would have to deal of course with many, many foreign nations but you’re saying the qualification is you either had to be a Shadow Home or Foreign Secretary, you’ve got Neil Kinnock there, did you actually ask Jeremy Corbyn to sign the letter?

DAVID BLUNKETT: Not as far as I’m aware because Jeremy had not been in a position of authority over those years and that’s what many people liked about him to be honest, that he was a …

DM: Well what about Hilary Benn?  

DAVID BLUNKETT: What about Hilary?  

DM: What about Hilary Benn, he is now the Foreign Affairs Spokesman.  

DAVID BLUNKETT: Yes, and although he was a Minister including in my team, he was not a Home Secretary was he?  I think you are missing the point here.  

DM: Do you think Jeremy Corbyn is being as enthusiastic as he could be about remaining in the European Union?  

DAVID BLUNKETT: I don't think Jeremy has ever been terribly enthusiastic about the European Union but that’s not to say he is actually against staying in, is it? There are lots of people watching this programme this morning and millions of people we’re going to have to win over who are not enthusiastic, that have been sceptical and in the next whatever months it is, three months, are going to have to be won over if we don’t have an economic, a social and an international crisis because our withdrawal from Europe would bring those things inevitably.  Just to come back to the point I was making earlier, most countries are concerned with people who come into the country and not those who leave so when I negotiated with Nicholas Sarkozy, the then interior minister in France, all those years ago back in 2002, that we would have immigration and security officers on French soil that was an enormous step forward both for the UK and an enormous commitment by France and they did it because we were partners, we were literally in this together. They’d got a problem, we were potentially having a massive problem of over 100,000 refugees coming in at that time – those measures reduced those coming in as refugees to less than 30,000.  If we opened those borders again, and that’s what it would mean because we’d pull our immigration and security back to Kent, you can imagine just for a moment that the French would have no imperative whatsoever to stop people leaving their country.

DM: Just a question on that Lord Blunkett, while we’re revisiting the past, do you now think it was an error to not bring in transitional controls when Poland and others joined the European Union, when you of course were in power.  

DAVID BLUNKETT: No, I don’t because they would have run out in 2011 anyway, many of those who came have made a tremendous contribution and have paid taxes and national insurance.  Bear in mind this, when the new arrangements came in in 2004 we discovered that 40% of those who actually registered and therefore were paying tax and national insurance and were counted as new immigrants were actually already in the country, many of them working clandestinely.  You either have people working openly with visas and with permission or you have them in the sub-economy, undercutting rates of pay, undercutting conditions and all the things that go with it.

DM: And what about another idea from those times, I remember you were a strong advocate of identity cards, ID cards, it shows who is entitled to be in the country, who is entitled to use the NHS, who is entitled to access benefits, do you think that should be revisited?

DAVID BLUNKETT: Yes, I do as a matter of fact.  I would do it a different way now because people panicked over the idea of an ID card rather a clean register, knowing who is here and who is entitled to public services, entitled to work here and the like.  I would simply say that all adults would have a passport, 82% do already and that passport would obviously be linked to biometric identifiers and that would be linked to a clean register and that would have got round the problem. We learn as we go along.  As Tony Blair once wisely said, we’ve just learnt how to do things when nobody wants us to do them any longer.  

DM: And just a last thought about Jeremy Corby and whether he gets involved in the campaign or not, do you think he might not even be leader by the time of a referendum?  I’m thinking about the May elections in all their various forms, if there’s not a very good showing for Labour do you think he should consider his future?

DAVID BLUNKETT: No, no.  I didn’t vote for Jeremy, I wish him well but there is absolutely no way there is going to be a change of leader between now and the referendum and anybody who thinks there is is living in cloud cuckoo land.  

DM: Do you think there are those in your party who  will look at this, this big beasts letter and say what are they doing, they are joining a Cameron led campaign?  

DAVID BLUNKETT: Oh I think there is a very real danger, as there was with the Scottish referendum, of people actually using the fact that there is common cause across people of all different political persuasions, mainly on the stay in but also on the out campaign, and saying we’ll judge you by who you are associating with rather than by what you’re saying and what the outcome will be.  I think that is a very real danger and we’ve got to face it and we’ve got to face people up to the fact that they are making a momentous decision about the future of the country and not about David Cameron and the government, despite the fact that David Cameron forged this referendum and has done what he’s done in order to be able to solve problems inside his own party.  We’re bigger than that, the issue of Britain’s place in Europe and the world is bigger than any of this and that’s why we’ve got to get out there and campaign.

DM: Fantastic of you to spare the time to talk to us Lord Blunkett, very good to see you.  Thank you very much indeed.