ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So with another hung parliament looking fairly likely, is a Labour/SNP deal almost inevitable?  Later in the programme I’ll speak to the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon about that, now though I’m joined from Manchester by Ed Miliband’s election chief, Lucy Powell, a very good morning to you.  Let’s talk first of all about that polling.  All politicians always say the only poll that counts is the one that takes place in the general election but your side must be buoyed by that bounce that Mr Miliband seems to have gained after that debate.

LUCY POWELL: Well polls do go up and down as you say so we don’t get disheartened when they go down and we don’t get buoyed when they go up but I think what is important about that poll is that very clearly it showed that Ed Miliband was the winner of the debate on Thursday night and we can see now why David Cameron didn’t want to have a head to head debate, doesn’t want to have a head to head debate with Ed Miliband.  I thought Ed came across as a man with principle and decency but also of passion, of toughness and of humour too and I think for the first time the public got to see the real Ed Miliband and not the Ed Miliband that sections of the press want to portray him as and I think that’s why we’ve always felt that this election campaign offers us an opportunity because unmediated and directly to the public, people will warm to Ed Miliband, are warming to Ed Miliband and that’s why we think we’ve got every chance of winning a Labour majority on 7th May.

DM: The centrepiece in that interview with Jeremy Paxman, the centrepiece of Mr Miliband exhibiting that toughness was the ‘Hell, yes’ and the T-shirts have been printed we understand.  Why is Labour proud of not preventing Bashar Al-Assad from gassing and murdering more of his own population?

LUCY POWELL: Well it is a very difficult situation in Syria and you can see there the rise of ISIS as well and ISIS are now the main force opposing Assad so had we gone in and taken Assad out, who knows what would have happened in terms of ISIS as well so I think what Ed always felt very strongly at that time and still does, is that unless you’ve got a very clear strategy about what would happen and how you would deal with the aftermath of intervention, then you go there at your peril and actually I feel even more strongly about that two years on than I did at the time because of the rise of ISIS and the damage that they are causing in that part of the world and actually I think intervention at that point would have seen them strengthened and not weakened and that would have been a much bigger problem for people here in the UK and the whole region.

DM: Would you say your leader used, let me call it dramatic licence when he described a meeting that took place to Jeremy Paxman, a meeting in which he said Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg were there and Obama was on the phone and he said right, I’m not going to do this.  We got this from Labour sources at the time, there were several meetings and phone calls in which Mr Miliband said he would support action if there was a consensual approach.  

LUCY POWELL: I don’t think that is the case.  I mean you’ll have to ask Ed and Jeremy Paxman asked him the other day, I wasn’t with him at the time so I don’t know but what I do know is that there was a crunch meeting that Ed was called to, as he said the other evening, which Douglas Alexander also spoke about because he was at it as well, where Ed was asked to agree to a vote in the House of Commons for military action.  He went away and thought about that and he came back and he said he couldn’t support it and I think he was absolutely right to do so.  I think it was a really, really big decision that he made and actually it didn’t just have consequences in terms of the UK military action but that vote in the House of Commons, if you remember, when the government were defeated had a ripple effect in terms of the whole Western world and their approach to Syria and it stopped intervention from the US as well so I think when people say about Ed Miliband, is he tough enough, when you look at his record as Leader of the Opposition he has actually shaped world events, he has shaped UK events in a way that I can’t remember a Leader of the Opposition ever having done before.  So that’s what he can do in opposition and as he said on Thursday, he sure as hell can do that as Prime Minister of this country as well and I think that’s what people really got to see on Thursday.  

DM: Okay, so let’s hear about the SNP and all we are hearing from Nicola Sturgeon, we’re about to hear more on this programme in about half an hour’s time, and from Alex Salmond about how they will do deals with Labour but they have got quite a long shopping list now.  Let me ask you, would Labour be prepared to compromise on its austerity programme which the SNP says is a red line if co-operation has to take place between the two parties?

LUCY POWELL: No, is the clear answer.  Look, we are as I think you heard from Sir Malcolm Rifkind just there, the Tories have given up on a majority government after May 7th, we haven’t.  We still believe there is every possibility there could be a Labour government, that’s what we are … a Labour majority government and that’s what we are fighting for.  We are doing incredibly well in many of the English and Welsh marginal seats and a poll out today confirms some of that and we are sure that if we can make sure that if we win the seats in Scotland that we need to, we can be a Labour majority as well.  The SNP obviously want to make themselves players in this election but we are the only party that can beat David Cameron, it’s a choice between Ed Miliband and David Cameron.  That’s what people in Scotland are beginning to understand and that’s what we are going to continue to argue very strongly in Scotland, that if a vote for the SNP and every SNP MP elected is one less Labour MP then it is one more MP likely to make David Cameron the Prime Minister, that is a very clear outcome at this election.  

DM: You are unequivocal about that, Lucy Powell, okay you are unequivocal about that, no compromise on the first Labour budget if you have to rely on any support from the SNP but the SNP are …

LUCY POWELL:  We said very clearly that we are not going to go into coalition with the SNP.

DM: The SNP are saying austerity has to stop, they will appeal over the heads of the Labour leadership to progressives, as they put it, within the Labour party to vote against an austerity budget.  

LUCY POWELL:  They are setting up these completely sort of ridiculous false scenarios.  First of all they are not the king makers in this election, this election is a choice between David Cameron and Ed Miliband as Prime Minister and Ed Miliband as Prime Minister will be very strong in putting forward Labour’s manifesto, Labour’s commitment.  What the SNP do is a matter for the SNP, not for the Labour party.  But the second false choice that they’re setting up is that somehow the Labour party has the same spending proposals as the Tory party which is an absolute nonsense as well as Nicola Sturgeon knows absolutely clearly.

DM: Well you do for the first year.  

LUCY POWELL: No, not at all, we have got very different plans to the Conservatives, they’ve got deep spending …

DM: That’s what Ed Balls said.   

LUCY POWELL: They’ve got deep spending cuts over the course of the parliament, bigger than we’ve seen over the course of this last parliament and we’ve got a very different plan about how we will balance the books fairly by the end of the next parliament but we will do so by ensuring that working people are able to get on in life and pay their taxes that they need to do so as well as sensible spending reductions whereas what the Tories are doing is extreme colossal spending cuts across all departments.  

DM: Okay, Lucy Powell, good to talk to you, thank you very much indeed.