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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: I am joined now by another man fired by Jeremy Corbyn but that was earlier this year, he is Pat McFadden, he was then the Shadow Europe Minister and a very good morning to you.  Looking at it from the outside, the time is up for Jeremy Corbyn isn’t?

PAT MCFADDEN: Well time will tell over the next 24 to 48 hours.  I think the most important thing is everything changed on Thursday and for Labour the exam question changed on Thursday too.  I think when Mr Corbyn was elected last year a lot of people were thinking they were electing just a leader of the Labour party and a general election seemed a long way off.  That’s all changed now, we could have an election later this year and so the exam question has very much changed.

DM: So you are saying you thought you could indulge yourself for three or four years before you got yourself a leader who looked like a winner but now it looks like there could be another general election we’ve got to get someone who appeals to all parts of the United Kingdom?

PAT MCFADDEN: I think when people were choosing last summer the prospect of a general election wasn’t foremost in my mind because we’d just had one and the next one seemed some years away.  Now we’re in a different situation on every level, we may have a general election later this year or early next year, we are seeing reports that 30% of people who voted Labour just last year in an election that we badly lost are now considering voting for other parties so we have got a big question here which is whether we are prepared to act to stop Britain becoming a one party right wing Tory state.

DM: And for that to stop you believe that Jeremy Corbyn must go but he’s digging in, we’ve just had John McDonnell, his right hand man, his key ally, saying he’s going nowhere, there are plenty of other Labour MPs who can fill his shadow cabinet and even if he is winkled out by the MPs he will just stand again and the membership will re-elect him.

PAT MCFADDEN: Well the membership will have to, as I say, ask themselves this question about whether we can go into an election with Jeremy Corbyn.  As my colleague Tristram Hunt wrote today, if Labour members really care about Labour voters then we have to do something about the Labour leadership.  This is not about petitions, it is not about gatherings of the party faithful, it’s not about selfies, this is about the future of the country and appealing to voters and I’m afraid that …

DM: Okay, it’s fast moving, we’re hearing that the Shadow Scottish Secretary, your only MP in Scotland of course, has resigned, it’s crumbling from under him.  It would be much easier, would it not, to avoid even more bloodletting and infighting if Jeremy Corbyn just walked out the door?

PAT MCFADDEN: Well he’s losing the confidence of those who are working most closely with him in the Shadow Cabinet, there have been three or four this morning and there may be more as the day goes on.  They don’t have to…

DM: There have been two in the last ten minutes.  

PAT MCFADDEN: There have been two in the last ten minutes, they don’t have confidence that he is the right person to show leadership for the party and I’m afraid in the recent European referendum that ability to show leadership was somewhat exposed.  

DM: What are the fears for the whole party if he digs in?  

PAT MCFADDEN: My fear is that you end up with an internal fight where he digs in and the result is that we end up with a general election quite soon perhaps with a new Conservative prime minister seeking a new mandate where we end up with a one party right wing Tory state and if we do that knowing that the leader that we’ve got can’t stop that, then I think we have got to think about our duty to our own voters.  

DM: And what does that mean, a reformulation of the centre?  

PAT MCFADDEN: No, it doesn’t mean that, it means we’ve got to think more about our duty to stop the country becoming a one party Tory state and the view that people are coming to is that Jeremy is just not equipped to do that.  

DM: But as I said, he has the apparatus of the party behind him, if he digs in he will get re-elected given your current membership and electoral rules so if he digs in where do those centrists amongst you go?  We have got, as you described there, a Conservative party, a government perhaps going to the right, the leavers take over there, the Labour party firmly camped on the left, isn’t there an opportunity for someone to represent the centre?  A mass party?

PAT MCFADDEN: I don't think anybody is considering that, I think people want a better more appealing leadership in the Labour party.  This party has done great things for the country over the years but we have only ever been able to do them by being elected, everything from the NHS to the minimum wage.  If we are going to be elected again we have to have the appeal to do it.  

DM: And Jeremy has to go?  

PAT MCFADDEN: I am increasingly concluding that he can’t do that.  

DM: Okay, thank you very much indeed, Pat McFadden, the former Shadow Europe Minister there.