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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Making the argument for another of the candidates, the frontrunner Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is Sir Alan Duncan, the veteran Tory MP and former Minister, he’s with me now.  

SIR ALAN DUNCAN: I’ve become a veteran have I?  

DM: You have indeed unfortunately.  I’m a veteran broadcaster, I don't know when that happened.  But on this issue you heard it there – and I heard you muttering one or two comments under your breath there – from your colleague Andrew Mitchell there saying in essence, and this is from a Remainer himself Andrew Mitchell, the next Prime Minister has to be a Leaver.

SIR ALAN DUNCAN: The first thing to say is that we are choosing a Prime Minister who has to run the country on a broad range of issues and be respected across the world, it should not be decided as a rerun of the referendum campaign.  Secondly, I think that Theresa has already addressed the issue that Andrew Mitchell was just raising there about the credibility of the negotiations by committing to having as a senior Secretary of State a Leaver as the person in charge of negotiations and that I hope is a unifying and practical solution to the dilemma that Andrew was just discussing.   

DM: What about the issue of the speed of the process, the question I put there to Andrew Mitchell and it has just been expressed more broadly, saying that whoever it is, my goodness me, given the circumstances we face at the moment we need a Prime Minister who is there for the duration.

SIR ALAN DUNCAN: Yes and I think Theresa, the most successful modern, Home Secretary in modern times, is just the person to give continuity, to be able to go straight into this at a running start …

DM: But the point being on the process you’re going through, whittling them down one by one, if she does thumpingly well in the first round that you go round and you say look, really we don’t need to have a contest, she’s clearly the winner amongst MPs?

SIR ALAN DUNCAN: Quite the opposite, we do not want a coronation.  We want this to go to the members in order to get the maximum possible approval for what I hope will be her leadership and her Prime Ministership.  It does take a bit more time and it will delay getting into the discussions that we were talking about there but we do not want a coronation and actually as party chairman and subsequently, Theresa in all leadership elections that we’ve had, for instance Michael Howard’s, has said I want this to go to the members.  So she actually has a track record on the occasion of three leaderships already of saying I want this to go to the members and now when she stands to benefit, she still wants it to go to the members and we are very clear about that.

DM: But on those negotiations, Michael Gove has been saying it himself, he feels she has no moral authority, Andrew Mitchell there saying she was on the wrong side and there is this issue isn’t there of being in charge of the Home Office for so long while those immigration figures just went up and up and up, it was her department that was overseeing that.

SIR ALAN DUNCAN: There is no wrong side or right side on this.  The people have decided we are now committed to leaving the European Union so this isn’t about sides, this is now about getting on with it and of course one of the main issues that will be addressed in those discussions is the free movement of people.  It is a very difficult problem and already a lot of people are finding their life in the UK made worse by the decision because they are being treated as foreigners who ought to be chucked out, which we totally condemn.  What has to be understood is look, we need a period of calm with grown up important negotiations whilst we remain part of the European Union until those negotiations are complete and I want everybody in the United Kingdom who is here be they Polish, Latvian, whatever it is, to feel that they are not going to be intimidated by anybody in this country.

DM: Okay but what are her thoughts, what are your thoughts on the UK staying within the single market?  As you know, you can leave the European Union and stay within the single market through various organisations but you have to, as far as we hear unequivocally, you have to accept free movement.

SIR ALAN DUNCAN: Nobody really understands all of the parts of the negotiations that are going to happen here.  It’s not as simple as saying do you want to be in this, out that, in that, out that – this is a very, very complicated process of disengagement and what we are going to have to do is find an arrangement which has us making our own law, which by the way I regard as a prize, this is the return of sovereignty and … hold on, and of parliamentary sovereignty but it has to be an agreement which will allow us to prosper and if I would say so, I don't think any of those who have been so ardent about leaving the EU have really explained what arrangements can be reached which will allow us to prosper.

DM: Okay, Sir Alan Duncan, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you.