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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now senior Tories have called for Andrea Leadsom to stand aside from the party’s leadership race with a report this morning that 20 MPs or so could quit if she wins and the row over her comments about motherhood is rumbling on with some of Theresa May’s supporters accusing the Energy Minister of weaponising parenthood.  I am joined now by the former Communities Secretary and May backer, Sir Eric Pickles, morning to you Sir Eric.  We are hearing some people are saying that she could turn out, Andrea Leadsom, to be the Jeremy Corbyn of the Conservative party.  

SIR ERIC PICKLES: I think that is probably a gross exaggeration and I think it is now going to be up to the members to decide.  Admittedly Andrea has had what might charitably be described as a disastrous start to her campaign but she’s got a chance now to make her points to the membership.  

DM: What does that disastrous start, as you term it, what does it tell us about her potential qualities as a Prime Minister?

SIR ERIC PICKLES: It doesn’t tell us very much.  She gave a bad interview, her first major interview with a very serious journalist and she fluffed it, she messed it up and to make it worse, she then accused that very senior journalist of engaging in gutter politics.  I don’t like to see those kind of reactions in a potential Prime Minister because she is going to have to deal with a lot more tougher people than that particular journalist, Rachel Sylvester.  I think Mr Putin might be just a little bit more difficult.  

DM: And then we have the Foreign Secretary saying most of the people he’s been talking to in Warsaw have never heard of her.  All in all, those of you on the May side saying she just wouldn’t cut it.  

SIR ERIC PICKLES: Well I think she has got a lot of potential and she probably should have waited and looked for her chances in a future leadership election.  She may possibly be blowing her chances forever as a potential leader.  I don't know her at all well, I’ve perhaps heard her speak maybe three or four times and two of those were at the hustings and she isn’t someone who has ever really crossed my radar. She seems pleasant enough but I am really looking for somebody with strength and determination.  

DM: And what about this issue of CV, her business experience in particular, her experience in the City.  Some say she wasn’t in as many senior positions as she has claimed to be but even if she was, is that exactly something that is going to appeal to the country at large, that you were in the City just before they crashed the economy in 2008?

SIR ERIC PICKLES: Well I am sure she had a very distinguished career in the City, I’ve no idea, I’m told we are going to get a definitive bio fairly soon but I think that people are looking for someone with enormous empathy and an understanding of what it’s like to be struggling to bring up not just a family but to see the prospects in schools, the prospects for people retiring and I think Theresa fits all those bills.  

DM: But do you think that was a low blow to contrast herself with Theresa May and having that stake in the future because she’s got children and Theresa May doesn’t?  

SIR ERIC PICKLES: Well I described it as tacky when it first came out and then I heard the recording and I actually thought the recording put her in a worse position than before but what worries me not so much, because these things happen, but I was surprised she didn’t have her own recording of the interview, I’m surprised that if she thought it was wrong she didn’t ring very quickly and try and get the headline adjusted but there didn’t seem to be anything particularly unfair. She came up against a top notch journalist, a top notch journalist wants to make news, she asked her an obvious question, it was a ginormous elephant trap and she fell into the elephant trap and then continued to make it deeper.

DM: Got in a hole and kept digging in your estimation.  What about this argument within the party that in reality your next leader has to come from the Leave side.  This idea that if they could in a parallel universe could both go away and come back with the same deal which inevitably involves some compromise with the European Union to get access to the single market or whatever, but that Andrea Leadsom is better positioned to sell compromise than the party than Theresa May because she was on the Remain side?

SIR ERIC PICKLES: Well a few feet from where we’re sitting she was described by a very senior ex-Cabinet member as a bloody difficult woman and I think I’d rather have a bloody difficult woman negotiating for me than someone who panics over a slightly unfortunate interview and makes it worse.   

DM: And what are you hearing within the party around the bars and the conversations you are having, how worried are they about an Andrea Leadsom leadership?  This idea we are reading today that some MPs are saying they couldn’t serve under her?

SIR ERIC PICKLES: I would take that with an enormous pinch of salt.  I just don’t believe that.  I know it has been a very turbulent couple of weeks but the idea of members of the Conservative party splitting away to form some centre group I think is ludicrous.  I think most members of parliament would support Theresa May, that was pretty obvious in terms of the votes but ultimately democracy demands that our membership picks our leader.  

DM: Do you think though then that whoever wins it can reunite the party or are you saying that Andrea Leadsom actually couldn’t?

SIR ERIC PICKLES:  Well I hope she would.  It was very noticeable on the full hustings that she was the only candidate that didn’t talk about bringing us all back together again and I think, and I hope this doesn’t sound wrong but in terms of bringing the Conservative party is the first step towards bringing the rest of the nation together.  We have to remember that an awful lot of people voted on the losing side of the referendum and the government needs to speak for everybody.   

DM: One of the symbols, Theresa May said it explicitly, Brexit means Brexit, we understand that but it is this triggering, this formal triggering of Article 50.   We are not entirely clear, especially when we hear from the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve suggesting that perhaps it could lead to a renegotiation, the Brexit vote and who knows, Article 50 might not ever be triggered.  

SIR ERIC PICKLES: Well it needs to be triggered when all our ducks are in a row.  We need to have the very clearest idea, particularly in regard to financial services which is a big part of our economy, whether or not we are going to be able to trade in instruments involving euros and I think until we get that we’d be very foolish to trigger it.  I’m not sure where Andrea is on this, I heard she wanted to trigger it straight away, she told us at the hustings that she didn’t and I now hear that she wants to trigger it fairly soon so I am not sure.  My view is that we trigger it when we’re ready.  It’s the one important card that we’ve got in our hands with regards to the negotiations.  

DM:  But it is a one way street though isn’t it because whether or not you have finished negotiations, after two years you’re out so you used the phrase ducks in a row, just having a look at Theresa May out and about this morning, going to church this morning in central London – how long does it take to get your ducks in a row?  These are complex issues.  

SIR ERIC PICKLES: Well when you are Prime Minister in place, we need to have a very clear idea but I want to make absolutely clear, Brexit does mean Brexit, we are leaving the European Union.

DM: But you talk about this issue of passporting as it’s called for the City of London in the financial services, that is hugely complex, it could take months couldn’t it?

SIR ERIC PICKLES: It is a very big deal.  I have already had people in my surgery on Friday very worried about their jobs, people coming across from one of the large banks from America to talk to the staff, deals are being offered in Paris and in Dublin for the transfer of those jobs so we need to retain as many jobs as we can in these services.

DM: Sir Eric, good to see you, thank you very indeed, Sir Eric Pickles there.