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DERMOT MURNAGHAN:  Now this week President Obama will visit the United Kingdom where he is expected to make a candid, quote unquote, intervention in the EU debate but the President has been urged by many on the Leave side not to get involved with Boris Johnson claiming it would be outrageous hypocrisy.  Well Stephen Gethins is the SNP’s Europe spokesman and he’s with me right now, a very good morning to you Mr Gethins.  Well should President Obama keep his nose out of internal UK affairs?   

STEPHEN GETHINS: Well he’s coming over with a message about security but to be honest I think this is a decision for the people of the UK and they will take that decision on the 23rd of June and they are going to make up their mind on a whole range of issues.  

DM: But I mean President Obama, given the relationship between Europe and the United States over so many decades, does he have a perfect right to express his views as the leader of the free world, so to speak?   

STEPHEN GETHINS: Well if the UK chooses to leave the European Union it will have an impact across our European partners, it will have the biggest impact here in the UK, I think a detrimental impact so of course everybody is entitled to their views but fundamentally the people making the decision will be the citizens of the UK.

DM: But you know where I’m going with this because if President Obama, a foreign statesman, has a right to come over here and express a view we know what the SNP say about Westminster politicians butting their noses into Scottish business.

STEPHEN GETHINS: Yes, well look, I think he comes over, it is entirely legitimate that he has a view on this but fundamentally it is up to the people on it.  Look, Westminster politicians never hold from sallying forth and telling the people of Scotland what they ought to do but actually there was a Project Fear style coming up and telling people all the disasters that would befall them if all of a sudden Scotland was independent and it has been unfortunate that actually some of those same people are campaigning to remain and actually some of those who are campaigning to leave are employing the same kind of Project Fear tactics.

DM: Ah, hold on, I want to get into that in a moment and I think you were referring in particular to Alistair Darling who we heard from a couple of days ago …

STEPHEN GETHINS: Well not just Alistair Darling.  

DM: Yes, but who led the Remain campaign in Scotland as well but they were right though, you say Project Fear but when it came to the economic arguments, particularly about the oil price …

STEPHEN GETHINS: They weren’t right …

DM: Well it’s not the $120 a barrel you said it would be.  

STEPHEN GETHINS: And just one other thing – it doesn’t work.  What was interesting in the Scottish independence referendum, the independence side, the yes side went from about 27% in the polls up to 45, they gained 20 points during that campaign.  Now by anybody’s count that’s pretty good.  Now the Remain side, and this is a concern for me as somebody who passionately believes in our membership of the European Union, is that I’m glad that polls are okay in Scotland but we’ve got a lot of hard work to do but getting a coherent argument from other parties has been very difficult and these Project Fear tactics just don’t work.  

DM: Okay, Project Fear then, but Alistair Darling expressed some very strong views about how scary the economic future in his view and indeed as he quoted, the IMF’s view, the economic future would be for the UK outside the European Union.  Do you think that tactic is wrong?

STEPHEN GETHINS: I think it’s wrong to try and scare people into voting a certain way.  I believe that the European Union has made us greener, wealthier, fairer and has benefited our economy, there’s a really positive story to tell.  Nobody is saying the EU is perfect but there’s a story to tell about the benefits to small business, the benefits to our environment, the benefits to workers rights and to paternity rights and I think that we need to be getting those across.  I think trying to scare people into voting a certain way, the lesson from the Scottish independence referendum was that just doesn’t work because people often see through that and they want to know what are you positively promoting.

DM: Now I’ve recently been talking to the Northern Ireland Secretary, Theresa Villiers, who of course is on the Leave side of the campaign and she says – and of course there are huge links between Northern Ireland in particular and Scotland, geographical proximity, ferries between the two areas, she says that nothing would really change in the event of a Brexit, that there wouldn’t need to be more security controls, passport checks and things like that.  What’s your view?

STEPHEN GETHINS: One thing that I have noticed … look, Theresa Villiers is arguing for a certain side, she wants to leave the European Union and she was using her position to make that argument and that’s an entirely legitimate thing to do but let’s take it in the round.  We talk about politicians from outside the UK, the Irish are very worried about this and I can’t blame them for being worried about it and if you think about the impact on cross-border trade in Northern Ireland and I think about the strong relationships that we have, family and economic, with Northern Ireland and Ireland as well, the European Union strengthens that and benefits our economy from that.

DM: But just to get right down to the practicalities, I know a lot of people … we’ve got an Old Firm game today haven’t we and lots and lots of people, thousands of people probably, are going to be coming over from Northern Ireland to watch that.  In the event of a Brexit, because the UK cannot be sure that people in Northern Ireland are not coming across that border which Theresa Villiers says will not change in the event of Brexit, would they have to have their passports checked when they land in Stranraer?  

STEPHEN GETHINS: You pick on a sore point because I’m a Dundee United supporter and we went out in the other semi-final yesterday so it’s not the best day to be picking up on semi-finals but the security issue is an important one.  Look, one thing that I find really disheartening and actually quite distasteful around the tragic events in Brussels was how quickly the debate around the EU was drawn into that, that did nobody any favours but as we get into this, just as the tragedies that occurred in London and the tragedy that occurred in Brussels, what we found is that no member state border was being crossed for these atrocities to be carried out.  In fact in Brussels as the investigations go on, it could be that the perpetrators of the attack didn’t even have to change Metro lines in order to make the attack so I don't think it’s relevant.  Where it is relevant is to talk about security organisations working more closely together and in Europe that’s another area that makes us safer as part of the European Union.  

DM: Mr Gethins, sorry, must end it there.  Very good to see you, Stephen Gethins there, the SNP Europe spokesman.