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DERMOT MURNAGHAN:  No prizes for guessing which stories are plastered right across all the front pages this morning.  Joining me today to take a look through the day’s papers are Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP and Justice Minister, he’s announced this morning he will be campaigning to leave the EU,  June Sarpong is a TV presenter and spokesperson for the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign and Rachel Johnson, the author and broadcaster.  Very good to see you all.  Right, Dominic, let’s start with your own piece in the Times and you are arguing it’s the time to take a £33 billion burden off the shoulders of small business, where do you come up with these figures from?

DOMINIC RAAB:     Well they are figures from Open Europe and there’s also some Institute for Economic Affairs figures but look, this is a head and heart decision not taken lightly.  For me the head side of things is I want us to free up our small businesses from all that suffocating red tape, that will be good for jobs.  I also want us to energetically trade with other parts of the world from Latin America to Asia, that’s going to be good for things like the cost of living.

DM: So what’s the most suffocating bit of red tape?  

DOMINIC RAAB:     Well there are things like the Working Time Directive which we’ve talked a lot about.  

DM: So like tired lorry drivers running people over then?  You think they should be able to drive for as long as they like?

DOMINIC RAAB: No, with something like the WTD there’s a really difficult balance about social policy, making sure that businesses aren’t hamstrung by extra costs but also getting the social policy right.  Should that be done by people accountable to the British people like me or should it be done in some faraway place by people they have no control over?  That’s why ultimately it’s a head issue but it’s also a heart issue.  I want Britain to be master of their own destiny and I feel that the EU has tested to breaking point the democratic country … sorry, excuse me, the democratic contract in this country and that is why I think that people gutturally feel that there is something rotten with what’s going on.  … Actually what all the business surveys show, particularly the British Chambers of Commerce, is that big multi nationals quite like the EU, they are good at the corporate lobbying.  The SMEs, the small businesses, don’t have a say, don’t have a voice, provide two-thirds of the jobs and struggle because they don’t have the HR departments, they don’t have the deep pockets to deal with all of these costs being pulled down on them by unaccountable bureaucrats.  … Let’s remember here, one of the reasons Boris has hung on is he wanted to see what the Sovereignty Bill proposals would be.  It is a very serious issue and missed the pantomime, it’s a very important point.  A basic cardinal rule of EU law is that it trumps national law and he wanted to wait and see whether any of the proposals that come out from the government can deal with that and I think it is, when push comes to shove, irreconcilable because it is a cardinal rule of British democracy that the people watching this show get to throw out their rulers.  

DM: Dominic Raab, you would obviously like to see Boris Johnson coming in on your side.  If he does this then becomes a leadership issue as well does it not?  You cannot imagine either one of these giants of the Conservative party – David Cameron and Boris Johnson – whoever loses has to sling their hook don’t they, they have to go?

DOMINIC RAAB:     I don't think that’s the case at all and I don’t want to prejudge what would happen afterwards, I think that we now have the opportunity of a lifetime to have a big debate on the big issues and actually that is far more important than the Westminster pantomime.  

DM: Dominic, this rather keys into the story that you picked out of the Telegraph on rigidity of EU rules.  

DOMINIC RAAB:     Well Janet Daley typically has nailed it.  She starts off talking about that in the EU we can’t police our borders because you have got unqualified free movement and then she goes onto say that people keep talking about the EU and the size of it and its uniformity that Rachel has touched on, as a strength but rigidity becomes a brittleness which is weakness and it makes it far more likely to break because it is not capable of dealing with the big issues from the eurozone crisis to the migration crisis to the issue of Putin on our doorstep and I think she has absolutely nailed this idea that big is not always better and actually, just touching on Rachel’s point, I think in an EU bloc, if the EU is going to survive and thrive, it needs to be more pluralist, it needs to have more flexibility and what we’ve seen both with this EU deal and I don't think …

DM: Well the Prime Minister says he’s got that deal, that’s the point.   

DOMINIC RAAB: Well we can assess the adequacy of it, I think he fought really hard but if you look at the EU as a whole, the juggernaut over the next 20 to 30 years, it is that rigidity which makes it weak.  

DM: This photograph is in all the papers, this was on Friday night wasn’t it?  George Galloway and Nigel Farage, strange bedfellows indeed.   Dominic Raab, are you pleased to see those two getting together, do you think that’s a vote winner?

DOMINIC RAAB:     Hold on, the truth is, people like Nigel Farage and George Galloway for all that I disagree with them on key issues, do tap into bits of the public that others don’t but if the suggestion is that the out campaign isn’t highbrow – you have got the likes of Michael Gove, one of the great social Tory reformers, you have got on the Labour side Frank Field who I think is probably one of the most heavyweight Labour politicians in the House of Commons saying look, we’ve got to be able to control our borders, this is a guy who made his name talking about poverty and social mobility.  So actually there is an eclectic group getting together but I think the sum total will reach parts that the elite campaigning for in won’t get near.  

DM: You won an election last May, your party won an election in the centre ground, a moderate nation, the whole campaign was saying that Labour even under Ed Miliband had gone too far to the extremes.   

DOMINIC RAAB:     Well this is a referendum in which everyone gets to have their say so you can’t just shut out people you don’t like the look or smell of and I’m sure inside there are lots of people … Jeremy Corbyn is further to the left fringe on many key issues than those two.  

DM: Dominic, this is an interesting in the Sun saying double exit in a week potentially in June, what’s that about?

DOMINIC RAAB:     Somebody has pointed out that the timing of the referendum on the 23rd June could mean that all the home nations in the European Football Championship could be out of the Cup by the time people go to the polls and aside from the tabloid fun it is quite an interesting question because this is going to be a very guttural, emotional, instinctive vote as well as all the rational slicing and dicing of the arguments and I just wonder if England or Northern Ireland or Wales did particularly well, whether you would get a spur of patriotism and nationalism or whether actually it might work the other way.  

DM: Thank you all very much indeed, I’m sure we will all be discussing this for an awful lot more over the next four months.