ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now Parliament will be officially dissolved tomorrow, it will bring to an end five years of coalition and many said that would never last of course.  Well as an election looms there is a strong possibility that another coalition or something like it is on the cards but can the Conservatives under David Cameron stop that from happening?  Well I’m joined now by the former Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, on his last day as an MP.  He first became a Conservative MP way back in 1974 and a very good morning to you Sir Malcolm.

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Yes it was, I was a very young man then.

DM: Yes and 40 years and more in parliament.  It must be said though, you didn’t want it to end this way did you, because you were caught up in that rather silly sting from your point of view about how well connected you were.  Do you feel a bit of a twit about that?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: No, I feel very angry.  The truth of the matter is that I’m not the first person, I doubt if I’ll be the last person in public life who is damaged when a rather shoddy, third-rate sting TV programme goes for you, that’s the bad news.  The good news as far as I’m concerned is there is a parliamentary inquiry, they have already made it clear they are not remotely interested in cut and paste TV programmes, they will look at the actual transcript of what was said, I am co-operating very closely with them, I am delighted they are doing that and I will of course accept their judgement and the quicker they reach it, as far as I’m concerned, the happier I’ll be.

DM: So you stand down as an MP tomorrow, is that the end of your parliamentary career or could you see …

MALCOLM RIFKIND: My parliamentary career, of course, I’m not an MP.

DM: But could you see it continuing in the House of Lords?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Well I don't think we should speculate about what might or might not happen.  I actually had the opportunity to go to the Lords after I ceased being Foreign Secretary back in 1997, I had that opportunity and I preferred to come back to the Commons but of course I am now in my late 60s so it was touch and go whether I would fight another term or not.  My public life continues because most of my public life is in regard to foreign policy, international issues and when I am travelling or meeting or involved in foreign policy issues, it’s not because I was the MP for Kensington, much though I enjoyed that, it was because I was a former Foreign Secretary so my diary is already very, very full.  Don’t worry, I will not be putting my boots up.

DM: Okay and you also have the luxury of commenting on this upcoming general election without participating in it for the first time.

MALCOLM RIFKIND:  Yes, that’s right.  Well no, not the first time, I was out of parliament for eight years.  

DM: Of course you were.   So tell me, do you think the Conservatives can still win an overall majority?

MALCOLM RIFKIND:  I think it is going to be incredibly difficult for anyone to win an overall majority because we are in a very different situation.  You get overall majorities when the two largest parties between them get 80% of the vote, that’s not going to happen.  It’s not going to happen in Scotland but it’s not going to happen probably in the rest of the kingdom as well so I think unless something extraordinary takes place the Conservatives will be the largest party, will continue to form a government but it won’t be a majority one.

DM: What do you read into this poll bounce, in one poll it must be said, in the YouGov poll today on the front of the Sunday Times,  that Mr Miliband seems to have had.  Do you think that flows from that debate, that discussion, that interview with Jeremy Paxman?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: I think you should ask that to Nick Clegg.  Remember how well he did during the last general election when he appeared on television and everyone thought he was fantastic, it didn’t have a slightest effect on the day of the election so no, I think that these polls that we are seeing at the moment are a reflection on the fact that people had very low expectations of Ed Miliband because of all the adverse publicity he’s had – fairly or unfairly – over the last four years and then he came across as a rather lively energetic active person and they quite liked that.

DM: So those were the fears that we understand were had at Number Ten about having a head to head debate against Ed Miliband, would he have been better then, Mr Cameron, just taking him on head to head and being able to refute some of the allegations from  his point of view that Ed Miliband was making?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Well there are two dimensions to these TV programmes, if they happen, these face to face during a general election.  One of them is pure entertainment and on the pure entertainment front, the Prime Minister tries to look statesmanlike, did look statesmanlike, looked a much more natural person to be a Prime Minister but people weren’t voting in the general election immediately afterwards, they were voting on the programme and Miliband was far more entertaining because he lost his cool, he was angry, he was humorous and so forth, that was good entertainment but the real purpose of any TV debates during the election for the public is once the entertainment is over, to actually judge who forms the next government.

DM: All right and strategy is very important, we’ll talk about that in a moment or two but while we’re on the tactics, do you also think that one of the mistakes of last week was the Prime Minister announcing that he will be standing down as Prime Minister and of course it takes a while to bed a new Prime Minister or a new leader in, he can’t do a full five years.  

MALCOLM RIFKIND: I was puzzled by that, I’m not sure what the thinking was.  I think it was to try and come across as somebody, I’m not power mad, I’ve got a job to do and when I finish the job then it’ll be time to move on and it’s certainly true that we’ve got a sort of unofficial rule that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair both fell victim to, after ten years the public say thank you very much, don’t ring us, we’ll ring you.  So there was no great astonishment in what he said, it was the timing of it just before a general election that I was surprised at.

DM: And also naming some of his potential successors.  Which one would you favour from the list the Prime Minister gave us?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Well the one thing one should assume is that you cannot remotely assume now who in four or five years is going to be the frontrunner, it could quite easily be none of the three.  

DM: But Boris Johnson, Theresa May, George Osborne, they are all strong candidates.  

MALCOLM RIFKIND: If the leadership election was going to be tomorrow, yes, of course they would be the three front runners but we already know we are talking about five years ahead.

DM: But which one would you favour then if it was tomorrow?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Oh don’t tempt me on that one, don’t tempt me on that one!  I couldn’t dream of sharing such a confidence.  

DM: Okay, well tell me about the strategy then, it is being said that perhaps the Conservatives with their election supremo Lynton Crosby there are running too much of a negative campaign at the moment, demonising benefits claimants, immigrants and of course, Ed Miliband.

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Well I don’t think you are being entirely fair.  I can be nice and objective now, I’m not a candidate so let me try and be objective.  It is right to go hard on the very excellent state of the economy, that’s what the last general election was about, the government came into office with this massive austerity programme.  Whether the government deserves it or not, the fact is our economy is doing better than pretty well anybody in Europe, unemployment’s falling, inflation’s low, all the other things we know about, that’s damn good news so the old saying in this country is stick with nurse for fear of something worse.  The public don’t love the Tories but for the time being they appear to loathe the Liberal Democrats and they just do not see Miliband as a credible alternative Prime Minister.

DM: But don’t they need a bit more vision?  I was interested the Prime Minister did talk in his speech yesterday about sunlit uplands but he didn’t say what exists on that plateau with the sun shining on it, it could be barren.  

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Well the whole point about visions is you can’t go into the precise detail and what the public expenditure implication is of a vision.  A vision is an ideal, is an aspiration and you have to use that language, you are quite right.  During a general election campaign I bet you will see Cameron transform from the cool sedate statesman to the very active, hyperactive political campaigner.  He’s good at that, it’s what he did when he first became leader.

DM: So you think there is going to be a change of course?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: I’m not sure about that, I think it was always intended there should be one but I think what we will see is a combination of the two.  The public, on the day as in 1992 when John Major beat Neil Kinnock, the public will make a judgement as to who they want as Prime Minister, they will also make a judgement about the state of the economy.  If had already been in power for ten years then it might be time for a change but this is a government that has only had one term and normally one term governments get second terms unless there is an obvious preferred alternative and at this moment in time there isn’t one.  And we haven’t even mentioned what seems likely to happen to the Labour party in Scotland.

DM: Well absolutely, I was going to get on to that but whatever it looks like, referring to your first answer there, it looks like there is going to be a coalition …

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Or a minority government, much more likely.

DM: Whatever way that partnership is done would the Conservatives prefer to get into bed in some way shape or form, not necessarily a coalition, with the Lib Dems again?

MALCOLM RIFKIND: I think the arguments for coalition were much stronger, they still exist but they were much stronger five years ago because the problem five years ago, and I remember having a conversation with David Cameron the day after the election when he explained why he wanted a coalition, we had this massive austerity programme and for it to carry credibility with the markets it not only had to be the right programme but we had to be satisfied the government would be in power long enough to implement it.  With a coalition there was that certainty, without it in theory the government could have fallen at any time.  We don’t have that problem now.

DM: You talk about the SNP and Labour, of course UKIP haven’t gone away and they are still polling 12, 13, 14%.

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Sure, you are right but it is a totally different situation.  UKIP look highly unlikely to win more than one or two seats but they could damage in marginal constituencies where it is Labour or Tory.  The problem with the SNP from the Labour party point of view is they are starting this campaign 50 seats behind the Tories.  If in addition to that they are going to lose 40 seats to the SNP which is highly possible, then the idea that they can not just win in England but win dramatically in England and overtake the Tory party is complete pie in the sky so the Nationalists are being dishonest when saying it doesn’t matter whether you vote for us or the Labour party, there will still be a Labour government, there won’t be.  

DM: Okay, and I’m going to be discussing that in a moment or two with Lucy Powell from Labour but the last question with you Sir Malcolm, your foreign affairs expertise – Yemen.  The situation there with Saudi Arabia getting involved, the Iranians on the ground there, something pretty nasty is happening.

MALCOLM RIFKIND: Oh it is potentially hugely serious because you could have a combination of two things.  You could have and indeed are quite likely to have a land invasion of Yemen by Saudi forces with Egyptian support and therefore you have a whole war going on in the south-west of that peninsula but of crucial significance is of course whoever controls Yemen controls the access to the southern entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and because the people who have created the problem in Yemen are Shi’a’s who are friends of the Iranians, the Iranians control the Persian Gulf.  If they control also what is called the Bab-Al-Mandab, that entrance to the Red Sea, there is no way the Egyptians and the Saudis are going to allow that so you could have a hot war in the not very distant future.  

DM: Sir Malcolm, on that note thank you very much indeed, Sir Malcolm Rifkind there, thank you.