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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then the Prime Minister has promised a full RAF campaign against Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria, that’s the headline, you might have seen it in lots of the papers, the Sunday Times as well this morning.  Joining me to discuss that and the rest of the top stories are Trevor Phillips, the broadcaster and former Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Chairwoman of Visit England Lady Penny Cobham and the journalism and campaigner, Dame Esther Rantzen, a very good morning to you all.  This Sunday Times front page, much discussed, Esther, ‘Britain will bomb ISIS in Syria’, it seems that elements of Britain have already done that because of being embedded with coalition forces.  

ESTHER RANTZEN: I find Syria so incredibly depressing, every aspect of it, that I was thrilled today and pardon me leaping ahead if I’m doing wrong but in the Sunday Times there was a much more hopeful story about Syria which was that George Weidenfeld, the publisher, a Jew, is financing a rescue mission to get Christians out of Syria so that they are not massacred and in this terrible situation where religion is pitted against religion, where there’s civil war, terrible raging civil war which takes no hostages, just beheads them, it’s lovely to have this sort of hopeful story.  

DM: Trevor, as Esther was saying there, people are confused about what we’re trying to achieve there because last time round when there was going to be a vote on it in parliament it was all about trying to remove Assad, this time it’s actually fighting Assad’s opponents.  

TREVOR PHILLIPS: Yes, I think though that there are a couple of things that are clear.  First of all, ISIS have to know that we mean it and I think that’s what Cameron is trying to do with this whole issue of bombing.  In a sense the details of it don’t matter, what needs to be clear is that the rest of the world says stop.  The second thing which is in the story but isn’t drawn attention to, is that Cameron I think rightly says that the big fight domestically is one of ideas.  The reason that these kids are going off to Syria and so on is because they think what is being done there by these people is heroic and bombing won’t solve that.  

ESTHER RANTZEN: It will make it worse won’t it?

TREVOR PHILLIPS: I don't think it will make it worse, I think you’ve got to understand I spent quite a lot of time in journalism dealing with some of these people and one of the things you’ve got to understand is being nice to them isn’t going to make them feel warmer.  They think we’re decadent, they think we’re finished so there’s no …

DM: There’s no negotiating.  

TREVOR PHILLIPS: There’s no negotiation but I think the place where you’ve got to do something is with our own young people, to persuade them that this way of life is better than that.  

DM: Okay, let’s go through some of the other big talking points and this of course, the remarkable Sun obtained video footage of the Queen as a very young girl before the war and the Nazi salute or was it?  It’s in all the papers, in the Times on Page 3, ‘Who could have done this to me?’ apparently the thoughts of Her Majesty.  I was thinking back, Esther, to when I was a kid growing up in the 60s, we used to play war games and sometimes you’d be the Germans and you’d do a Nazi salute, someone could have filmed that.  It’s not exactly a big deal even if she was doing that.  

ESTHER RANTZEN: I just hope that the Palace will not take action, that people won’t extend this story.  For me it’s a 24 hour wonder, there is a six or seven year old playing a game with family in the garden and frankly nobody could feel more strongly than I do about Nazism and about what happened in the Holocaust.  

DM: That goes for everyone really doesn’t it?    

ESTHER RANTZEN: I do, I do but as a Jew I would like to say the Queen has been fantastic.  As a young woman she was fantastic, her family was fantastic, if this country hadn’t been as they were I wouldn’t be here today and nor would my whole family so as far as I’m concerned it’s a non-event.  

DM: What do you think, Trevor? Were the Sun right to let us see it?   

TREVOR PHILLIPS: Of course. Roy Greenslade and Peter Preston who are journalistic elders say, what are you supposed to do?  You’re given this, are you then supposed to suppress it?  I think that the slightly, if I can put it this way … first of all, nobody thinks the Queen is or was ever a Nazi.  Think about what was happening at that time, Andrew Morton in the Daily Mail I think writes rather soberly about the feelings of the Establishment at that time which were frankly pro-appeasement, everybody …

ESTHER RANTZEN: Some.  

TREVOR PHILLIPS: No, actually frankly the overwhelming view was the way to deal with Hitler was to negotiate and so forth so this was not out of place and I imagine this was just a joke, they were having a joke.  Maybe they were actually imitating Charlie Chaplin, we don’t know.  

DM: Well that’s the point isn’t it, ridicule him.  

TREVOR PHILLIPS: But the point I wanted to make about the reaction, one of two examples we’ve got today of the Establishment response to attacks can get it wrong, the other one being the BBC.  To suggest somehow it is a big vulgar and it’s wrong for a commercial newspaper to do something which is what it does, I don't think that is the right response.  Unless the Palace is also then going to say, by the way the Sun doesn’t have to sell newspapers and it will support all the journalists that will be unemployed if they go out of business.  

DM: Okay, let’s get some more stories and Esther, you’ve got Hitchcock writ large, killer seagulls it says, are they really killers?  They killed a dog or something haven’t they?  

ESTHER RANTZEN: Oh it’s a hideous picture and my poor mother was always terrified of birds and I used to reassure her and say they were lovely little fluffy things.  No they’re not and anyone who has got eyeball to eyeball with a gull, my goodness those are large birds aren’t they?  Big beaks, nasty things.  Sorry, I feel a bit strongly because they have desecrated my much loved car last night.  

DM: How do you know it was the gulls?

ESTHER RANTZEN: Because you can always tell with gulls, they don’t look at anything else.  So next time I go on a beach I shall wear a very large hat.  

DM: Trevor, the last story is about the BBC of course and much debate of course about whether it’s going to get its wings clipped, excuse the pun there following on from the last story.  ‘Auntie is not undergoing involuntary euthanasia’ by Anne McElroy there.  

TREVOR PHILLIPS: There is a nice piece by Anne in the Observer in which she basically says, steady on everybody, nobody is proposing the abolition of the BBC, nobody is proposing killing anybody off but the BBC’s response which has been back off or Strictly gets is, it seems to me has been a little bit over the top and is a kind of example of an Establishment body which has somehow got itself into the place where it seems indecent even just to ask the question are the ways we are doing things right now still the right way?  

ESTHER RANTZEN: Do you really see the BBC as an Establishment body?  

TREVOR PHILLIPS: Yes.  

ESTHER RANTZEN: You’ve not met BBC producers …

TREVOR PHILLIPS: I’ve worked at the BBC, I’ve won prizes for the BBC and I know exactly what you’re going to say.  The BBC thinks of itself as sort of full of stormy petrels but actually …

ESTHER RANTZEN: It’s anarchic isn’t it?

TREVOR PHILLIPS: No.  

ESTHER RANTZEN: You don’t find it anarchic?

TREVOR PHILLIPS: If you’ve read Roger Mosey’s book, the former number two, what you see is a very, very strong culture, and it’s a liberal culture, it’s one that is completely at one with my sort of North London liberal instincts but it is by no means anarchic or radical.    

DM: Sorry I need to shut it down, that was very interesting!  Okay, Esther, Penny, Trevor, good to see you all, thank you very much for taking us through some of the stories there and lots of seagull links here, stormy petrels as well!