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SOPHY RIDGE: The Lib Dem leadership race is turning into something of a stroll for the one candidate who has thrown his hat into the ring, with contender after contender stepping away from the fight it now looks pretty certain that Sir Vince Cable is going to pick up the baton from Tim Farron later this year. Sir Vince joins us now in the studio, hello, good to see you here.

SIR VINCE CABLE: Thank you.

SR: Well the story in a lot of the papers this morning is the suggestion that the government may be rowing back from austerity. Now of course you are a member of that coalition that pushed through many of those belt-tightening moves, is now the right time to loosen the belt slightly?

SIR VINCE CABLE: Well there certainly is a time to change the emphasis of policy but I just can’t understand this argument that says you either have austerity or non-austerity, I mean the world isn’t like that, you have more or less or something. I think what there is a big public mood for, and I think it’s right, is that we shift the balance and instead of just cutting, cutting public spending we have people willing to pay more tax and indeed my party campaigned in the general election saying a penny in the pound on income tax for the health service and I think people are up for that kind of change. Similarly public sector pay, I mean you can’t just have unlimited public sector pay but we should be lifting public sector pay above the present cap which pushes people’s incomes down in real terms and again we argued in the election for a phased increase and so at least people’s pay – teachers, nurses – is protected in real terms. I would also argue that it makes sense to use government’s borrowing capacity at very low interest rates to do more investment, you know, social housing, infrastructure – these are things that we could do very sensibly within sound public finance.

SR: You’ve mentioned a few things there, how about tuition fees? Because there is a suggestion from some in the Conservative party that that’s an area they could look at again. Labour have said that they want to scrap tuition fees, is it just going to be the Lib Dems now backing the idea of nine grand?

SIR VINCE CABLE: Well I think they’re panicking. I think we certainly need to look at the way the system has worked. If you remember, tuition fees were introduced under the Labour government, they were subsequently increased under the coalition, we need to see how it’s worked.

SR: So who’s panicking now, is it the government or Labour or who?

SIR VINCE CABLE: Well the Labour party have a ridiculously populist programme which doesn’t really stand up to investigation. I mean if you don’t have any form of fees, who pays for universities? How do you end this discrimination between the 40% of students who go to university and who would be subsidised as opposed to the 60% who don’t? So that would be highly inequitable.

SR: But they’re winning a lot of votes though aren’t they from young people?

SIR VINCE CABLE: It is and that’s why I think we really need to look at it but if we had more money for education, and I’d love to have more public money for education, the real pressure point at the moment is in the schools. The schools are horribly under-funded, we are getting teachers, teaching assistants being laid off so that’s where the real priority is at the moment. Yes, by all means let’s look at universities but universities are about the only bit of the publicly financed sector of the economy which are flourishing and for goodness sake, with some cheap populist gesture, killing that off would be a very dangerous and stupid thing to do.

SR: Okay, strong words there from you, Sir Vince, on that. Now let’s assume you are going to be the next Lib Dem leaders, well you are the only candidate at the moment before we get too excited about it, at the moment the Lib Dems appear to have a huge part of their policy being all about offering a second referendum on the Brexit deal, mopping up the votes of disgruntled remainers. If you are leader are you going to stick by that, because it’s not always been something you have been wholly committed to shall we say, the idea of a binary referendum?

SIR VINCE CABLE: Yes, I am committed to it. I’m not assuming I’m going to be the leader, we have a proper process, somebody else may come up and I’ll respect that, but as you say, no one else is competing. I think we’re distinct in the Lib Dems and we’re actually in a very strong position politically is that we’re the only party at the moment which is campaigning against this very, very damaging extreme hard exit, Brexit option which the government is pursuing with the support of Jeremy Corbyn, I mean that was revealed very clearly in parliament this week and we will campaign very, very strongly, together with some dissident MPs from the Labour party and the Tory party and others, to keep us within the single market, to keep us within the customs union, avoid this kind of obsession – the government have this obsession that the European Court of Justice shouldn’t be involved but the practical consequence of this is that very good arrangements – you know [Euratem?] that does excellent research based in the UK on things like cancer research, this could be destroyed because of this obsession with some red lines which have been dreamt up by the Militant Tendency in the Conservative party, this is very damaging.

SR: I want to pin you down a bit on what your policy is in Brexit because you said that you want to try and remain in the single market, you also previously said about free movement of people having to be changed or coming to an end. That sounds a little bit, as Boris Johnson might say, have cake, eat cake policy over the EU doesn’t it?

SIR VINCE CABLE: Well I do believe in the principle of the free movement of Labour and indeed the four principles of the single market but actually if you look at the way the European Union works, other member countries have some degree of restraint on movement …

SR: It’s very small …

SIR VINCE CABLE: Let me just give you an example which I dealt with when I was in government. The Germans say you cannot just freely go into Germany unless you have a German professional qualification, which is why we don’t have free trade in services, and it is that kind of practical, pragmatic step, working within the European Union, working within the single market, respecting the principles, that’s the kind of outcome we should be looking at and instead of this grandstanding that the British government has adopted, that you are either completely 100% in or you have to leave the whole thing and that’s what’s causing this enormous disastrous move into this hard Brexit that’s doing so much damage.

SR: You see I am still a little bit confused by this. Let’s have a little look now at something that you said a week after the referendum which is, ‘There should be some control over migration from the EU, this will however make it difficult to retain single market status.’ So if you accepted that then, what’s changed? I don’t understand.

SIR VINCE CABLE: It is difficult but they can be reconciled.

SR: You just said it would be difficult to retain single market status.

SIR VINCE CABLE: Well I think actually when you reflect on it, and I’ve reflected on it, it is perfectly possible to reconcile these things because other member states do that.

SR: So you’ve changed your mind since then?

SIR VINCE CABLE: Well that was put in rather stark terms. I think it is absolutely possible to remain within the single market, to respect the principle of freedom of movement but to have some degree of management of migration. Other countries do it, we should do it and …

SR: So you’re not just playing to your Lib Dem audience here and trying to paint a rosy picture?

SIR VINCE CABLE: No, I believe in this stuff and I have been fighting for the European Union and British membership for half a century, I am very committed to the project and I think my party is in exactly the right position, representing a very, very large swathe of public opinion that is becoming very alarmed at the way in which this hard Brexit option is being pursued not just by the Conservatives but by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party and they do want an alternative. When we see the economic pain kicking in, more and more people are going to want an alternative and we’re the only party offering. Just to give you a trivial example, this week’s Wimbledon is being launched and the people who normally produce the strawberries can’t produce them because the labour force has disappeared because of anxiety about their future status in Britain and that is one of hundreds and hundreds of practical examples of the way in which this extreme form of Brexit is going to harm Britain and we’ve got to stop it.

SR: I’m interested to know your thoughts on your predecessor, Tim Farron, who of course led the Lib Dems through a difficult election campaign, he came under a lot of scrutiny for some of his views on things such as gay sex, abortion and so on, that’s why he resigned according to his statement. Now let’s have a look at what one of your former senior MPs David Laws said about Tim Farron which was, ‘As a gay man I do not wish to be tolerated, I wish to be respected for who I am.’ If that’s one of your own former MPs saying that, how much damage do you think Tim Farron’s comments did to the election campaign and the Lib Dems?

SIR VINCE CABLE: Well David Laws was a very close colleague of mine and I have enormous respect for him and I think he said exactly the right thing but I’m not criticising Tim Farron, he did a great job in helping the party to recover from the terrible 2015 situation, built up a credible position in Europe which has now put us in a very strong position, built up our membership, built up our activist base. He did, as he himself acknowledged, not handle that whole issue very well of reconciling his own personal faith with his public positions on gay rights and other issues and his position was a perfectly fair one, a lot of people have private views deriving from their religion but they have to put these on one side when they are enacting public policy and he acknowledged that he hadn’t got that right and that’s why he stood down. But I very much respect him, he did a great job for the party and I respect his personal faith and I’m not suggesting for a moment that he should give that up.

SR: Okay, Sir Vince Cable, thank you very much indeed for coming on the show this morning.

SIR VINCE CABLE: Thank you.