Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Emily Thornberry Shadow Foreign Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

SOPHY RIDGE: With just ten days left to make a decision on Brexit, tomorrow MPs will once again have the opportunity to spell out what kind of Brexit they want to see but the indication from Downing Street is that they aren’t done yet with the Prime Minister’s deal. Meaningful Vote 4 could be just around the corner and five Labour MPs voted for the deal last week but many more need to switch sides if the Prime Minister has any chance of getting her deal through Parliament. Well joining us now is the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, thank you very much for being on the programme. Less than two weeks to make a decision, no sign of a deal yet, I mean where do we go from here?

EMILY THORNBERRY: It’s really hard. Jeremy is trying to bring people together and we are trying to see what Parliament can agree on. I mean the difficulty is that it is also last minute and the reason for that is we have been trying to tell the Prime Minister for a couple of years now the sort of thing that people could agree about but she just doesn’t listen.

SR: You need more MPs to compromise don’t you, your policy about trying to find a solution, a cross-party solution, I mean you voted or abstained on quite a few different options, do you think some of your colleagues need to do the same?

EMILY THORNBERRY: I think the MPs need to compromise, of course they do. We do think that what we have been suggesting is an entirely thought out, you know, we have been talking to Europe about it, we have talked to experts about it and what we’ve said is that we want to be in a customs union, we want to be close to a single market, we need to have a dynamic alliance of rules and regulations so that we can be outside the European Union but not very far because we think that the 52/48 have actually spoken an essential truth which is that yes, we do need to leave the European Union, there was a referendum but we mustn’t ignore the 48% and we need to therefore leave but not go far.

SR: So you are talking about the fact that you want to be in a customs union, you want to be close to the EU, just explain to me what it is that you have an issue with about the Withdrawal Agreement, the Prime Minister’s deal that she puts forward to the House of Commons.

EMILY THORNBERRY: Well the problem with the Withdrawal Agreement is that first of all she has set her face so against being in a customs union …

SR: But there is a customs union in the Withdrawal Agreement, that’s the backstop.

EMILY THORNBERRY: Well there’s the backstop but the difficulty is with the backstop is that it only applies to part of the United Kingdom and not all of the United Kingdom.

SR: No, it’s the whole of the United Kingdom that is effectively within …

EMILY THORNBERRY: But what we’ve said is that we need to have some sort of … So okay, she puts forward a suggestion but what you are really saying this morning is that she’s put forward this idea that’s full of unicorns and rainbows that doesn’t make any sense and the European Union has said, all right Theresa, if you really insist on this, we’ll agree to that but we want to have an insurance policy and the insurance policy is not acceptable. What we should do is ditch this and just go, actually you know, what will work will be to be in a customs union and to be close to the single market and that’s how we should have negotiated throughout. She should have listened to Parliament, she should have consulted, there is some common sense in Parliament, she should have paid attention to what we’ve been saying.

SR: So what is it specifically about the Withdrawal Agreement that Labour won’t vote for?

EMILY THORNBERRY: It’s because it’s so uncertain. It’s essentially saying let’s leave and then whoever is going to be the leader of the Tory party – and goodness only knows who it might be – if they remain Prime Minister what it is that they will negotiate and we cannot trust them. We can’t trust them and business needs to be sure about where it is that we’re going and what it is that we’re doing next which is why I’ve said, actually I did Prime Minister’s Questions I think two and a half years ago and I made it clear in the House of Commons then that on our side of the House we think that we should be in a customs union. No if’s, no but’s, be in a customs union.

SR: I understand you are saying that you don’t know the shape of the future but that’s the EU’s fault isn’t it because they laid out right in the beginning that we need to sort out the divorce before the future relationship can be sorted so the divorce is the Withdrawal Agreement and we’re still struggling to find out what it is…

EMILY THORNBERRY: If you are looking for faults, the fault is this right, is that we’ve had a referendum, people say they want to leave, there has to be another injection of democracy after that. We can’t just say we are going to leave and then hand it over to Theresa May and let her do whatever she wants with our country. She ought to have been listening and there needed to be a democratic input. We said democratic input should be a Meaningful Vote and a Meaningful Vote is something with meaning, it’s come back with your suggestions, Parliament can vote on it and if we don’t like it, you can go away, have a rethink and then go back to Europe and negotiate something with a bigger mandate from the whole of Parliament but she’s been taking the mickey. She should have come back in October, she put it back to November, then December, then January and even with days to go she is still saying it’s my deal or no deal and that is not meaningful, that is not democracy, that is Theresa May stamping her feet and saying I want this, no one else is allowed to do anything else. No wonder she’s in trouble, I mean she’s out of control. She’s not listening to anyone, no one knows what it is that she’s going to do next. I think her judgement has been undermined and yet we don’t know whether she is going to remain Prime Minister, if we are going to get someone else, who that other person is going to be or what the future is. It is a mess and as I say, all I am trying to say to you this morning is that we have as the opposition been really trying to engage in a way which is helpful, brings a bit of common sense to a debate.

SR: Okay, you are talking about the need for a meaningful vote, so Labour’s position is moving towards what you describe as a meaningful vote, what others might describe as a second referendum. I just wanted to look at …

EMILY THORNBERRY: Our meaningful vote was come back with your ideas and then get it through Parliament and Parliament had to have the final say but because she wasn’t prepared to do any backwards and forwards with us, so she wasn’t prepared to listen to us saying actually we need to be a customs union, for her to go I don’t really like a customs union, are you sure? At least have a discussion and between us we could come to some form of solution and this is what Jeremy is trying to do now but this is why we are doing it so much at the last minute was because until now we have been blocked from that by a Prime Minister saying ‘I’m in charge and it’s my way or the highway’.

SR: So are you going to call a confidence motion in the Prime Minister now?

EMILY THORNBERRY: We shall see. I mean obviously it seem that a time may come where we will need to call another confidence motion.

SR: This week? You haven’t got much time, ten days before we leave …

EMILY THORNBERRY: I know but it’s a collective decision and not one that I can make on your programme I’m afraid.

SR: Okay, a collective decision as in around the Shadow Cabinet table?

EMILY THORNBERRY: Yes, it’s done by the leadership in consultation with senior members.

SR: Okay, now we might be in election territory clearly, what would Labour’s position be going into that election? Would it be that we want to leave with a deal or would it be that actually we want to put the whole thing back to people with a second referendum?

EMILY THORNBERRY: The principle is, and further some of the half a million people who belong to the Labour party are watching this programme this morning, but the principle is that they have a say in what our manifesto is, there isn’t a kind of, as it was with Theresa May’s last manifesto, it isn’t a couple of people in a back room saying …

SR: We might have a snap election though …

EMILY THORNBERRY: Well we had a snap election last time, it was a snap election last time.

SR: We have been negotiating Brexit for years now, surely you should know what Labour’s position will be going into an election.

EMILY THORNBERRY: Well I can tell you what Labour’s position is now and I can tell you what I would think would be in the manifesto but I can’t be sure because it is not for me to decide, it is up to the membership to decide. We have a process …

SR: Would it be leaving the EU or not?

EMILY THORNBERRY: So what we would need to do, we have to abide by the result of the referendum and the problem is at the moment is that we’re in a complete deadlock so the question would be how do we break the deadlock? Do we break the deadlock by way of being able to agree something in Parliament? If we can’t agree something in Parliament then what do we do? Do we have a general election or do we have a popular vote? These things need to be sorted out because we can’t be left …

SR: Would we leave the EU or not under a Labour government?

EMILY THORNBERRY: I think that we’re likely to leave the EU but I think it is something that we need to agree ourselves and I think there is a strong argument for asking the people to have the final say on this, particularly as everything is so controversial at this stage.

SR: Okay, if we can have a look, your colleague Barry Gardiner said this week that ‘the Labour party is not a remain party now’, is he right?

EMILY THORNBERRY: We are internationalists, we are Europeans and I think it is quite difficult for us to leave the European Union, most of us campaigned to remain and I think in our hearts we want to remain but the difficulty is that we have to square that with democracy, we’re democrats above everything else and if the people want us to leave then we have to leave and it’s been our job to try to make sure that we leave on terms that cause the least amount of damage to jobs and to the economy.

SR: So in your heart you want to stay?

EMILY THORNBERRY: In my heart I want to stay, I think it’s in Britain’s interests to remain in the European Union without a doubt but actually what tops everything else in this is democracy and if the people want us to leave then, as I say, it’s my job as a public servant to do as I’m told and to do it in a way that doesn’t harm our country. If public opinion has changed, if the public want to remain then that’s obviously a challenge for all of us and we need to think again about that or if we end up in a deadlock or we end up in a situation where we may be going for no deal, then I think it’s right for us to go to the people and say, do you want to have for example Theresa May’s deal or to remain and in those circumstances I would obviously be campaigning to remain.

SR: I went down to the Brexit march on Friday where lots of leave voters were saying how frustrated they were by the fact that we weren’t leaving on Friday as the Prime Minister had promised and I spoke to one girl there who was 17 years old, she was standing underneath the Suffragette flag and what she said has really stayed with me so I just want to put to you what she said, if that’s okay. She was talking about the Suffragettes, “They fought for my right to vote and then I’m here to fight for that vote to be counted. If we don’t leave the European Union then democracy is just gone.” It feels like there is going to be a huge crisis of faith in democracy if there’s another referendum, if we stay in the EU.

EMILY THORNBERRY: This is something that we are wrestling with, I understand that. The first thing I’d say, and I don’t want to make a cheap point but she wouldn’t be able to vote and to be able to vote if I got my way or if Labour got our way, 16 year olds would be able to vote and of course there is an argument that if 16 and 17 year olds were able to vote then there would be a much larger proportion of the population wanting to remain, although of course not that girl but yes, I think … I think the whole point is that we had a referendum, we got a particular result and I personally don’t really understand why 70% of the population at this moment don’t want to remain in the European Union but they don’t. I personally think that the reason for that is that we’ve not had the sort of debate that we need to have, I think that it’s been completely disrespectful on both sides with people just shouting at each other as opposed to just concentrating on the issues and looking at them honestly and saying really, is this helping our country? Are we getting all the things we were promised during the referendum by the leavers or are we having to compromise so much that if we were to stand back and look at it, is it really in our interests to leave? I wish that we could have a debate along those lines but we don’t seem to have and people have got dug in and given that people have got dug in and given that public opinion has not changed in such a major way, I can still see the argument for us needing to leave.

SR: Okay, the deadline is fast approaching, would you be comfortable with a longer extension and taking part in the European Union elections if it meant leaving with a deal?

EMILY THORNBERRY: We have to … in practice I can’t see how we can get everything organised in a couple of weeks. Again we just need a bit of honesty injected into this so I think we will need to extend. I don’t personally think that we need to be involved in the European elections, I think that there is a side protocol that can be negotiated.

SR: Are you preparing for the European elections?

EMILY THORNBERRY: Well yes, obviously we have to make preparations for it because if that happens then it happens and we need to make sure we stand part of it but we think there is another way through this and we think that if we need to have a longer period of time than is currently on offer then it can be done. The process is difficult but where politics says yes, we should do it then you can find a way through this process.

SR: While we have got you on I want to ask you a question that isn’t Brexit related.

EMILY THORNBERRY: Oh good!

SR: And that is the government’s decision to try and potentially increase the number of stop and search that the police use to try and combat knife crime, 48 people stabbed to death this year alone. Is that something that you welcome?

EMILY THORNBERRY: I think that we need to do everything that we can in order to protect our youngsters. I have lost far too many constituents to knife crime, I write letters to grieving mothers and go round and see them and it is the worst part of my job. I’ve had teenagers in my borough … I have worried about them and we have had times in Islington where everyone has been very scared and where good kids who wouldn’t normally carry knives for goodness sake, have started carrying them because they want to defend themselves. We have found knives that are hidden in the parks. There are times when anxiety spikes to such an extent and there is a level of hysteria that needs to be broken and in those circumstances the police, I think, do need to have the power to essentially stop everybody and so long as it is done in a way which is respectful and where it’s explained to people how and why it’s being done, then it’s protecting all of us. One of the times when it was done in my borough, my daughter was stopped. She is a very prickly and difficult individual at times and I’m surprised she wasn’t arrested on the spot! But you know, they were stopping everybody and they were being very careful about how they were doing it.

SR: And how did she feel, was she …?

EMILY THORNBERRY: She was outraged, she was outraged and she came home and I explained to her why it was being done and that it was there to protect everybody and to make sure that everybody is as safe as they can be. Now this is not a solution in itself and of course if it is not done properly it can make matters worse and it can make particular groups feel that they are marginalised and picked on and seen as criminals when they walk down the street when the only thing, you know, it’s not done fairly so it needs to be done fairly, it needs to be done respectfully and in moments of crisis I can see the reason for needing to increase the police powers of stop and search.

SR: Okay, Emily Thornberry, thank you very much for being on the programme.