Murnaghan 16.12.12 News Paper Review with Bonnie Greer, Sir Menzies Campbell and Penny Mordaunt MP

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well, time now to take a look through the Sunday papers and I’m joined by former Lib Dem leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, by the American born playwright and author, Bonnie Greer and by the Conservative MP for Portsmouth North, Penny Mordaunt, a very good morning to you all. We’ll start with you, Bonnie, and interesting to get your perspective on obviously the story that’s leading all the papers and so many pages inside the papers as well, that’s the terrible school shooting. In some sense, I mean talk us through the headlines you’ve chosen but some sense of the why and the how?

BONNIE GREER: I really want to talk about that because of course we would all agree that this was horrific and most of the commentary has been about why, why don’t they ban guns, what’s the story. I want to say particularly to the British public about how deep the idea of the gun is in American culture. Actually it began in the English Bill of Rights in 1689 in the Glorious Revolution in which embodied in the English Bill of Rights is the right to bear arms against tyranny. When the American ?? left this country, mainly to escape tyranny as they saw it, they took that notion with them and so the Second Amendment actually is not a bestower of rights, it is a re-stater of rights and Americans believe that actually the Second Amendment guarantees all the rights that proceed from the idea of being an American. So the gun represents the idea of the fight against tyranny and is deeply rooted in the American psyche. It is very much about what has gone …

DM: You say deeply rooted but generations and hundreds of years later, I mean isn’t a form of tyranny, this spate of shootings we’ve seen in recent, just recent months, isn’t that something that can be changed?

BONNIE GREER: I think logically of course it is but to answer the question as to why doesn’t this change and why it doesn’t change is that the gun is considered a guarantee of liberty and when you go right down to the root of it, Americans will tell you we need it to protect ourselves. Now the selves can be your neighbour or it can be literally the federal government.

DM: Come in on this Penny, there are arguments we hear in the United States, and not just supporters of the National Rifle Association, who say in actual fact the answer is not more gun control, it’s more gun ownership. That if the teachers had been armed there they could have responded. You do hear that government.

PENNY MORDAUNT: I think that’s a ridiculous response. I think one of the problems that we’ve seen here and indeed in other tragic incidents is the type of weapons that are being used. When we think of gun ownership in the UK it is quite often a shotgun for spot purposes. You can buy automatic weapons in the United States that if you do have, I mean you’re never going to be able to stop a rogue person who has psychological problems going and doing terrible things but you can limit what firearms they’re using and I think any kind of … they may not be able to arrive at a situation that we have in the UK but any small steps that could be taken I think would have quite a massive impact on what weapons are out there and I think he has signalled that he is up for this fight. He’s been very sensible and cautious but I hope he is …

DM: Do you think politically he really could go forward with this?

MENZIES CAMPBELL: Remember, he just won a second term and traditionally presidents in their second term can often be more, if you like, adventurous than they were in the first because they are no longer seeking re-election but it will be one tremendous fight. What is interesting of course about all of this is it strikes a lot of echoes of other incidents and particularly the incident in Dunblane some years ago and one of the most touching contributions to the debate is a piece by Charles Drysdale from Dunblane talking about his daughter who was shot there and giving some indication of just how profound the impact is going to be upon the parents and the community in the United States. Our system was tightened up after Dunblane, I have a shotgun certificate, it now requires a great deal of justification even for renewal and of course the argument often in the United Kingdom is it is not the legal ones you should be concerned about, it’s the illegal ones. This is a big subject.

DM: This is a debate we’re going to continue I know for weeks and months and maybe years to come but I want to bring from you more stories here and Penny, the issue that’s dividing your party – gay marriage. Britons vote in favour of same sex marriage, in the Mail.

PENNY MORDAUNT: Yes, this is a very interesting piece of polling in the Mail on Sunday which shows both the public’s attitude which is 60% in favour of same sex laws but it also shows the Conservative voters attitude. I think that the majority of people I speak to on this issue really it’s not a big issue for them. Obviously we’ve got lots of mail coming from churches in our mail bags in parliament but the majority of people I think aren’t really fussed, they just say right, that couple over there can be a bit happier but it doesn’t impact on me and my marriage and that tends to be their attitude. Certainly from the debates that we’ve had in parliament, this polling is borne out in terms of my party being 50/50 either way. What will be interesting is whether Members of Parliament actually vote on their opinion of the matter or whether they are swayed because they’re worried about their reselection, they’re worried about …

DM: Or listening to their constituents which is what they’re meant to do.

PENNY MORDAUNT: Well we owe our constituents our hard work but we also owe them our opinion and I think that on these issues where we have a free vote, we should think long and hard about what whether we’re doing the right thing.

DM: Okay, within that, talking about polling, we’ve had this UKIP, up to 14% in some polls, your party, Menzies, pushed down into single figures – do you feel they are becoming increasingly marginalised and damaged by coalition?

MENZIES CAMPBELL: Well coalition was never going to be easy but we’re not marginalised, if you look at the coverage we get every Sunday in the newspapers. I think it’s not surprising that Farage says they’re the third party but how many councillors have they got? How many MPs have they got? If being ahead in the opinion polls was the sole judge, then you’ll remember the Liberal Social Democrat Alliance at one stage had over 50% in the polls and it should have been the government by that logic. Well, obviously not. UKIP are clearly benefiting from some of the difficulties of the Conservative party, this is an issue for the Tories rather than anyone else.

BONNIE GREER: And I think Mr Farage should be very careful that his party doesn’t become a catch-all for people who are centre-right in this country and right wing, he needs to be very, very careful about it. Same sex marriage, as Penny says, is not something that people are discussing and being opposed to, and I would think that Cameron is being very smart because he may have to possibly face a law suit at some point if people want to challenge this in the European courts so it’s a smart move on his part to ask the question and to get us in line with a lot of what’s happening right now.

MENZIES CAMPBELL: It’s a very interesting poll, the question is why is he doing it - he believes it, 14%, he wants to win trendy votes, 67%! A lot of sense in there I would have thought.

PENNY MORDAUNT: I think it’s much more important that we get it through than get credit for it.

DM: Well that’s a very good point. Bonnie, your next story, this in the Sunday Mirror, Mark Austin, heads he wins, tails he loses, this is about Ed Miliband.

BONNIE GREER: Well this is Mark Austin, an excellent column about the Ed Miliband problem versus Mr Osborne, who you would think would have enough on his plate being Chancellor of the Exchequer, he also happens to be the Conservative ‘Tory Majority in 2015’ campaign manager and he’s come up with the idea that the campaign is going to come to down on the strivers versus the skivers and he’s pretty much narrowed it down to people who keep their curtains open in the day and people who close them during the day. Miliband has got to take a very simplistic argument and nuance it and make it actually reflect the country that we live in right now and he’s having a bit of a problem doing that because of course the other part of it is that Osborne is taking it down to as really simplistic as he possibly can.

DM: It’s an interesting battle as we head into another election. Sir Menzies, we can’t ignore this story, the hoax call nurse and the awful pain of her family.

MENZIES CAMPBELL: Two things have struck me about that. You should always try and think what ultimate effect your actions may have and the two disc jockeys who perpetrated this must, as I think we’ve seen from their appearances on television, be absolutely destroyed by what they did but the fact is they did it and the second point, which I think has to be made, is the dignity of the family of this woman.

DM: It’s striking isn’t it?

MENZIES CAMPBELL: Quite extraordinary, going out yesterday after obviously their moving memorial service, all members of the family contributing and of course I think by now the body of the nurse is on its way to India to have a tradition burial there. I think it just demonstrates to all of us, beware your jokes or your japes because they can have unfortunate and unforeseen consequences.

DM: Our thoughts going with the family as they go off for that ceremony. Penny, it might the last story we squeeze in here, it’s one I’ve been discussing with Eric Pickles, the local government and communities secretary, fifty ways to save. Some great ideas there like no more biscuits at meetings and things like that.

PENNY MORDAUNT: Yes, have you had some fifty shades jokes already this morning? This is very interesting because local government has had the largest percentage cuts to its budget and it really is separating the wheat from the chaff with local authorities. There are some that are really getting to grips with this and are reducing their back office costs and are managing this and there are others that aren’t. Just to give you a quick example, my local authority, school badges for the music festival, an independent quote £104, local authority charging over a thousand, so there is lots of fat still in local government to go.

DM: But in terms of the size of the cuts, it’s tinkering at the margins some of these suggestions, no more mineral water, a café in the library.

PENNY MORDAUNT: No, actually I disagree with you. I’ll give you another example, there’s a fantastic local charity in my area which was being supported by £3000 supplying counselling advice for young adults. Cut that, which my local authority has done, and in less than six months you are going to have about fifty grand put onto your community service budget.

DM: We’re running out of time, I just want a quick thought from Bonnie, do you think these local authority cuts, which is how most people access their services, they are getting close to the bone aren’t they?

BONNIE GREER: Well it’s these little tiny things that are making people feel as if something is actually happening and local authorities are how we encounter government and how we want government to work and to talk about putting a cafeteria in a library, all this sort of thing, it’s minimal and it’s also taking people away from the services that they need.

DM: Which just takes me to the Lib Dems because you made the point, Sir Menzies, about how many councils you control and again there can be quite a lot of Lib Dems on the ground, local Lib Dems are going to get it in the neck, they’re the ones who are instituting these cuts.

MENZIES CAMPBELL: Well all councillors will get it in the neck of course if council services are being cut but look, if we are determined to restore economic stability to reduce the deficit, cut down the borrowing, then I’m afraid no area is exempt and for example my particular interest which is defence, defence has really been put through the wringer when it comes to how much or how little can be afforded.

DM: Okay, I am so sorry, we are out of time but Menzies, Bonnie, Penny, thank you all very much indeed for taking us through some of the Sunday papers there.