Murnaghan 26.05.13 Paper Review with Ken Livingstone, Nadine Dorries and Shazia Mirza

ANY QUOTES MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Time now to take a look through the Sunday papers and I’m joined now by the former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries and the comedian and columnist, Shazia Mirza, very good to see you all. Let’s start straight away with the story of last week and on-going I suspect. Ken, this in the Mail, it’s in so many of the other papers as well …

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Well all the papers.

DM: Gag the hate clerics.

KL: You were talking to Peter Clarke, the former counter terrorist head at the Metropolitan Police about the ban on the IRA being interviewed on TV. I mean I think that the danger here is that you run the risk of taking one or two hate clerics and turning them into mega figures as we’ve seen in some of the on-going trials. The simple fact is, if someone is advocating terrorism, you arrest them, you put them on trial, it’s a crime. I worry too much, all through the papers it’s about what we can do to tackle this, that and the other. You will always find people recruited into terrorism if you are not tackling the causes. What alienates a lot of these young men and it is either individual acts of racism against them as they are going through college or they sense injustice about what is happening to Palestinians or invading Iraq.

DM: That’s the point, what if it’s just those ideas which aren’t arrestable, where they say what the UK and other western nations have done in Afghanistan, in Iraq, what they’ve done to innocent Muslims.

KL: We know that Tony Blair was told by the head of M15 before the invasion of Iraq, this will make us a target for terrorism. The only thing that was amazing is that it was four years before we had that sort of kick-back in the July bombings here in London on the Tube and the bus. I think we have actually got to accept the fact that a large proportion of the world thinks the west is anti-Islam or wants to control the oil, which is …

DM: Which is where some people in this country will get those ideas. Nadine, I interrupted you, what were you going to say?

NADINE DORRIES: Well it’s interesting that Ken said quite simplistically what we should do when these hate preachers are identified is arrest them and lock them up. Actually the problem is identifying them and much of this activity takes place in a very subversive way and actually one of the things the government has done is very quietly are putting in place across universities, counter-terrorism officers. So actually what we can do is identify this hate preaching at a much earlier stage because of course the problem is that it gets to this point where they become almost acolytes in their own right before they are identified and arrested and stopped. By that point they have done a lot of damage.

DM: But I’m interested in this idea about a stop on ideas, I mean what’s your take on it Shazia? If you are expressing extreme views but they are not by any interpretation criminal, should that be allowed?

SHAZIA MIRZA: People always ask me what do I think because I am from the same background as these people. I don't know, I don't know any people who think like this, I don't know any people that behave like this. It really is just a few people and the idea of ideas, I mean they will never be, these hate preachers will always find a way of preaching. They can do it privately in a mosque and there will always be people that will listen to them because they share the same religion and they do share the same ideology but it’s really a few people. I don't know anybody that would behave like this and I know some very religious people.

DM: But it’s not just these ideas. Let’s swing it the other way, Nick Griffin has been on Question Time famously for the BNP, right or wrong, to put those views out there so right thinking people can challenge them.

SM: To them it’s not extreme, it’s the true idea of what they believe in. It is the true religion, it is the true Koran. It’s not extreme to them, it’s normal.

ND: That’s one of the problems, there are so many interpretations of Islam. I heard just this morning somebody saying it is anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-homosexual, anti-women’s rights, it’s about Sharia, it’s about extremism. There are so many interpretations about one religion that so many people pick at.

SM: But to them there is no interpretation, there is just one interpretation and that’s what they believe in. The normal right thinking people like me believe there are many interpretations, they don’t.

KL: What we need to remember is that people that came over here from Pakistan and Bangladesh, came because they wanted to be part of Britain, they wanted to get away from Sharia law and intolerant medieval attitudes in their local village. I had a debate about 20 years ago with Al Majroom which is now banned and in my constituency about 300 mainly young Muslim locals turned up and they were arguing for the introduction of a caliphate instead of parliamentary democracy and I got about 90% of the vote at the end of that. When I’m in a mosque in London, if you close your eyes you hear London accents. Like you I’ve never come across people …

ND: But you can’t be sure, you don’t know …

DM: And indeed the internet’s around as well. Just to bring in the second story here Nadine, the one you’ve got, it’s a dimension of this. Cameron’s holiday, I mean what do you think? It’s on the Sun front page, David Cameron taking a holiday, he’s the Prime Minister.

ND: He does have staff, we’ve got the internet, we’ve got mobile phones, I think Cameron could actually get back from Ibiza to London quicker than if he were in Cornwall. I think he is entitled to a holiday, he’s entitled to be with his family. I actually want the Prime Minister to be refreshed, feeling happy because he’s had holiday time with his kids and his wife and come back and be a refreshed Prime Minister. I think this is just ridiculous, criticising the man because he takes a break and a few days holiday when he is probably a 90 minute flight away from door to door back into parliament.

KL: The Sun does have a track record on this. I remember Jim Callaghan coming back from the Caribbean, what’s the front page? “Crisis? What crisis?”.

SM: I think Ibiza is the problem, why has he gone to Ibiza? He should have gone to the Caribbean.

NM: If he was in Cornwall they’d never get him back.

DM: Why not Blackpool? He wouldn’t want to come back, the weather’s so good there.

NM: This is the age of global travel, you know, he could be back here in an hour and a half.

DM: Shazia, you’ve got a very controversial story, this in the Mail and coming from a judge, isn’t it? Remove children from criminal families at birth.

SM: This is a very controversial judge, Alan Goldsack. He’s known for his hard line views but he’s saying, he’s celebrating 43 years as a judge and he has given this interview where he said children born into criminal families should be removed at birth and given up for adoption because he believes that crime runs in families so if your parents are a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer, in the same way if you are a criminal your children will be criminals and you could save the state £250,000 per person because that’s what’s spent on dysfunctional families.

ND: This isn’t new because the last Labour government actually came up with exactly the same policy and actually took steps to put a policy like this in place.

DM: Well not removing them, trying to identify children in families where they might be in …

ND: Actually no, the last Labour government actually did articulate the fact that if you remove children when they are born into particularly difficult, dysfunctional families – and when we talk particularly difficult we are talking about children who are born into families of drug dealers in very poor circumstances. Actually there is a quote in here from Camilla Batmanghelidjh who runs Kid’s Company under the arches in London, who deals with these and works with these very dysfunctional families, she actually says that what we need to do is to look at new ways of working with the families and I’m actually surprised to a degree that Camilla says that because I spent some time with Camilla and actually met a child …

DM: Why are you surprised?

ND: Because I actually went there because I spent time with her and worked with her and I’ve heard her articulate a different point of view. I was with Camilla when they were counselling a child who had actually seen her drug dealer mother thrown off the balcony of her maisonette and had been found three days later in a flat which had absolutely not even a radiator on the wall. So I think some of the families are just impossible to work with and this judge may have a point.

SM: But who’s going to queue up to adopt these children? Are there people queuing up for these children to take them?

ND: Well going into care is not the answer because they do need to go into families and into stable homes. Actually if you look at the outcomes of children in care, they are actually probably as bad as children who are left in dysfunctional families.

SM: This judge actually says that the care system in this country is not working.

ND: I think everybody has to agree, yes.

KL: If you end up in a home, it invariably fails, they don’t get you to university. Taking someone immediately after birth and raising them as your own child I’m sure wouldn’t have any long term problems but it takes forever to get an adoption organised in this country.

ND: It can be quicker …

DM: That’s another debate and we haven’t got time for that but Ken, your second story is in the Times …

KL: It’s almost the photograph because Nigel Farage has now moved on from the fag and the pint of beer to the glass of wine and the cigar but it’s the poll that says side by side, there was a poll about a week or two ago which showed the Labour lead down to 3%. All the polls this week have got the Labour lead back up to 10 and Nadine was pointing out to me that in one of the polls UKIP is on 14% but in the poll that includes asking ‘Do you support UKIP?’ they are only 2% behind the Tories.

DM: Are you going to need their support?

ND: Well there is apparently … you know, it’s not a case of doing a deal. I’m part of a team in my association so it’s about talking to my team but …

DM: But there is no point is there, there is no point UKIP and Conservative candidates opposing each other if they more or less hold the same views.

ND: Well exactly, exactly. There are about a hundred MPs in parliament who actually have not voted for increases into the EU budget, they have voted for a referendum, they did vote against gay marriage, they would be supportive of grammar schools if they had the option. If UKIP were standing against those MPs they would be standing on almost exactly the same values and principles so all this seems a nonsense where you have two people who think and have the same values standing against each other. I would imagine that as an emerging party what UKIP wants to do is to focus its resources into areas where it wants to win seats against people who have ….

DM: So you would prefer a non-aggression pact in those circumstances?

ND: There is no pact.

DM: You could be endorsed by …

KL: UKIP could concentrate on getting rid of those stories who …

DM: You could be endorsed by Nigel Farage?

ND: You have to be really careful, every Conservative MP has to be adopted by their Conservative association and then they could seek endorsement from UKIP because after all we have just recently voted to change the law to allow that to happen. The interesting thing is that David Cameron said we don’t do pacts or deals. In that case, I’m not sure what the coalition is. It may be necessary going forward.

DM: Well from that serious point let’s go to a dancing gorilla! Shazia, you found a gangnam gorilla.

SM: This is Sunny the gorilla who is in a zoo in the Netherlands and he has taken up the gangnam , the famous dance that Psy did, that David Cameron did, that Obama did …

ND: That Boris did!

DM: Of course he would.

ND: This gorilla is doing it really well. He is all arms, all legs, slapping the thighs, the hips, he’s got all the moves. The thing is, the people at the zoo are very upset because Psy made over five million and the gorilla is making peanuts!

DM: Oh deary, deary me! Who writes those?

ND: I thought she was a comedian!

SM: No, that’s not my joke, that’s what it says in the paper. No, I don’t go that low. The thing is though, people, are they really this desperate for entertainment? They go to see a dancing gorilla, is the X Factor not enough?

DM: Ken, Twitter at its worst, it’s not Bercow but the braying mob. This from the Observer.

ND: Are you on Twitter, Ken?

KL: I do very, very occasionally but the scale of abuse that I’ve had to put up with.

DM: It’s put you off has it?

KL: Now with all this suing, lawyers must be over the moon but this decision against Sally Bercow is going to open up a lot more challenges like this. I have to say why did he pick on just Sally Bercow, there are so many critics.

ND: I think he picked on a few, it wasn’t just Sally he went for, it was a lot of people who made the same …

KL: I’ve been accused of being an agent of the Communist party, Private Eye said I had a secret Swiss bank account and Gaddafi put 200,000 in. As you can see from my …

ND: Recently?

KL: No, this was back in the days before Twitter. I broadly think that people in public life should live with that and not keep going off to the courts, you make yourself look a fool.

DM: Okay, on that note we have to draw the curtains. Thank you all very much, Shazia, Nadine, Ken, thank you very much indeed for taking us through some of the Sunday papers there.