Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with MP Iain Duncan Smith

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

SOPHY RIDGE: Well Brexit has this week been delayed by another six months and our next guest is today urging the Prime Minister that she should now be prepared to leave the EU without a deal. We are joined now by the former Conservative Party leader, Iain Duncan Smith. Thank you very much for being on the show. So what’s your reaction then to this delay?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I think it is very interesting that I haven’t seen a lot of stuff from constituents coming in from the beginning but it was on the 29th when we didn’t leave, that’s when this has all gone wrong. Up until then people were prepared to give Theresa May the benefit of the doubt but they knew that she’d said that she would leave on the 29th March and the big problem was, as soon as we didn’t leave you could see all the poll ratings start to crash and it is only linked to the fact that Leave or Remain, they were expecting us to go and when we didn’t go it looked like a complete breach with the pledge that we had made and that’s a disaster for a political party and there is no question that polling at the moment, I think it’s very voluble and very flexible but it’s where it is now and I suspect it’s about right.

SR: The Sunday Telegraph leader on the poll of polls that they have done is saying that the Labour party would be the largest party if there was an election with Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. Do you think that is the case?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well you know, this is three or four years out from the next election and there is a lot to go. I just cannot conceive the British public with Jeremy Corbyn’s background and a party that is mired in charges of anti-Semitism and really ghastly misogyny and other problems that they’ve got going on, a man who backs the Venezuelan dictator who has been murdering his own people – all of these things will come home to roost.

SR: Jeremy Corbyn would probably dispute that.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well dispute it or not, he stands charged with supporting Maduro when the rest of the world says Maduro must go in Venezuela but you know, it’s a kind of Marxism and my point about this is whether people like it or they don’t like it, none of that will be on display because it’s all about Brexit at the moment, it’s all about whether the Conservatives have delivered on their ability to leave the European Union and we really have to get out, we simply cannot fight the Euro elections. I gather dozens of Conservative Association members have now written a letter to the Prime Minister saying they are not prepared to fight Euro elections, it would be an utter disaster for us. It would be a disaster for the country, I mean what are you going to say on the doorstep – vote for me and I’ll be gone in three months? It doesn’t make any sense.

SR: Will you campaign in the European elections?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I’ve always campaigned for Conservative candidates but I absolutely do not want to campaign on the Euro election ticket which would be almost impossible to justify and I think the public would ask why are we going to spend £109 million plus and add another billion a month to that by being full members of the EU when we could have left and we should leave? So I think the date isn’t October at all, the date is the key moment in May when we have to put up electoral officers. If we don’t put those up then we’re leaving before the end of June.

SR: According to polling today, your seat is one of the ones that is high risk.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I have a seat that is marginal like a lot of colleagues do and we are fighting very hard. We haven’t seen a massive change in that I have to tell you but notwithstanding that I think it’s important for us to recognise across the board the idea of a government run by Jeremy Corbyn with all those Marxist policies is just going to be a disaster for the United Kingdom.

SR: Do you think you will lose your seat?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: No, I think I will hold my seat because I think I’ve been clear and straight with my electorate since the day I was elected and they know my views on this and they know my views on a whole range of other issues which I’ve been clear about – social justice, I set up the Centre for Social Justice and I’m very keen to see the worst off improve their lives in the best way possible and that’s not the changes needed to our policy process at the moment but the reality is, here we have this irony that the economy has a current account surplus, we have the lowest unemployment, the highest employment and the lowest youth unemployment literally for decades, the economy is now seen as a very, very good investment by external people who are holding back for Brexit. With all of those and with the deficit down to 1% we should be romping home in the polls. Why are we not? Because the one thing the public at the moment fears is that we haven’t delivered on our word which was to leave on March 29th. Now we keep extending and extension I have always said is political death, we have to make a decision. Either they are prepared to modify their agreement in which the biggest problem is the backstop …

SR: But they won’t, they said they won’t.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I think there is some scope for some further discussions about alternative arrangements. Why? Because the EU themselves have now said that no matter what, there will not be a hard border on the border of Northern Ireland and they will have alternative arrangements. Well if they are going to do that for no deal, their threat that there would be borders, hard borders in Northern Ireland, is gone. That means there is scope to say, well if you are going to do that and we put forward the proposal months ago to them about how they could be using existing customs techniques, you can do it when you have the deal. That would end the whole problem about the backstop.

SR: You went to meet with Michel Barnier this week didn’t you and he is conducting the Brexit negotiations for the EU, are you seriously telling me he told you that the Withdrawal Agreement would be up for renegotiation? It’s the opposite that he’s been saying.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: No, I’m not going to get into what we actually discussed because there is still some scope I think but the key thing is both sides now grudgingly accept that the backstop does not work, it doesn’t deliver what you want, it’s impossible to run, practically it doesn’t work and it literally would cut Northern Ireland away from the United Kingdom.

SR: You don’t like the backstop but the EU and the British Government are backing the backstop aren’t they?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Genuinely, genuinely the EU knows that the backstop doesn’t work, it simply physically, practically does not work.

SR: Is that what Barnier told you?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I know because you can’t apply it. Under the existing backstop proposals the whole of the UK would have to be doing some 250 million wet stamp pieces of paper at the borders. These are plucked from the Turkish Agreement and dumped into this agreement at the last moment, it doesn’t work and they know it so they are working on this as much as we are. So my point is, let’s be honest with each other, let’s not wait to get this done, let’s do this now and we could actually produce alternative arrangements that mean that Northern Ireland is no longer under threat to be left out of the UK and we would then be able to have an agreement which actually works. That’s a possibility and a very strong possibility right now but we’ve got to get on with it.

SR: Another possibility is staying in the EU, are you worried that we might actually end up never leaving?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I believe we have to leave, I believe we will leave. Both parties were elected on manifestos that said we were leaving the customs union, leaving the single market. The problem has been that inside Parliament it’s stuffed full of people who have never accepted the result, the problem has really been – and in a sense Mrs May made this clear – it is about those in Parliament who are doing their level best, and some of them are in my party, to actually frustrate and stop Brexit.

SR: Including some people who support Brexit but refuse to vote for the deal.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well the real problem has been is that there is this concern that what we do is allow a foreign power to interfere in the United Kingdom and carve one section of the United Kingdom out, what they call UKNI, which would be in a completely separate world from that of the UK with borders between the UK and Northern Ireland. It’s intolerable, nobody voted for that. We voted to leave clean as a United Kingdom and I think we simply have to do that and I really urge the Prime Minister to be very clear that we are not fighting the European elections. Any idea of doing that is a disaster, if we make that clear today and say we are going to leave, deal or no deal, before the Euro elections then I think the public would start to snap back and say okay, these people mean business and when we do it, that’s the moment that we’ll end all of the nonsense from these other peripheral parties like UKIP and the Brexit Party and the Tiggers.

SR: Don’t tell Anna Soubry – don’t worry, she’s left the studio now! Just while we’ve got you, you called on Theresa May to set a date for her departure, when do you think that date should be?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I know that the Prime Minister has already said she’d go, she said she’d go as and when the Agreement was ratified which was looking at around May/June. I think those dates still stand, I think what the Prime Minister has to do is to aim everything now towards departure before the Euros, which would then allow her to step away having done what she said she would do, get the UK out of the European Union in one way or another, then we could have another leadership election and pick a new leader which is the way that it has to be. She has accepted and agreed that but I think that now has to be set down. As I say, there are lots and lots of Chairmen out there who do not want to fight the European Elections and lots who are fighting the May elections right now who are really upset and concerned that they are going to have a backlash in what is a very important local election.

SR: There could be grassroots revolt, if you like?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well there already is, to be quite frank. People don’t want to fight the Euro elections, they want to get on with the May elections and they want to do it in a sense that they can say to the public, we promised you we would leave, we are and we have left so we will leave before the Euro elections take place. That is the key position to be in and by the way, I have a real concern with some of my colleagues going out lauding Jeremy Corbyn and saying somehow we agree with quite a lot in all of this. We used to say that he is not fit to govern, my view is that he is not fit for government and nor are his policies which would wreck the economy. We need to be very clear that in the course of this we don’t end up letting Jeremy Corbyn dictate to us that we stay in a customs union or we have some kind of second referendum or for that matter we align with the European single market. All of that, given to us by Jeremy Corbyn, is a recipe for disaster.

SR: Okay, it sounds like you are ready to fight that election certainly. Iain Duncan Smith, thank you very much for coming on the programme this morning.