................................................................................
ON THE RECORD
ALAN SKED INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 26.1.97
................................................................................
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Alan Sked, it is a bit of a rum do, this
isn't it? Here you are, wanting to pull us out of Europe and yet you are
concentrating your electoral fire on those people and the Party that are most
sceptical about Europe?
ALAN SKED: Well, that's not true. We are putting
up candidates wherever there is a local constituency party who wants to run
candidate. Clearly there are more Conservative MPs than there are Labour ones
because the Tories are in government and have had large majorities until very
recently over the last twenty years, so it's not that we're concentrating on
the Tories, it's just that the Tory Party have more MPs and of course the Tory
Party has been responsible for the Treaty of Accession, the Single European
Act, ERM membership and the Maastricht Treaty. They've taken us in there,
that's why they have to be responsible.
HUMPHRYS: There are more Tories than Labour, yes,
but the imbalance is absolutely huge, isn't it? Way way beyond that small
difference...
SKED: It's quite coincidental, it's just as
the cookie crumbles....
HUMPHRYS: So it doesn't matter if you damage...
SKED: We see no difference between the
Tory Party and the Labour Party over Europe. The Tory Party has taken us in
to all of these things, the Tory Party will not rule out a Single Currency,
the Tory Party knows that under Article One-O-Five of the Maastricht Treaty,
twenty-eight billion of our gold reserves have to go to Germany, but that's
something that doesn't worry them. John Major could exercise his opt-out and
stop that happening tomorrow. He won't.
HUMPHRYS: So it doesn't worry you either then that
you might end up helping to elect a Party that is far more enthusiastic about
Europe than another Party that might move us further into a Federal direction.
As far as you are concerned, all that matters is that we pull out of Europe, so
long as we're in Europe, it doesn't matter we're wholehearted Europeans, or
whether we're cautious Europeans, whether we're Federalists, whether... it
doesn't matter.
SKED: John, I don't know whether you've joined
the Tory Party, but I don't see why I should fall for their propaganda.
HUMPHRYS: You know full well they are less
enthusiastic as a Party about Europe....
SKED: That's not true, that's absolutely not
true. You're repeating Tory Party propaganda...
HUMPHRYS: I'm repeating what they've told me.
SKED: That's alright, they tell you propaganda
and then you're repeating it. Please let me just have a word. What in
our view is what we would like a number of UKIP Members of Parliament returned
at the next election because remember, Maastricht went through by three votes,
if we'd only had two MPs in the Parliament, we could have blocked that and this
time, if even one of us, if I were returned to Romsey, the result would be so
electrifying that the people would know that one person to come from nowhere to
Parliament because of the intense feeling there is against European Union in
this country, that would be more effective than getting all the Tory
Euro-sceptics returned, but let me just say the Tory Euro-sceptics do not take
the same view of us. Now, this is a letter from Teddy Taylor, leading
Euro-sceptic on House of Commons notepaper, he says "I take the view that sadly
the powers surrendered to Brussels cannot be reclaimed by the British House of
Commons and that there is no legal way in which we could do so, so I take the
view that sadly the powers surrendered to Brussels cannot be reclaimed by the
House of Commons and there is no legal way of doing so". Now, if the Tory
Euro-sceptics believe that, why should we worry about them because in practice
they're no better use to this country's independence than Labour or Liberal
Democrats.
HUMPHRYS: So you will reward him for those views
with which you concur by standing against him?
SKED: No, you miss the point. The point is
that we can take back our independence and it will only take UKIP MPs to do it.
HUMPHRYS: All right. Let's deal in the real
world.
INTERRUPTIONS
SKED: If we get a handful elected, the result
would be electrifying. And they will know that they cannot go further down
the path to Brussels as the Tories want, as Labour want, as the Lib/Dems
want...
I don't agree with you that the Tories
are less enthusiastic than Labour. Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine are
gun-ho for a single currency, and European Union.
HUMPHRYS: Some people might say shocking rather
than electrifying, if you were to do what you're talking about.
SKED: They may say that, but the result would
be that this whole process of surrendering our independence would be stopped in
its tracks.
HUMPHRYS: But let's deal in the real worl, shall
we? Let's take an example here, a specific example. Teresa Gorman, if you
like. Now Teresa Gorman's aims and your aims are the same. Look, you hear
the lady telling us, you heard her say it again there that she wants Britain to
be out of Europe.
SKED: With all respect to Teresa Gorman, she
changes her mind every day of the week.
HUMPHRYS: Come on, she's been pretty consistent on
that.
SKED: No, she hasn't, I'm afraid. Let me
finish. On the Referendum Bill in the House, she said she wasn't in favour of
withdrawal, there is says she's in favour of withdrawal, there she says
you can't work through UKIP. A few months ago, she was trying to defect
to us and...
HUMPHRYS: Well circumstances change, I change my
mind, what do you do. Now what she is saying the way things have gone, I now
want to pull out, that is her stated position......as a woman of honour.
SKED: She stated that two months ago, she
stated something last week, Teresa has become the original dizzy blonde, one
day she says one thing, one day she says another.
HUMPHRYS: You'd better watch that sexist language
or you'll be in serious trouble. Now look, she wants to pull out of Europe.
SKIED: She doesn't.
HUMPHRYS: She says she wants...
SKED: One day of the week, she does....
HUMPHRYS: As of today, as of today she wants to
pull out of Europe. Now if she is still saying she wants to pull out of Europe
on election day and you put a candidate against her, you will weaken her, you
will weaken her in favour of somebody who does not want to pull out of Europe.
SKED: I don't want to concentrate on Teresa,
she was slung out the Chief Whip's Office the other day and told to join
us because she had no influence left in the Tory Party.
HUMPHRYS: The point is she didn't join you.
SKED: No, I've got to the stage now that lot's
of these people I wouldn't want.
HUMPHRYS: Even if she said I'll come over?
SKED: No, I think it would be a debatable
issue now. Whatever. The thing is this, that if the Tory Party is putting
forward the view that it no longer is in favour of European Union, then the
Prime Minister can make it absolutely unambiguously clear that he will rule out
any future option of joining a Single Currency. He could do that today, he has
the right to do it - he won't. The Tory Party is divided, and the people who
still control it are the pro-federalists.
HUMPHRYS: Well, there you are you see. The Tory
party is divided. You can see that much at any rate. So therefore there are
some who are left
SKED: But-
HUMPHRYS: Well, please, if I may just finish the
question. It's usually me accused of interrupting the answers.
SKED: I'm sorry.
HUMPHRYS: Let me finish the question if I may. So
you are saying - not withstanding the fact that the Party is divided, therefore
some are less enthusiastic about about Europe than others - you can see that
at least - are there any candidates in the Tory party, any MP's in the Tory
party even, against whom you would not stand or is none of them pure enough for
your purposes?
SKED: Oh, I don't know. What they could do -
no I can't speak for Tory party MP's - what the Tory party MP's might do.
HUMPHRYS: What? You've just been doing that.
SKED: Well I'm only going on what they told me
personally and what I've heard on television contradicting something else.
But, in any case, if a Tory MP were to make a public statement saying that he
or she would favour complete withdrawal from the European Union, and replace
the membership by a Free Trade Agreement, then, our local Party could then
decide whether it was worth, or not worth, running a candidate against that
particular Member of Parliament.
HUMPHRYS: So Teddy Taylor's safe then, is he?
SKED: No he's not, because Teddy Taylor - the
letter I quoted - says specifically that you can't come out, and it would be
illegal to repeal the Maastrich Treaty. He sees sadly in his own words no
possibility of withdrawing the powers we've surrendered to Brussels. He's a
defeatist.
HUMPHRYS: But, he wants to come out. Oh, I see.
So, even if they're-
SKED: Well, do you want me to read his letter
again? He says sadly we cannot withdraw.
HUMPHRYS: Even if their instincts are pure - if
their interpretation is wrong - you'll still stand against them.
SKED: Well, if Teddy Taylor says that you
can't come out, we want someone to say you can come out, then it's a reasonable
intellectual case for having a debate about it.
HUMPHRYS: Come on, you're just having a bit of
fun, at the expense of these people.
SKED: No, this is deadly serious, we are the
only possible future for people in this country, forty percent of whom want to
come out. Forty percent only want a Free Trade Agreement - that's eighty
percent of the British people.
HUMPHRYS: Join up with Jimmy Goldsmith then, in
the few seconds we've got left - join up with Jimmy Goldsmith.
SLED: No, he doesn't want to come out either.
He wants to stay in.
HUMPHRYS: He's not pure enough for you either?
SLED: No, he wants to stay in. He's an MEP
and he wants to keep European institutions We want to be a normal self-
governing Parliamentary democracy, with a British Government accountable to the
British people alone.
HUMPHRYS: Alan Sked, thank you very much.
...oooOooo...
|