Interview with Kenneth Clarke




       
       
       

 
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                                ON THE RECORD      
 
 
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1                              DATE: 04.10.92 
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JONATHAN DIMBLEBY:                     Good afternoon and welcome to On The 
Record. Well it had been intended as a week of celebration.  Instead the party 
conference at Brighton will seem like the Last Chance Saloon as a battered 
Prime Minister struggles to restore the credibility of a government that's 
under devastating assault from every quarter.  In this programme, Kenneth 
Clarke goes on the record to answer the widespread charge that the 
administration of which he is a leading member has proved itself incompetent 
and rudderless - and is now discredited at home and abroad. 
 
                                       
 
                                       This week the Prime Minister is facing a 
most severe test of political leadership, his party at war with itself, his 
Chancellor in the dock, his government condemned and ridiculed by friend as 
well as foe, his own standing in the country sharply diminished.  How does John 
Major now convince his critics at home and abroad that his administration is 
not a busted flush?  After the humiliating turmoil of the last ten days it will 
not be easy. 
 
 

 
JONATHAN DIMBLEBY:                     Home Secretary, it is an extraordinary 
spectacle, the Chancellor ridiculed everywhere, the pound in free fall, no 
economic policy, a party at its own throat, the list goes on and on.  This is a 
government whose credibility is shot to pieces at home and abroad. 
 
KENNETH CLARKE MP:                     Well, I wouldn't expect you to play down 
the nature of the crisis and I certainly accept we're in rather a difficult 
crisis which I have to say I remember rather a lot since we came into power in 
1979.  We plainly had a disastrous setback when we were driven out of the 
Exchange Rate Mechanism on what everyone know calls Black Wednesday. I think we 
have to react as we've reacted to other crises since 1979 - with clarity, with 
consistency, showing we're a government of conviction. I think our aims are 
clear and we have the chance next week to set them out again and get back on 
course. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You talk about this disastrous setback, 
the government has been rowing with the Germans, unless the Germans are lying 
through their teeth there now seems to be every evidence that the government 
could have avoided that dreadful setback by realigning before Black Wednesday 
and the debacle that followed. 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I don't accept that interpretation 
of the exchanges and I still incline to the view that people in charge of 
central banks should be cautious about what they say when there's uncertainty 
in the exchange markets.  Leaving that on one side, I think the Anglo-German 
dispute has quite rightly been brought to an end.  They're our best allies in 
Europe, they usually are more or less where we are on the great European 
issues.  I always say that I find the Christian Democrats very comfortable 
colleagues.   A man like Volker Ruehe, who's their Defence Minister, who I 
know, if he was British, he'd be a member of John Major's Cabinet and a very 
good one.  So, I don't think we're at serious loggerheads with the Germans. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Well, let's not leave that row entirely 
aside, let's go back to the particular substance of that row and one particular 
part of it.  The Bundesbank said, very clearly, that they asked the German 
government to initiate negotiations for realignment before Black Wednesday and 
they said that the government did that.  Did that happen or did that not 
happen? 
 
CLARKE:                                I obviously was not directly involved 
closely with events but my belief is that no serious realignment was possible 
before the French referendum, the idea we could have got into negotiation 
about a realignment without causing further disturbance to the markets I think 
is highly unlikely, I think the French, for example, let alone ourselves, would 
not have negotiated a realignment before the French referendum....so the 
Bundesbank may have had that idea, I don't know, I don't know one way or the 
other but I don't think it was a serious and realistic option. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You said not so long ago, that you were 
in this, you were all in this together, I assume you must have known on such an 
issue of substance as this, the Federal government, says the Bundesbank, the 
Federal government complied with this request to open negotiations and it 
complied with the request, says the Bundesbank, by initiating negotiations.  
Now let me put it to you that for the Treasury and the Prime Minister to reply 
that there was no request from the German government for renegotiation, is to 
be extremely misleading unless the Bundesbank is lying. 
 
CLARKE:                                I think there was no prospect of a 
negotiated realignment taking place in the run up to the currency crisis.  It 
requires all the countries in the mechanism - that's eleven of them actually - 
to agree.  I do not believe that anybody would have got a consensus for a
realignment.  I think it is a complete red herring to go back and say some 
quite alternative scenario might have unfolded the week before. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              It may be that you don't think it would 
have been possible or wise.  My question to you is - given the debacle that 
happened, whether or not it was discussed.  Was it on the table or not?  The 
Prime Minister seems to suggest that it was not even on the table.  The 
Bundesbank says unambiguously, endorsed by the Federal Government, that it was  
on the table. 
 
CLARKE:                                All I can say is I, personally, knew 
nothing whatever of any suggestions of a realignment.  I heard nothing about 
any suggestions of a realignment.  Never reached the stage where a Cabinet 
Minister like myself knew that such a thing was being contemplated.  If I'd 
been asked what I thought about it I'd have assumed that it was completely 
unrealistic you couldn't get such a realignment and that we really couldn't - 
no point in contemplating one until the French Referendum was behind. 
 
                                       Of course,  in the wisdom of hindsight, 
we might have preferred a realignment to what actually happened, when currency 
movement, speculation, took us out of the ERM, but I don't think anybody 
foresaw that until the last twenty four hours. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              In politics the wisdom of hindsight is 
generally thought to be rather important.  If there was an almighty cock-up by 
the Government which led to the fruitless attempt by spending billions of 
dollars to rescue our position in the ERM, then the benefit of hindsight is not 
something that you can just throw away to one side as an interesting 
observation, is it? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I would have liked to see a 
realignment if we could have had one, but what I'm saying to you - which I 
think corroborates the  Prime Minister's version of what occurred and the 
Chancellor's version of what occurred - is I heard nothing about this supposed 
realignment and this offer of a realignment until well after the events of 
Black Wednesday had taken place, and I really do think these exchanges with the 
Germans being analysed in this way somewhat miss the point.  Our relationships 
with the Germans are good, have to be good, must remain good. 
 
(BOTH TALKING AT SAME TIME) 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              ....the Chancellor and others started 
slagging them off, weren't they? 
 
CLARKE:                                I think you're entitled to say - if he 
hadn't said it other people would have said that it's unusual for the President 
of a Central Bank to allow himself to be quoted, apparently speculating, about 
the value of other currencies in the mechanism of which his Bank is, as it 
were, a member.   But, having said that, we said that, otherwise people are 
trying to stir up anti-German sentiment and the whole thing has boiled over 
into some of the Euro-sceptics talking about jack boots and carrying on about 
the V-2.  This is nonsense.   
 
                                       Today's Germans are our allies.  Today's 
German Government is very close to our own and that's how we should stay. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              We had the Chairman of the 1922 
Committee - a significant figure in the Party, one's led to believe - saying 
that we've come to doubt whether the Germans have changed. 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, if Marcus said that.. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              He did. 
 
CLARKE:                                ... and I suspect he said it in the heat 
of the moment, and if you had a serious discussion with him he wouldn't agree 
with that.   We are at the moment, as you say, in a serious political 
situation.  I can assure you the Government of this country is not going to be 
pursued on the basis of extraordinary remarks about whether the Second World 
War...the fact is today's Germans are our allies and what we both have to 
deal with is how to keep the Community, Exchange Rate management, economic 
policy on the rails, so that Europe as a whole can come out of recession. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Well, because, as you acknowledge with 
the benefit of hindsight, a realignment did not occur, we are where we are now. 
Let me put it to you that when I say the Government is without credibility now 
it's because it's thrashing around in the water in search of an economic policy 
and we're told maybe the pilot will come back in two or three weeks and tell us 
what the policy is.  That's hardly credible posture for a Government in a 
crisis? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, the policy is extremely clear.  
The first priority is that Britain must come out of this recession strong, when 
the world comes out of this recession - that includes the Germans who are 
having their own problems as well as the Japanese and the Americans, and our 
policy is sound money, our policy is low inflation, our policy is to create 
the climate in which the best of our industry can thrive.   That remains clear. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              That's being in favour of motherhood 
and apple pie, with great respect, isn't it? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, in fact, sound money, low 
inflation are achievements that this Government which nobody else has 
followed, and most of our critics when you listen to them appear to have 
forgotten everything that we learnt in the seventies and the early 
nineteen-eighties and that there was in the aftermath of our leaving the ERM 
a ludicrous feeling about that "happy days were here again", the currency could 
just go into free-fall, we could lower our interest rates to whatever level we 
chose, and somehow that would take Britain out of a recession which the rest of 
the world is in - I don't believe any of that, and our policy is clear. 
 
DIMBELBY:                              Your policy.  Well,  we'll have a look 
to see whether it's clear.   Your policy at the moment is to allow the 
pound apparently to be in free-fall.  You can't have sound money with the pound 
going on down like this, can you? 
 
CLARKE:                                You would certainly have to take a view 
of the Exchange Rate and we cannot allow the pound just to devalue.  We are 
floating.  And I prefer managed Exchange Rates in a single market - of the kind 
that Conservatives have been constructing - to floating Exchange Rates.  
Circumstances make us float.  But you can't just allow the currency to devalue. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              OK.  You say you can't allow the 
currency to devalue.  The essence of the floating pound as it is at the moment 
is it's a sinking pound.  As you going to say the Government has to intervene 
at some point - and we don't know when it might be - to say to the market 
"Sorry - we're not going to allow you to go on running the pound down like 
this"?  
 
CLARKE:                                Well, when you have a floating Exchange 
Rate it becomes your duty - it particularly becomes your duty - to have a 
monetary and a fiscal policy that gives your traders some stability, that 
stops the pound sinking in such a way as to create inflation in a year or two's 
time. 
 
                                       It becomes important that we stick to 
the policies which actually before we were sticking to because - to use the 
jargon - we were aiming at the convergence targets of the ERM.  We were quite 
happy to set our sights at fiscal deficit, three per cent of GDP; quite happy 
to set ourselves at the other convergence targets of the ERM.  We weren't 
committed to the timetable which the others - I think rather foolishly - 
thought you could set out, which were set out in your piece, that now, now we 
have a floating Exchange Rate we must rapidly restore, in the present 
uncertainty, stability.  I mean businessmen want to know where they are and 
they want stability in the Exchange Rate. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              And they're saying that with great 
ferocity to you.  The pound so far has devalued by seventeen per cent from the 
point at which it entered the ERM.  You say we mustn't let it go down.  Has it 
reached its bottom for you, or are you prepared to see it letting go a bit 
further down until you decide what's low enough?  
 
CLARKE:                                Well, obviously, when you go into the 
markets, unwillingly as we did, having been forced out of the ERM, you've got 
to achieve stability at a level which is sustainable in the markets.   
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Where's that level? 
 
CLARKE:                                ...We're still in the stage of seeing it 
steady down.  We probably won't know clearly for a week or two's time, but it 
must be the aim of the Government to get stability at a reasonable level which 
will minimise the de-inflationary consequences of this devaluation.  That means 
that we're back in the business  of monetary targets, fiscal targets.  The 
Chancellor quite rightly has talked about not just going back to the old days 
of M-3 and M-Zero, but actually chosing some other targets by which we can 
stabilise our Exchange Rate. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Right.  You say that the floating pound 
cannot be just left to the market, as some people say it ought to be because 
then interest rates could then come tumbling all the way down.  You say that 
has inflationary consequences - sorry.
 
CLARKE:                                Well, it is in the market.  I mean 
obviously at the moment we are in a floating situation - we're in the market, 
...a Government must take a view of what its Exchange Rate ought to be in that 
market....... 
 
(BOTH TALKING AT THE SAME TIME)    
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You can't tell me what the view is? 
 
CLARKE:                                The view is that we need to have - as 
you're bound to have after a devaluation - a very stern monetary policy, very 
stern fiscal policy, to make sure that we don't get inflationary consequences 
from whatever level the pound's stable as...at the market. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              That,  that, that is, um, with respect, 
not an answer to the question which was, as I think you understood, have we 
reached the bottom now or not, in your judgement, of the pound's value? 
 
CLARKE:                               Well, the great thing about free markets 
is I am not going to sit here and take a view on what I think the currency 
would stabilise at.   But what I do know is the Government should take a view 
and its economic policy should be such as to achieve stability in the new 
situation as rapidly as possible.   We certainly can't just ignore 
devaluation;  we certainly don't want a great deal more devaluation which will 
be very damaging to our position indeed. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Will it be credible if this Government 
having inside the ERM raised interest rates to fifteen per cent, outside the 
ERM drop them down to nine per cent, has to raise them again to stop the pound 
sinking below the level that you think is proper? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, of course, in totally floating 
markets your interest rates do go up and down.  I mean, I think I've throughout 
been clear that I didn't want us to leave the ERM - I accept we were driven 
out.  Once you're outside, we're back in the situation where before we went in 
interest rates were fifteen per cent.  People can recall occasions when we were 
in a floating Exchange Rate, when interest rates went up four per cent in a 
fortnight.  Everybody wants to see interest rates down, but your interest 
rates, your fiscal deficit, your monetary policy, have to be set in a way that 
achieves the maximum stability in the Exchange Rate. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Now, if you are going to use fiscal 
policy, are you seriously saying that this Government will be credible with the 
electorate if you say we now have to cut public spending in order to prevent 
inflation spiralling upwards again? 
 
CLARKE:                                We said we were going to cut public 
spending or restrain public spending within the already published forecast for 
next year - which we haven't done for a long time - in July of last year.  Now 
I do think that going out of the ERM that makes that doubly important. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Say that again.  That's a very important 
thing you say. 
 
CLARKE:                                I think having come out of the Exchange 
Rate Mechanism it makes what we said in July even more important. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Bigger cuts that means. 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, the cuts we (if you call them 
cuts) - in fact the first year they were merely sticking to what we published,  
but sticking to what we published against expectations in the general world - 
"Ah well, they never really mean that.  We can always lobby for some more" - 
this year we've got to stick at what we said.  It is particularly important now 
that we do that because we've left the Exchange Rate Mechanism, we've got to 
carry some credibility in the floating market. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              And to do that - this floating market 
which you personally abhor, but which you find yourself in...     
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I prefer the managed one. 
                                        
DIMBLEBY:                              You're going to have to go to the 
electorate with unemployment rising towards three million, with companies going 
down the tubes all over the place, and say - "Sorry, our way of getting out of 
the recession now is maybe to hike up interest rates if the pound goes too 
low;  maybe to cut public spending more severely than we had to" - Are you 
going to add to that and maybe put taxes up as well? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, firstly, let's make it clear we're 
all talking about the jobless, and we're all talking about industry.  I think 
as all the politicians and commentators argue about Maastricht and the ERM, 
what matters is what's in the interests of industry and jobs.  Now I would say 
to people in British industry, getting the climate right for you does not 
involve the public, um, the Government allowing public spending to increase so 
that Government gets heavily in debt.  
 
                                       It does not involve allowing the 
Exchange Rate to sink further and further down so that everything we import 
becomes so much more valuable, everything we export becomes worth less.  That, 
I would defend, what I've been saying throughout, in terms of the long-term 
interests of British industry and the desperate need to get the number of 
unemployed down.  I don't think our policy has caused unemployment.  I think 
our policy now is designed to get it down.
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Now, given that this is what your 
policy is, but to keep inflation down as well in the way that you've just 
described, do you or do you not rule out, which Michael Heseltine was talking 
about, the prospect of tax increases? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well the government has placed itself 
against tax increases which is why we have to look to public spending to get 
the fiscal deficit down to an acceptable level.  Now payment can't go into 
debt, you can't spend a very great deal more than you're raising by way of 
revenue, you're bound to spend some more because we're in recession, you have 
unemployed, social benefits and so on, but within the constraints we have to 
make sure that we hit the targets which we set in July, and cuts in public 
spending are the Conservative approach, not tax increases. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You are pledging that the government 
will not go back on its pledge on taxation.  There will be no tax hikes is 
that your commitment? 
 
CLARKE:                                The Conservative policy is a low tax 
economy, which is a low tax economy which we set as our aim.  No responsible 
government I think could ever say that you never put up taxation, but our 
success has been that we've always controlled the public finances so that we've 
got taxation down, therefore our policy now, our aim now which I think we'll
deliver, is to get public expenditure under control so there's no need for tax 
increases.  Listen to our rivals, and I mean all our rivals, Euro-sceptics as 
well as socialists would put taxation up.  It's obvious from what they say. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Alright.  I want to move on.  You 
described an economic policy which you hope will be regarded as credible.  Let 
me ask you about the ERM and the credibility of the government in this respect. 
Is it seriously credible to say "We will go back into the ERM but only if they 
get rid of fault-lines which we won't define, but they say don't exist and  
at any rate you aren't going to get anywhere"? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I think it's obviously sensible to 
say we're not going back to have a repeat of Black Wednesday.  I mean as if you 
do anything, if you go running across a surface and you fall over an obstacle 
you go back and find what it was you fell over.  You don't just carry on doing 
the same thing again.  Our aim remains the Exchange Rate Mechanism.  I think 
we're all clear that we didn't anticipate what happened on Black Wednesday and 
we're not going to go back again until we feel some reasonable confidence that 
that will not re-occur. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              What was it that you tripped over.  What 
is the fault-lines to which, what are the fault-lines to which the Prime 
Minister refers? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, firstly there was the huge sums of 
- absolutely vast sums of money moving about which I think people can fairly 
say we should have known, we did know that such sums of money are available at 
international exchange markets.   We were surprised at the judgements that the 
speculators were making when we had achieved such success in getting our 
interests rates down to German levels, our inflation down.  I think in the past 
that would have had more effect on the markets than it seemed to have, the 
French referendum and other doubts that..(INTERRUPTION).and then there was 
this, I don't think it should be the basis of an argument with the Germans, but 
there clearly needs to be an understanding between those who are in a European 
monetary system on the behaviour of the key players within that system and the 
fact that there was at vital moments uncertainty about whether the Germans 
should now be reducing interest rates, whether the Italians and ourselves 
should devalue - all that, that needs to be talked through very very carefully 
before anybody contemplates going back into it again. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Now this the first time, and you've been 
characteristically open, that a cabinet minister has defined the fault lines.  
One, it's the money moving around in the markets in ways that you couldn't 
have..didn't expected. 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I mean you can't stop that. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              But you can't do anything about that 
fault line.  The other fault line is the wretched Germans....effectively what 
you're saying, self interest rather than European interest? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, as I say....we all pursue self 
interest.  As a British cabinet minister, all the way through to Black 
Wednesday and afterwards, I've been pursuing British interests which I think 
involve membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism if we can.  I'm not going to 
criticise a German minister and a German bank of pursuing German interests 
..... 
DIMBLEBY:                              But no way.... 
 
CLARKE:                                But I think German interests, we have to 
discuss with them to get them to accommodate German interests which are 
stability and exchange rates, stability inside the single market, we have to 
discuss with them how you make necessary reflection in your policy of what is 
the wider interest as opposed to just an immediate one.  The Bundesbank in my 
personal opinion, giving - recklessly giving advice to that great institution, 
cannot regard it as the sole German interest and they are behaving in the 
classic way as if they were never in the EMS and all that matters is the German 
money supply and German inflation. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              But it would extraordinarily naive of 
any cabinet minister or government to suppose that the Bundesbank would ever, 
has ever behaved without that guiding precept.   Are you seriously suggesting 
that you can go to the Germans and say as they would interpret it, "We want you 
to build in a little bit of inflation into your system so that you can 
accommodate a little bit of our inflation"?   It's not on. 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I certainly wouldn't put it that 
way and I certainly, given the....which think all this is impossible, that it 
is going to take some time before we get back to the Exchange Rate Mechanism, 
but it is - it should be as self-evident to them as it is to us that if we're 
agreed on the desirability of a monetary system, there has to be a clearer 
understanding betwen us all of how it works and the Germans, let me remind you, 
firstly carried out their legal obligations to us by intervening to support our 
currency rate as they did and they're protesting they did, but no-one's ever 
denied they did, they stepped in and worked with the French extremely closely 
to defend the value of the Franc.  Personally I'm not indignant about that, I 
don't agree with them in the sense that their opinion appears to be that the 
value of sterling was not defensible, the value of the Franc was, they 
intervened and the Franc came through although it's come through into a system 
weakened, not least because we and the Italians are out of it, but that I think 
paves the way for our sitting down at some stage which won't be at Birmingham, 
but at some stage and saying, "Look, before we get back into this situation 
again we have to make sure there's a much better understanding, how we're going 
to avoid a repeat of Black Wednesday. 
 
DIMBLEY:                               Given what all of them have said I put 
it to you that the prospect of getting the change that you've just called for 
is to inhabit and I say it with respect, but on the basis of what the Germans 
have said, you inhabit cloud cuckoo land? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I've just said that I don't think 
it's going to happen in a hurry.  I don't think it is cloud cuckoo land.  If it 
is thought that you're going into a single market, if it's thought that Europe 
is going to become the trading block which everybody's agreed upon and is going 
to thrive in competition with the Americans and the Pacific rim, I think 
Germans, British, French have all got to agree on the rules by which that bloc 
operates and Black Wednesday may have shown that this is going to take quite a 
long time, and for all of us actually understand the basis on which we're going 
to keep in touch on monetary policy inside the single market. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You say it's critically important and 
that Britain can't go in without some such change to the structure as you've 
described it.  I want to know because this is at the core, the heart of this 
whole ERM question, is if at core it is the Bundesbank not behaving...don't  
want to say it aggressively, but not behaving in the European interest, what 
exactly do you expect the Bundesbank and the Germans to do? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I haven't said it's all the 
Bundesbank, but I mean we're all agreed the Bundesbank played a key part.  The 
only thing we're complaining about I think really is the stray remarks which we 
say they made and they say the didn't. Well, let's draw a line under all that.  
What we're ...(INTERRUPTION)... I quite agree with you, that's all water 
under the bridge, so there's much more interesting stuff than that, bit of 
blood mixed with it perhaps, but we now have to make sure that when we go back 
into the Exchange Rate Mechanism, when and if we do, and I hope very much we 
do, we all of us, the partners in that system have a much clearer idea what 
we're going to do so we don't have crises again, that take one or two of the 
partners away.  That seems to me as basic obvious commonsense and if it sounds 
too platitudinous I have been touching on a bit more detail a few moments ago. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You have touched on detail and that's 
why I want to pursue it a bit more with you because it's obviously extremely 
important.   Let me put back to you what the Dutch, the Belgians and Kohl all 
agreed at their Christian Democrat meeting at the beginning of the week, out 
came the former Belgian Prime Minister on their behalf Mr Martins (phon.) and 
he said this.  "The EMS is not deficient, you have to accept the logic of the 
system.   Sometimes a realignment is necessary".   A pointed observation.   To 
go back to what we were first talking about, a pointed observation about the 
British, they are not persuaded that because we couldn't hold our place that 
therefore the rules of the game have to change and the goalposts have to move 
are they? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, you go on from what they said.  I 
don't think the European monetary system is deficient.   We joined the monetary 
system about five years ago.  We joined the ERM two years ago.  The disciplines 
are important, I mean we talk about the Bundesbank being against inflation, so 
is the British government, that's why the disciplines, the convergence criteria 
we don't mind.  You may have the quote in front of you - I don't.   I don't 
think they could all have been saying actually everything in the garden's 
lovely and we're quite happy with the Exchange Rate Mechanism with the British 
having gone out, the Italians having gone out and the Spanish reintroduced 
exchange controls, the Irish introduced exchange controls, that the Greeks not 
even joined and the French just having beaten off a great run on the Franc.  I 
think if you get us all together you will find there's quite a lot to talk 
about about how a European monetary system might work and we're in favour of it 
working if it can be made to work, because it gets stability in the single 
market on which we've always been keen. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You've always been keen.  It would not 
be credible would it to say that we are at the heart of Europe if we were  
indefinitely inside the ERM? 
 
CLARKE:                                I personally see Europe working on the 
basis of a European monetary system so I would trust that as that system 
evolves we're part of it, it's just part of a far bigger policy of making sure 
that as we trade in the single market and our political base in the world 
depends on the community, we influence the rules in that community, that's 
where we should be. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Do you accept that signing the 
Maastricht Treaty, ratifying the Maastricht treaty is up for the ERM. 
 
CLARKE:                                It's to sign up for a process which 
we're happy to do.  It remains our intention to go into the Exchange Rate 
Mechanism when conditions allow.  The Greeks have ratified - they're not 
members of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.  You set out in your piece quite 
clearly the stages which the Treaty of Maastricht contemplates but that's a 
timetable we never accepted.  It was signed on the basis that all twelve 
countries wouldn't make that timetable.  There are plenty of people in the 
Government who don't think any of them will make that timetable as it's set 
out. 
 
                                        That is a direction in which policy 
should go - we're heading in that direction.  We're saying we'll join the 
Exchange Rate Mechanism when conditions allow, puts us in a perfectly
straight forward position to ratify Maastricht just as the Greeks have done.   
 
DIMBLEBY:                              So those Euro-sceptics or doubters in 
your Party who may be running away with the idea, well, we'll be dragooned into 
the lobbies on Maastricht but we'll never get the ERM, should not have any 
illusion about that; they will be getting the ERM; it's only the timetable 
that's in question. 
 
CLARKE:                                They'll get the policy we've declared 
which they like.  I would say to any Euro-sceptic doubting Maastricht because 
somehow imagines we'll be forced into the narrow band in 1994 - "Don't worry, I 
mean, that's not your misunderstanding".  It is true that if we ratify 
Maastricht we'll be committing ourselves to that aim.  I've described a managed 
currency system, a European monetary system but actually I don't think half the 
countries will be in the narrow band by 1994. 
 
                                       Our aim, our own behaviour when we 
ratified Maastricht will be consistent with what I'm saying.  We would 
like to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism; we will join it if conditions allow; 
we will only join it when British interests actually are served by our joining 
the Exchange Rate Mechanism. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              If this process is as difficult as you 
describe, do you not feel that the Government is at great risk of its 
credibility being, in European terms, even more undermined by the prospect of 
the inner-core countries, as they're called, leaping over Maastricht and going 
directly straight into a single currency? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, it was always contemplated in the 
Maastricht Treaty that there would be some who hit the timetable, some who 
wouldn't.  I actually don't think all this stuff about a two-speed Europe is 
likely to happen in the way that people are fearing in the last week or two, 
not least because the Germans - I'm quite sure and quite a lot of the other 
member states - want nothing of the kind. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              If it did happen - we never know what 
happens, we didn't know we were going to come out of the ERM - if it did 
happen, would you personally with your commitment to Europe, regard it as a 
massive haemorrhage of British influence and authority if we weren't inside 
that inner group? 
 
CLARKE:                                I never want to see us in a position 
that the Scandanavians and the Swiss have been for the last twenty years of 
having all their lives dominated by what's going on in the community but not 
being at the heart of decision making there.  I actually think Europe works 
best when Germany, France, Britain and their allies, are all involved, when 
there's no particular one or two countries dominating and that's where we'll 
get back. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Can we move to the figure who is the 
architect of the economic strategy that this Government has been pursuing.  
Assuming that he is an honourable and decent man, and no-one is calling that 
into question, is it credible to have the man who negotiated us onto the rocks 
of Black September, to remain in power telling us that he was singing in his 
bath afterwards? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I don't think any colleague who's 
an honourable and decent man can start criticising the Chancellor when what he 
has done is exactly what he discussed with his colleagues and we all agreed he 
should do.  And so I actually think that it would be extremely distasteful if  
any one of his colleagues suddenly said that Norman somehow should be made,
jettisoned as if somehow we're now changing our policy.  We're not even 
changing our policy aims, therefore, we have same the Chancellor.  I'm 
delighted to hear he sings in his bath, this is a resilient Government. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Well, you may be delighted to hear that 
he sings in his bath, a lot of people are very cross about it.   
 
CLARKE:                                I'd rather not listen to it. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              You don't have to, I trust.  Reported it 
is that the Chancellors of Europe, the City, even indeed, parts of Whitehall, 
believe he has no longer credibility and that, therefore, the economy and the 
pound are being damaged regardless of his individual virtues.  Under those 
circumstances does he not have to consider his position? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I think credibility depends on the 
economic policy you pursue and the skill in which you pursue it and I do not 
believe that any other Chancellor of the Exchequer, of any Party as it happens, 
could have avoided Black Wednesday and I...you and I were talking earlier on 
about the line which Norman now has to chart.  Plainly it's is going to take 
him so time to spell that out in detail.  I think his credibility generally, 
his policy, it's just an inevitable political reaction to a crisis that 
somebody's got to have their head lopped off and I don't think it should be 
Norman. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Well, let me put it...there are a lot of 
people in the constituency saying he ought to have his head lopped off as you 
doubtless heard but that's not my question, the question is this:  Is it 
credible that the man who sings in his bath after getting out of the ERM, is 
the man to take us straight back in again when it's possible? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I don't think any of us think 
we're going straight back in again as you and I have discussed a few moments 
ago.  I think Norman's a Chancellor who's not going to say the day after Black 
Wednesday that everything's now off, we've lost our sense of direction.  He 
was the Chancellor we had before, he's the Chancellor who's going to help us 
stay to that sense of direction, carry out mapping out the course of Britain we 
intended in the middle of an extremely difficult recession where we must ensure 
that Britain does not get into worse difficulties than any of our trading 
partners. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Home Secretary, is it as credible to 
hear protestations of ministerial support for the Chancellor as it was to hear 
such protestations in the case of David Mellor? 
 
CLARKE:                                Well, I particularly regret David Mellor 
being driven out in the way he was.  I mean, that was all part of the silly and 
rather nastier side of British politics.  I think this is a political issue 
that Norman's been challenged on - it's one where the Government's been 
consistent and I don't think the Government could remotely contemplate him 
going on that basis. 
 
DIMBLEBY:                              Home Secretary, thank you very much. 
 

 
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