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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 15.5.94
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. In today's programme,
how the untimely death of John Smith has changed the course of British
politics. The contest for the succession has not yet begun, but we'll be
talking to a man who once sought the leadership for himself. That's after the
news read by Moira Stewart.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Welcome back. The political scene in
Britain had been frenetic - if not positively frenzied. One election campaign
ended and another just begun, the ruling party tearing itself apart, the Prime
Minister himself facing the real possibility of a leadership challenge. Every
day bringing new tensions, new excitements. At quarter past nine on Thursday
morning it all stopped. And the hands on the political clock have been frozen
ever since. They will stay frozen until after John Smith's funeral on Friday
morning, at least for the main players in the political drama as far as their
appearances on the public stage are concerned. But backstage, things are
moving.
And in the front row of the stalls the
critics and the observers are making their calculations and reviewing the
developments and that's what we'll be doing today: taking a look at what the
death of John Smith means for the Labour Party and the political scene in
general - and at who might emerge as his successor. Has Tony Blair really got
it all sewn up even before the campaign has begun?
********
HUMPHRYS: I'm joined now by Andrew Marr of
The Independent and Peter Riddell of The Times.
Gentlemen, all done and dusted for Tony
Blair?
ANDREW MARR: Not yet, I think. There's been a lot of
immediate comment - papers coming out saying it's got to be Tony Blair - but
there will be a real serious contest. It's a new Electoral system that hasn't
been tried out in quite this form before. So, I think, it's early days. My
money would certainly be on Tony Blair but my money would be for a hell of a
contest first.
HUMPHRYS: Peter?
PETER RIDDELL: Yes, I'd agree. I think, it will be a
hell of a contest. I think a lot will depend on when it's going to occur -
and, there's some pressure, particularly from David Blunkett, the current
Chairman of the Labour Party for it to occur in July; it'll be a big postal
ballot; very influenced by television because you're talking about quite a lot
of..a large number of people voting - around two hundred, two hundred and fifty
thousand individual Labour Party members; maximum plus, in theory, up to four
million Trade Union levy payers; what influence will be exercised by Union
Leaderships - their doubts about Tony Blair....
HUMPHRYS: But they have no block votes, of course.
All that's gone.
RIDDELL: No but the-there'll be a lot of keen
watching of how the ballots are conducted. At the last Election - alright, it
was a walkover for John Smith but some of the ballot papers weren't exactly
straight. They were strongly seeking to influence the result. They're saying:
your Union Executive strongly recommends you to vote for John Smith.
HUMPHRYS: That's still going to be allowed, isn't
it?
RIDDELL: There'll be people...because it will be
a tighter contest, people are going to keep a much closer eye on it this time
than they did in the past 'cos it's going to be a much broader thing on that.
I think that'll be one of the stories of the next two or three months.
HUMPHRYS: There's this talk of the fact that if
there's a sort of single transferrable vote system which means that both Blair
and Brown can run. Does that make sense to you?
MARR: They can both run. That was always-
HUMPHRYS: And without fighting each other, as it
were...?
MARR: Well, you can't run against somebody
else for the same job without, in some sense, fighting them. And, that's part
of the problem. I mean, if you've got two candidates like Blair and Brown who
occupy very similar part of a political terrain together, slugging it out in
public then, that will diminish the modernising case, or might diminish the
modernising case because Gordon Brown is going to have to make the case why he,
Gordon Brown, should be Leader and then Prime Minister, not Tony Blair and vice
versa. So, that's one of the problems they've got to sort out between them.
I think, the real problem, or the real
issue with the Electoral system is not so much STV or the way it's going to be
done but as Peter was suggesting, the fact that a lot of it is going to be
dominated by television, the media. Everyone's going to be doing opinion polls
to see who the voters would most like. Rather, as you remember happened, when
John Major became Leader of the Conservative Party and there will, certainly,
be quite a backlash among a lot of old trade unionists, individual members of
the Labour Party, saying: we don't want to be dictated to by the media. Why?
Who are they to tell us who we should vote for?
So, I think, that will be quite an
issue.
HUMPHRYS: They've already decided, haven't they?
The media.
RIDDELL: The media. We're not a conspiracy, as
perhaps you might discover reading me tomorrow.
HUMPHRYS: Some of them, I should say that.
RIDDELL: Some have decided, but I think there is
a danger and I agree with Andrew exactly on that because, I think, there will
be a reaction against it and I know who it'll benefit is, I think, John
Prescott. If John Prescott stands, I think, he'll do rather well because he
appeals to people who want a traditional Labour stance. He's a gutsy fighter,
as he showed at the Conference last time, delivering the changing rules on
candidates, the OMOV issue, as it is popularly known.
I think, he'll do rather well for
exactly that reason. People-there'll be a reaction against Tony Blair. The
other factor on a number of candidates is: every Leadership election,
whatever rules says, you've got to have momentum.
HUMPHRYS: But - sorry - but Bryan Gould was
saying, in that interview I just did with him - that he thought it was going to
be between Cook and Blair?
MARR: I think, it's more likely that John
Prescott will be the runner. He has got this problem with a magazine article,
saying that he wasn't in the league to be Leader of the Party but he's very,
very popular in the Party. If the Party could choose somebody to make the
Labour Party feel good about itself, I think, they'd probably go for Prescott,
possibly with Robin Cook as his Campaign Manager.
But, they've got to think about the
voters and I suspect, at the end of the day, they're going to say: well, we
love John Prescott, he's one of us but we've got to reach out beyond our tribe
into the South, into those people we haven't been able to convince before and
that's why, probably, they will end up going for Blair.
HUMPHRYS: 'Cos that is the problem, isn't it? If
problem it is, that Blair is the candidate for the country, as it were,
Prescott is the candidate for the Party?
RIDDELL: Yes, it's something that they feel-want
to feel comfortable with. I think, it's very important for Labour Party
members, Labour MPs, Trade Union members, who are- who pay the political levy,
they feel comfortable with someone. And, I think, it will be a combination of
thinking: well, he's good on TV, he appeals to us and, also, he believes in the
Labour Party.
So, I think, what we'll be hearing from
Tony Blair, when the campaigning starts in a few weeks' time, will be very much
an assertion of Labour values. We'll be hearing a lot about his constituency in
Durham and things like that. He'll want to get away from exactly what Kim
Catcheside was reporting of the 'yuppy'. Now, there'll be a lot about
Sedgefield.
HUMPHRYS: Will it be what some of the papers are
portraying - and that is - a classic Left/Right fight, in which the old wounds
are going to be reopened. I mean, there's a certain amount of self-serving
there, obviously. But, what do you think?
MARR: I think, there's plenty of opportunity
for that if the Labour Party chooses to go down that road. There are serious
disagreements as we heard in the earlier reports, particularly on macro
economic policy, to a lesser degree on Europe. I think, the difference between
the Conservatives and the Labour Party on Europe is that the Labour
anti-Europeans are both fewer in number and tend to be much older, frankly.
So, I don't think Europe's going to be a great divisive issue but I could see
tax, the positioning of the Labour Party on macro economics as being a serious
issue. And I think, certainly, if we get a "modernising candidate" and a
candidate of the traditionalists or the Left standing against that candidate,
the media will, certainly, portray this as a classic Left/Right struggle. But,
we've got to remember, it's a Left-Right struggle that's taking place on an
agenda which has already narrowed considerably, compared with, say, the early
Nineteen-Eighties.
HUMPHRYS: Even so, is it going to be damaging? Is
it going to help the Tories? Is it going to help Mr Major, in particular?
RIDDLE: Well in the short term it helps John
Major, because the talk of a threat to him in the summer I think has gone
completely. I mean the last thing the Tories can do is change their leader,
however badly they do in the European Elections on June 9th, when Labour is in
the midst of choosing a leader, that just won't happen, in the short term.
Also, with relation to Michael
Heseltine, one leader dying of a heart attack raises questions about someone
else who had a heart attack however healthy, however different it is; Tory MPs
- the people who decide the Tory leader will be thinking of that. So I think
in the short term it gives a respite to John Major, in the long term however I
think it may well pose very serious problems because if it's Tony Blair or
someone like him as a new Labour leader you could see quite a revived Labour
Party, one which captures..some voters have gone to Lib Dems in the South and I
think there could be a real problem to be..he would emphasise the contrast
between a fresher looking Labour Party and a bit of a stale old government
which has been around for an awful long time.
HUMPHRYS: Portillo, Andrew Marr - the effect on
him?
MARR: The effect on Portillo is that if
there's a leadership crisis later in the year Portillo looks a bit better, I
don't really see Michael Portillo as being somebody who's got the reach into
the middle of the Conservative Party to become leader in the short term at all.
I think on the Heseltine issue we've got
to unpack that a little bit, have to ask ourselves if by the end of the year
the Labour Party has gone through a leadership campaign, come out with Tony
Blair, looking pretty good - does that make Tory MPs more or less likely to
panic about the leadership? Answer: more likely if there is a leadership
contest, if John Major goes Michael Heseltine is still a formidable candidate.
And I think you've also got to ask
yourself Central Office is going to be looking at the Labour candidates and
saying how can we attack them, how can we get at them. If Blair gets it
they're going to be saying don't send a boy to do a man's job, inexperienced,
never been in government; if they're going to mount that kind of attack then
Michael Heseltine doesn't necessarily look that bad an alternative.
HUMPHRYS: What about the Liberal Democrats - we've
heard Paddy Ashdown talking about John Smith's death in terms of a great loss
to progessive politics. What should we read into that about relationships
between the Lib Dems and the Labour Party?
RIDDELL: Well in specific terms, absolutely
nothing at all because John Smith and Paddy Ashdown didn't get on terribly
well. John Smith regarded Paddy Ashdown as an irritating outsider who was a
bit sanctimonious to be honest. The relationship was much closer between
John Smith and Ming Campbell and some of the other Scots, that's where the
closeness was. I think in practice that if it was someone like Blair and Brown
Paddy Ashdown would find it easier to work with. I think his problem is that a
new generation Labour leader would appeal to some of the people who had voting
Lib Dem in the South. However, it would have a paradoxical effect: it would
reduce the bogy thing of voting Labour, Labour will be less frightening and
therefore perhaps in the South West it would be much more difficult for the
Tories to argue "if you vote Lib Dem and elect a Lib Dem MP you're going to
allow in a wild radical Labour government". So the vote might come down but he
might get more seats.
HUMPHRYS: Right, five seconds left for what we've
got to have is Tony Blair with Margaret Beckett continuing as the deputy?
MARR: Well Margaret Beckett's the deputy at
the moment, if she chooses to stand down then I suspect the Party would prefer
to see somebody like John Prescott as deputy to make it quite clear that it was
a balanced ticket.
HUMPHRYS: Peter.
RIDDELL: I think it's probably going to be
Blair/Beckett but I think they would probably like Prescott in the long
term.
HUMPHRYS: Gentlemen, thank you both very much.
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