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ON THE RECORD
CONSERVATIVE DISCUSSION
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE 16.1.94
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: So, Charles Clarke, first perhaps from
your perspective. How do you think Labour, as an analyst - looking at it from
that view - how do you think Mr. Major got into that mess over back to basics?
CHARLES CLARKE: I think he got the whole thing the wrong
way round. He achieved a slogan with no substance before he'd established the
policies. What one ought to do is firstly, establish your policies and the
uniting theme around them, based on a proper analysis of public opinion and
political opinion. Having sorted out the policies, then establish the package,
the presentation, the slogans and then, thirdly and finally, get out and make
the case in Party Political broadcast speeches, advertisements and so on. I
think they seemed to have pick the slogan "back to basics" without having any
underpinning structure of policy and themes, and now they've got into the
problem that's why they've come unstuck now.
HUMPHRYS: John Maples, is that conceivable? I
mean, do politicians and their strategists sit around like a group of ad
writers from Saachi and Saachi, for instance, and say "Let's think of a good
slogan, now. What can it be today? "Back to Basics" - that's it, we'll go
with it".
JOHN MAPLES: No. I think that at election time they
go through the process that Charles Clarke has just described, of a
considerable amount of research - seeing what the policies are, what defines
those and unites those, and coming up with a slogan to use in advertisements -
but between elections I don't think that's what you are about. What you're
about is trying to get the Government right, trying to get the policies right,
and I think what he was saying, if you actually look back to the speech, he'd
talked about core values before he talked about back to basics, and talked
about things like free trade and sound money, and teaching people, you know,
the basic elements of education, respect for the law and being tough on crime.
I mean, those were the things he talked about and I think actually those are
the elements of policy which he ought to pursue and which do strike a chord
with the public.
Now whether or not back to basics
turns into a happy or successful or catchy slogan or not I don't think really
matters. I think what matters between elections, if you're in Government, is
getting the policy right and what he was articulating was what he saw as the
core of some of those policy areas where the Conservatives are, I think, sort
of making the running.
HUMPHRYS: Yes -- just a second Charles. Are you
telling me that they don't actually sit around and think up slogans at all?
That you don't have men and women sitting around with damp towels wrapped
around their foreheads saying "Let's find a slogan"?
MAPLES: Well, I think there's some thinking up
of the sort of logos you see above Party Conference platforms and that sort of
thing, but, no, I think it's it at elections that you really try to encapsulate
your very complicated message into relatively simple slogans. I don't think
that's what you're about between elections.
HUMPHRYS: But you still don't you, I mean, you
give briefings to journalists before big speeches and you say "maybe you ought
to think about this, maybe this is what's going to be".
MAPLES: That's I think what back to basics is.
I mean what he's trying to describe here is, as I've said, free trade, tough on
crime, you know, new policies on education. These sort of areas. And I think
that back to basics does sum that up in a way, but I don't think it's really...
I don't see it as being intended to be an all-enveloping slogan that describes
what the Government's about.
HUMPHRYS: Charles.
CLARKE: John, what I feel is that John is
absolutely right to describe the difference between elections and other times.
But I think that what goes on between elections is only a less intense example
of what takes place at election time. The lack of clarity I was talking about
has meant all kinds of questions have been raised. Is personal morality part
of the back to basics thing, individual morality or not? Is, for example,
there to be a specific policy to try and penalise single mothers in relation
to the Social Security budget in the Treasury?
There's a whole series of different
answers, different emphases have emerged from this campaign and because of a
lack of precision in what the back to basics set of policies, themes actually
were from the outset it's allowed both the Conservatives' opponents, in the
Opposition, in the media and elsewhere to make hay, but also people within the
Conservative Party who wish to emphasise different aspects of their own
perception of back to basics, to make their own theme run and to pull it there,
and it needed to be pulled together much more tightly than I think is being
done.
HUMPHRYS: But we're being sort of Monday morning
quarterbacks here, aren't we? I mean, we're saying, look, it could have been
done differently - I mean, they should have spotted all these coming up - but
should they really? I mean, how differently would you have done it?
CLARKE: Well, certainly Labour Party campaigns
and strategies have had mistakes and errors in them over the time, but the
mistakes and errors occur from not thinking through properly what is going to
be the impact of what you do, and my belief is they didn't think through
properly what back to basics was and how it would be, and how people would
respond to it.
HUMPHRYS: That is entirely possible, isn't it John
Maples?
MAPLES: Well, I think that the process of
Government is much more complicated than the process of running a campaign and
being in Opposition you're essentially running a permanent election campaign;
if you're in Government you do it for about sort of six weeks before the
election, and there are a whole series of areass where the Government is trying
to find its way through very complicated areas.
I think that all he was doing was
reasserting where he started from in some of those policies - what the values
were, the core values that he described, or back to basics, however he wanted
to describe it and where he started from - I don't think it was intended to be
a, as I say, an all-enveloping description of what the Government was about,
and the fact that it let in debate at the moment on the private sexual morality
of Members of Parliament, and I think that's an unfortunate accident - I don't
think anybody could have predicted that happening - but it has, of course given
the media a bit of a hook on which to hang this as a story, but I think that's
a passing thing, that will go away.
HUMPHRYS And it may be, Charles, may it not, that
in a sense it's not going to cause enormous damage to the Government after all,
because it will go away inevitably - it'll run out of Ministers who've done
naughty things, for a start, presumably, and maybe what the Labour Party
should be doing is saying "Look, let's not be distracted in a sense from this.
Let's look at what our strategy presumably was and that is attack the
Government over the economy, if that's wehat the strategy was". Was it?
CLARKE: I think politically you and John are
both right in saying that the immediate impact of these personal sex scandals
and so on will go away. What I think won't go away is lack of clarity about
what the whole back to basics theme means, unless that is specifically done by
the Prime Minister and put into shape, and what I think that Labour needs to be
doing, in addition to what it's already doing, is pressing the Government very,
very hard about what the policies - not the personality aspects - the policies
of back to basics ... (break in tape) ... and how they're in fact going to put
them into effect in education, law and order, all the areas which some
Conservative Ministers are now mentioning. That's the area for an increased
offensive in my opinion now - to put more pressure on the Conservatives on back
to basics.
HUMPHRYS: And looking at it now, as we look back -
I'm saying look back at it, we may be in the beginning of it, we may be in the
middle of it now, John Maples - do you say to yourself, as a Tory strategist,
"Yes, it actually was a mistake. Wish we'd done it differently".
MAPLES: Well, I think that if somebody had known
that around Christmas a whole series of scandals of one sort or another -
relatively petty things, but to do with people's private sexual morality - were
going to break, then they would have been much more cautious about taking back
to basics into the area of family policy and single mothers. It wasn't the
Prime Minister who did that, and actually the speeches that were made by
Ministers about single mothers at Party Conference were made before the Prime
Minister coined the phrase "back to basics".
But I think what is interesting is
that.. where we're talking about back to core values in these policies -
education, the economy, sound money, free trade, housing and those sort of
things - these actually are the areas of political debate at the moment. They
are the areas in which there is a very clear distinction I think between the
Government and the Opposition over which way policy should go, and I think
that what they are doing is drawing attention to that. I think that he's right
to continue to pursue the sort of policy development and changes that are
taking place in those areas, and I do think that that is responding to
something that the public want.
HUMPHRYS: And maybe to that extent, Charles, we're
going to be dancing to their tune if you go along with the back to basics now?
If you keep it going in the way you've described.
CLARKE: While back to basics is defined in terms
of issues like law and order and education, Labour not only has no alternative
but will wish to put the focus on the Government policies in that area. Tony
Blair, for example, has been very, very keen to press in the whole law and
order theme the Labour version of, as it were, back to basics, tough on the
cause of crime as well as tough on crime itself. Education in the same way.
And I think Labour will welcome the idea of serious debates about what are
basic values in these fields and what the basic policy should be put in place.
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ON THE RECORD
LABOUR DISCUSSION
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE 16.1.94
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JOHN HUMPRHYS: Charles, let's look at tax first.
You're always, the Labour Party's always going to have problems with tax during
an election campaign isn't it, so is the strategy now effectively to say,
"actually you can't trust either party on tax, or let's try and negate the
whole thing"?
CLARKE: I think there are three things that
Labour has wanted to do on tax, first make sure that it's understood that it is
the Tories who are the tax-raising party, that's what that advertisement's
about, that's what they've been trying to do right through the last year, I
think with some success. Secondly, they have to convince people that paying
taxes goes to improved services. Many people now believe that if you pay taxes
it just goes into a bottomless pit of no value to them, and that's why I think
Gordon Brown has launched at the beginning of this year his approach to
raising, to hypothecating taxes, that's making taxes more related to particular
services, to unifying tax and benefits for pensioners and so on, and I think
you'll see over the year policies beginning to emerge which make the link
directly between paying taxes and improved services, and finally I think they
have to convince people that Labour can be trusted to run efficient public
services, and that still remains a core Labour problem which runs - it doesn't
just affect Gordon Brown, but the whole of the Labour front bench team.
HUMPHRYS: Makes sense to you John Maples. Would
you be doing much the same if you were - ?
JOHN MAPLES: No, I mean I think that they have got a
very serious difficulty here, because I know that the Labour Party during Neil
Kinnock's leadership abandoned a lot of those traditional left-wing policies,
not all of them, but quite a lot, nuclear disarmament, nationalisation, that
sort of thing, and to a considerable degree state interference in the economy,
but the thing that they very clearly stood for and I think still stand for is
spending more money on public services, health, education, social security,
whatever it is.
HUMPHRYS: So are you supposed to.
MAPLES: Yes, but I think this is the difference.
I mean you know, we seem to have settled down at somewhere around forty per
cent of the gross national product being spent on public services one way and
another. The Labour Party's always telling us we ought to be spending more,
always telling the public that they would spend more, and that's a very clear
position. It's a perfectly respectable one, I don't disagree with it, but it's
a respectable one and one can argue relatively easily, but it's got to be paid
for, and I think that wherever the Conservatives are at the next election in
terms of taxes, they will always be able to say that the Labour party are
saying we should spend more on all these things. The only way they can pay for
it is by raising taxes. I think this is one of those issues, that while it is
not as easy for us now as it was a few years ago, because we've had to put up
taxes this year, I think it's always going to be one of our issues and
difficult for them.
HUMPHRYS: But what Charles is saying you're saying
might make sense electorally? Purely as a strategist, forget the fact that
you're a Tory as well, if you can.
MAPLES: I think it's very difficult for them to
escape from it. I mean I think this is one of the defining differences between
the parties. I mean there are some big differences and this is one of them.
The whole area of how much of our national resources should be spent on public
services. I mean I think there are other ones, and it's interesting that in
your film you talk about the European elections. I mean I think there are very
clear differences now between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party over
what kind of europe they want, what they think its powers ought to be, and I
think that we will clearly try to make the European elections about that, but
mid-term elections as have by-elections become a sort of popularity poll on the
governement of the day and inevitably they always do badly, because there are
things that the public are unhappy about, they know they're not going to have
to change the government and they've sort of essentially got a free vote. But
I think the European elections are about much more than that, and if we can
succeed in persuading people that here there is a real difference and I think
from our point of view a rather dangerous difference, that you know what the
Labour Party wants out of Europe is a much more federal Europe, you know the
Social Chapter is to do with telling us how we regulate our working lives and
much more how we regulate the economy. I don't think that's what people want
and I think that we will try to show that there is a real difference there
between the parties.
HUMPHRYS: You're shaking you head there Charles?
CLARKE: Just on the point of Social chapter John.
All the opinion polling indicates that the British people want to share the
benefits of the Social Chapter that are experienced elsewhere in Europe. I
think Labour would be very happy to fight on that case, but if - sorry .....
HUMPHRYS: You say Labour would be very happy to
fight on that case because that is what the opinion polls show. Let me take a
slightly broader and deeply cynical look at this, and say, is that what you're
actually about you strategists? Do you say, this is what the people want. We
will find a way of selling that to them, or indeed giving that to them, because
you don't have to sell it to them if they clearly want it, or do you say,
gentlemen I have principles, folks I have principles. Are you going to find a
way of selling - I mean what is a strategist for?
CLARKE: What a strategist does is firstly say:
what are the principles that the party you're advising wishes to put into
practice. Secondly what is the state of public opinion and political opinion on
those issues, thirdly what policies and what objectives do you therefore have
within that context?
HUMPHRYS: So you'll trim you principles if you
think you can't quite sell the whole thing to the electorate?
CLARKE: I think that all political parties that
seek to operate in the modern world will take account of modern pulbic opinion
before putting forward what their final policy proposal is. For example it
would be ludicrous for the Labour Party to put forward the policies on which we
won in 1945 to win in 1996, and it won't do it.
HUMPHRYS: What about the leader of the
Conservative Party at the next election now. It was said during the last one
that you were terribly glad that -- you were divided in one election, you
were divided about whether you wanted Mrs Thatcher to stay in power because
somebody else would be more difficult to beat. Is that your view this time?
CLARKE: My view is that John ....
HUMPHRYS: In relation to John Major of course.
CLARKE: Of course. My view is that John Major
cannot win the next general election for the Conservatives, without some
unimaginable transformation of his personal leadership qualities. I think that
will become increasingly clear over the current year through the local
elections and through the European elections and will lead Conservatives who
want to win the next election to say we've got the change our leader in order
to win the next election.
HUMPHRYS: If, John Maples, a strategist came to
that conclusion as well, and again I ask you if you can just step aside from
your party for a moment and think of yourself as a strategist, if they came to
that conclusion as well, would they actually say,"Look, you'd better think
about changing the leader in time for the next election". Is that the role of
the strategist?
MAPLES: Well, the Conservative Party when it's
in government doesn't use strategists like that, I mean the strategy is made by
the cabinet ministers and by the Prime Minister, and so I don't think sort of
questions like that really arise. I think that politicians do have
principles. They go into politics because they believe in particular things
that they want to pursue. Now clearly there are different degrees to which you
can pursue something, whether you emphasise it or not is a question of timing,
you can't do everything at once for a start; but I don't think it really is as
cynical an exercise as you are suggesting, that what you do is go out and find
out what the public wants and offer to give it to them. I think there are
certainly things - you've obviously got to take account of public opinion in
what you emphasise or when you try to do something you know is going to be
difficult, but if for instance the conclusion that one came to is that the
public wants an extra five per cent of our national income spent on public
services and the taxes to pay for it, my view would be let them have it from a
Labour government, because they'll get tired of it very soon.
HUMPHRYS: Okay. Charles, a very quick final
thought. If you really think that John Major cannot win you should actually go
easy on him now as a Labour Party shouldn't you, so that they'd keep him there?
CLARKE: I don't think there's any way that an
opposition can play that kind of game. That decision is for the Conservative
members of parliament and my actual view is that they should do what John Smith
did this morning, and put maximum pressure on John Major, I think that's the
right approach.
HUMPHRYS: Gentlemen, thank you both very much.
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