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ON THE RECORD
INTERVIEW WITH PADDY ASHDOWN
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 16.10.94
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Paddy Ashdown, it is inconceivable that
you should be seen to be propping up the Tories, so is it not time to pass the
death sentence on this policy of equi-distance?
PADDY ASHDOWN MP: You can't tell where this present
position in politics is, and you don't know which way it's going. You don't
know what Mr Blair will do with the Labour Party and you can't tell the
circumstances of the next election. Where Menzies Campbell is entirely right
is that the Liberal Democrats must not be a monastic cult. We haven't been,
the whole style of politics which I'm seeking to introduce is one in which we
will work with others, like I did last year on the issue of the Maastricht Bill
with the government in order to preserve Britain's future in Europe against the
Labour Party that wanted to destroy it.
You know, we've seen a film on Northern
Ireland John, and the fascinating thing about that was that the hope for
Northern Ireland will come through co-operation between parties on issues on
which they agree. That's the style of politics I want to create in Britain,
and that's the style of politics Liberal Democrats are going to take part in.
But what is clear is that we don't yet
know what the new Labour Party is. We know what Mr Blair would like to make
it, but there is a great distance as you have seen from the Clause Four vote
between saying something and delivering it. Once that becomes clear, once we
know the circumstances of the next election, the Liberal Democrats will have to
decide what their position is, in relation to the Labour Party and in relation
to the Conservatives.
HUMPHRYS: Plenty of senior ....
ASHDOWN: Liz Lynne was, if I may say,
absolutely correct. Which Labour Party are you talking about? Are you talking
about the Labour Party in Sheffield, old, corrupt, municipalist, centralist,
stuck into the old style of politics that Mr Blair apparently says he wants to
get rid of, or are you talking about the Labour Party of Mr Blair.
HUMPHRYS: Well, they are of course talking about
the Labour Party of Mr Blair aren't they?
ASHDOWN: Well not in Sheffield they're not, are
they? People in Sheffield are voting for the Liberal Democrats to kick out
the Labour Party in Sheffield. Let's see what Mr Blair can do with the Labout
Party....
HUMPHRYS: But Sheffield ...
ASHDOWN: He's a man of very considerable gifts.
He's got some clear ideas. He's determined to make an electable Labour Party.
It think that's good for Britain, and incidentally I think it's good for the
Liberal Democrats too, but there's a long long way between a conference
leader's first conference speech, considerable efforts and considerable speech
though it was, and what he can actually deliver in his party - as he found out
not more than a day later.
HUMPHRYS: But are you honestly saying that the
Blair Labour Party is the same as the old Labour Party? You don't believe
that.
ASHDOWN: I don't know, and you don't know either.
This is a blank sheet of paper - this is a vacuum....
HUMPHRYS: So you disregard everything that Tony
Blair said?
ASHDOWN: No, I don't. Quite the contrary John, I
just said to you that I don't disregard everything he said, I greatly welcome
it.
HUMPHRYS: But you don't believe that he can push
it through.
ASHDOWN: No. I think it's a question that has to
be decided. When it's decided we will know the shape of politics. When you
know what the conditions of the next election are going to be - it's two years
away - you will then have some idea about what the relationship between all the
parties is going to be.
HUMPHRYS: It might not be decided until Mr Blair
is in government, if he is in government and then of course it's too late for
you.
ASHDOWN: I don't think that's true at all. Watch
this space, is I think the interesting point of politics, but I mean watch this
space for the Labour Party, watch what this vacuum is going to turn into.
That's a very very interesting question, a question which rightly is in front
of minds of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, and the people in Britain.
I don't for a moment say that the
election of Tony Blair was anything other than a very important moment in
British politics. I personally believe that the ingredients are there for us
to be able to change the nature of our politics. Whenever a new leader comes
to a party that alters the imperatives under which all of us have to operate.
I know, I've seen five national leaders since I've been leader of the Liberal
Democrats now, and in every single time they got a new leader, Mr Smith after
Mr Kinnock, I was told that that would be the end of the Liberal Democrats.
Mr Major after Margaret Thatcher, a moderate Prime Minister, the Liberal
Democrats can't survive. Throughout that period the Liberal Democrats have
continued to grow, grow strongly, both ........both in terms of votes and in
terms of ideas.
It is not insignificant incidentally
that amongst the other successes of the last five years, and they have been
remarkable against the backdrop in which we were told by the press that Britain
was back to two-party politics and we couldn't survive, we are now the
strongest party in challenging the Tories in sixty or seventy of their key
seats, we've increased by a quarter our number of councillors, and we have
mapped out the agenda that Mr Blair is now moving the Labour Party to.
HUMPHRYS: Well that is ...
ASHDOWN: Well, you see the interesting point,
well let's wait and see what happens.
HUMPHRYS: But that's a concession isn't it?
You're saying precisely what I was saying earlier. ...Mr Blair has mapped out
the agenda that you have been setting, it means that he is on your agenda,
therefore you are on his agenda.
ASHDOWN: Mr. Blair is not the Labour Party, as
you found out on the day after his speech.
HUMPHRYS: Yes but you wouldn't suggest that party
conferences determine or dictate policy, yours doesn't?
ASHDOWN: Of course it does, ours is the only
democratic party that exists in Britain, it has one member one vote and it does
set party policy.
HUMPHRYS: ...but you found yourself able to say
after your part, as certain votes were taken in your party conference, "that
isn't Liberal Democrat policy?"
ASHDOWN: John you really must not misreport in
the way that others have. What the party passed at its conference, was not
the decriminalisation of cannabis, although that was what was reported on the
BBC, on the Nine O'Clock News, what the party passed was a Royal Commission
which would consider amongst other things, the decriminalisation of cannabis.
And what I announced, to get this absolutely square, so that you don't make
the mistake of misreporting us again, what I announced was that the Royal
Commission would go into the party manifesto, not the decriminalisation of
cannabis, 'cos that's not what we voted for.
HUMPHRYS: But you know full well that the Labour
Party Conference doesn't actually decide what a Labour Prime Minister is going
to do when he gets in Downing Street, anymore than a Conservative Party
Conference does.
ASHDOWN: That is true, because the Labour Party
is yet to become a fully democratic organisation, and the block vote still
exists in certain areas, and it's one of the reforms I hope they'll make, and
it's one of the reforms the Liberal Democrats, as a party committed to
democracy both internally and throughout the country, will watch on very
closely. But that is an open question, the question you have to, I think,
address yourself to is is it the case that everything that Mr. Blair is says is
about to become Labour Party policy. You've heard the news from Sheffield,
self evidently that isn't the case.
HUMPHRYS: But the big point here surely is that
Tony Blair is speaking your language, John Major manifestly is not speaking
your language?
ASHDOWN: Take the case of last year then, on the
question of Europe, fundemantal to our future, in which we took a very
considerable risk, probably the most courageous vote I've cast in the House of
Commons as my colleagues, to vote with an unpopular government, to save our
future in Europe, when the Labour Party was trying to destroy it.
Now, I'm not saying that these aren't
interesting times, of course they're interesting times, what I am saying is
that on all the issues that really matter, the nature of the Labour Party is
not yet known to us, and I would argue...
HUMPHRYS: The nature of Tony Blair is known to
you though, the leaders are immensely important.
ASHDOWN: Of course they are.
HUMPHRYS: And if you look at the kind of thing he
talks about: the Left of centre must develop a political philosophy with a
meaning for the modern world and Liberal Democrats have a place in that. Now
it is literally inconceivable that John Major might say that. So there is no
question - if I could just finish the point - there is no question that you
could - to use one of the expressions from that film, cosy up to John Major,
and there's only one other party that's left of significance.
ASHDOWN: This is not a question of cosying up,
this is a question of agreeing on what are the right policies for our country,
and working together on them. Now I am in favour of that, as I showed you, by
the actions we took last year, not with the Labour Party but with the
Conservative Party. We have set this agenda, it's no small thing for a third
party to have set the agenda, invented the language, constructed the policies
over the last four or five years, to which the leader of one of the other major
parties, is now seeking to lead his party to. If he succeeds, then we will
have more areas in which we can co-operate together on things on which we
agree. People are saying we don't want to go in the direction of the Labour
Party, that's absolutely right, but Mr. Blair seems to me, leading the Labour
Party in the direction of the Liberal Democrats.
HUMPHRYS: Well then why...
ASHDOWN: Let me give you this example. We have a
number of key issues, the area of constitional reform, we've led the way on
that. Mr. Blair is now moving towards that and let's see if the Labour Party
would accept that, with a single issue, very important one.
HUMPHRYS: Can I pursue that one just for a moment,
before you complete that. Constitutional reform, are you going to ring them up
this afternoon then, on the basis of this and say, now look Tony, you and I
both agree things have to be done, let's get together, let's.... I don't know,
start the Plant Committee up again, or call is something quite different.
ASHDOWN: I've no objection to the two parties
coming together, as I suggested in my conference speech, for instance on the
NHS, on ket issues where we agree, in formulating policy upon which we can
agree, that's a very good thing, but since you're talking about similarities,
can we talk about some dissimilarities, very very important......if you
wish?.
HUMPHRYS: Well just for a moment, I suggested you
might ring Tony Blair up this afternoon, no reason why you shouldn't then is
there, and say look, not these vague suggestions about co-operation, but Tony,
let's do something, let us get together and hammer out a joint position.
ASHDOWN: Who knows, it may well be that our
spokesman for this area will decide that there's a case to come together. I
think it's a very good idea, I've said it on the NHS. Look, the more areas
that we can work together upon, with other parties, the more areas that we can
establish a new culture in politics, with the Conservatives where we agree
with them, with Labour where we agree with them, on areas that we agree upon
the better, that is changing politics in the style that I wish to have it
changed.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so in order to establish that
common ground, you are quite prepared either to give him a tinkle at his home
this afternoon or to...
ASHDOWN: If someone were to suggest to me that
the two parties get together to talk about constitutional change in Britain,
where they can agree, I would say that's a wonderful idea provided others are
brought into it too. We're not just talking about ourselves, there's Charter
88 that's been a medium for this....
HUMPHRYS: Bring 'em all!
AHSDOWN: But, let's ....
HUMPHRYS: I doubt that the Conservatives would
want to join you, but nevertheless...
ASHDOWN: There are some Conservatives who might
be quite interested in it, but the door should be open to it, that's the kind
of politics that I think we need to create. And now let's talk about areas
where we manifestly don't agree.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, but before we leave that one ..
ASHDOWN: Now John, let me just see if I can
mention, there's another side to this, and ...
HUMPHRYS; I just want to be quite clear though
what you're saying on this question of constitutional reform. You are issuing
an invitation.....now let us be clear.....
ASHDOWN: No, I don't issue invitations on your
programme. It's a wonderful programme, but it's a wonderful programme...if you
can understand but if someone is to suggest that the two parties should get
together to talk about constitutional reform I'm thoroughly in favour.
HUMPHRYS: And you might suggest it yourself might
you?
ASHDOWN: I'm thoroughly in favour of that, and
the NHS is another area.
HUMPHRYS: I've just suggested that.
ASHDOWN: Europe - Well, you can understand if I
don't issue invitations on your programme I'm sure...
HUMPHRYS: Well not quite....(interruption).. the
people watching the programme understand it, because as you say ...
ASHDOWHN: I know you want your news point out of
the programme, and I'm sorry to deny it to you.
HUMPHRYS: I want clarification really....that's
what I want.
ASHDOWN: Well, you can't get clearer than this,
that as far as I'm concerned, if the two parties come together with others, for
instance under the medium of Charter 88 and discuss constitutional reform on
the areas we can agree, noting the areas we will disagree because the absence
of a commitment to proportional representation is very important, I'm
thoroughly in favour of that.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so in that case, people will say,
"Why can't Paddy in that case just say ...."
ASHDOWN: Now let me go on to perhaps identifying
for you the areas that are fundamental and different between us. Now maybe
Tony Blair will shift this - on the public services, absolutely crucial. The
Labour Party seems to want to take the public services back to 1979. We don't
believe that re-establishing the old centralised insensitive public services in
Britain is the way this country ought to go. What we do want to do is to take
a decentralised public service, NHS, education and other public services and
recommit them with their local community, a fundamental difference.
Let's take the economy. The Liberal
Democrats have led the way in thinking about how you might map out an economy
that understood the importance of the environmental imperative. We're in
favour of THE most fundamental change to the taxation system of all time, this
is shifting taxes away from wealth and jobs and onto the use of finite raw
materials, and pollution. The Labour Party is nowhere near that, although
it would be a matter of probably the biggest single taxation and economic
change that you could have, or if you wish let's take the case of Europe. We
are quite clear that if there's to be a single currency Britain ought to be
part of that single currency. Labour is unclear about that.
HUMPHRYS: But not as unclear as the Conservative
Party. So there's an area where it's possible that you might...
ASHDOWN: But again, you have to accurate. The
Labour position with the Conservative position is indistinguishable on the
single currency.
HUMPHRYS: But you're not suggesting...
ASHDOWN: Indistingishable. And let me take
another area - on education, on nursery education. Mr Blair's words on nursery
education is "We'd awfully like to have it sometime, but we won't tell you
when and we won't tell you where you get the money from" is indistingishable
from that from Mr Major.
HUMPHRYS: But you just been setting out what
Tony Blair said doesn't matter all that much because he may not be in control
of his own party, so you know it's difficult to have it both ways.
ASHDOWN: If I may suggest that I think you're
beginning to have it both ways as well. What I'm saying is, there is an
interesting thing happening in British politics. I hope that we can use that
to create a new culture of British politics, the culture in which parties learn
to work together on the things they agree on and expand those areas, and then
learn to co-operate both in government and out, out of it for the things that
they believe in that are good for the country, and that applies to the
Conservative Party, it applies to the Labour Party. The Labour Party at
present is a very interesting blank space. I can see what Tony Blair wants
to make of it and I greatly welcome that. Let's wait and see what happens.
HUMPHRYS: Well, you say it's a blank space, and
you say you can wait, you're going to have to wait, but sooner or later issues
will arise on which you will have to absolutely - in fact there's an issue
arising in the very near future isn't there - a by-election, Dudley West. Now
Labour might well win that, probably will win that. If you give them your
support, certainly will win that.
ASHDOWN: I really .....
HUMPHRYS: Nothing is certain in politics, I accept
that view increased ...
ASHDOWN: I know that it's fun to do so, but why
deny the people of Dudley the opportunity to vote for a party that comes from a
different position, has different policies, and it isn't necessary to treat
them as people who have to be herded like sheep from one ...
HUMPHRYS: Because you did just that at Eastleigh,
because you said that you were terribly cross when the Labour Party went hell
for leather in Eastleigh and said "We're going in there and we may win and
we're going.." you didn't like that, your party was very cross about it.
ASHDOWN: Absolutely not John. We were quite
happy about .....
HUMPHRYS: I must have misheard a great deal of....
ASHDOWN: I'm afraid you did, because we were
quite happy that they should do that, and quite hapy that they should be beaten
and beaten roundly. I wasn't in favour of the Labour Party standing down in
Newbury. The people of Newbury didn't need us to tell them what to do.
HUMPHRYS: I wasn't talking about Newbury, I was
talking about Eastleigh.
ASHDOWN: Well remember what happened at Newbury,
it's much more like Dudley incidentally where the Labour Party started from
nowhere, in Eastleigh it started from a much stronger position. In Newbury
they lost their deposit, but it was right that they should stand because they
stand for something different.
HUMPHRYS: In Dudley West, they start from a very
strong position, you start from a very weak...or relatively weak position
compared with everybody else there. So it would be awfully sensible wouldn't
it in this new politics that you talk about...
ASHDOWN: Why do you try to deny people the right
to be able to vote for parties that are distinctive and independently
different, and why do you treat the electorate as so dumb that they have to get
you to tell them what to do. Leave them to make up their own minds.
HUMPHRYS: But you see, neither of us can speak for
the electorate, can we, but the one thing we do know...
ASHDOWN: No, but I'm prepared to give the
electorate the chance to be able to use its intelligence, just as they did in
Newbury. I'm prepared to let the electorate have a chance to be able to vote
for what they want, I'm not prepared to have you in a television studio, or me
in a committee room of the House of Commons, say I'm terribly sorry people of
Dudley, you're not going to have a chance to vote for a party that's different
and distinctive, because we're going to deny that to you. That is bad
politics, and if I may say to you John, bad democracy too.
HUMPHRYS: So you will be going hell for leather,
in Dudley West.
ASHDOWN: We will be standing on our views, as an
independent, distinctive, third force in British politics, which people are
voting for more and more across the country...
HUMPHRYS: And if that contributed...
ASHDOWN: ...that has led to the agenda, that
others are now being forced to move....a party that's been ahead of the
electorate...sorry, been ahead of the agenda, has mapped that out and it is
no small thing in five or six years, that we've built ourselves up to where we
are now, an indication perhaps of the fact that people like us and want us
there, and it's no small thing to have mapped out that agenda, and that's the
agenda, distinctive, different and out in front.
HUMPHRYS: And if that, if your actions in Dudley
West contribute to keeping the Conservative Party in power for a day longer or
a week longer, or a year longer, even though you have said it is absolutely
wrong that one party should stay in power for this long, because you have all
the problems associated with a single party in power, you will do so, you will
say 'so be it'.
ASHDOWN: What are you suggesting, John, that we
should somehow act in a way which I think is profoundly undemocratic, by
allowing people, by preventing people from having a choice, by agreement in a
studio or a smoke-filled room in Westminster. That we will therefore diminish
democracy in order to ......
HUMPHRYS: You see I'm not really talking about
facts, I'm talking about the policies converging and ...
ASHDOWN: I don't understand why it is that you
believe the electorate are so dumb as not to be able to use their vote
intelligently?
HUMPHRYS: I never suggested that for a moment,
have I.
ASHDOWN: I'm perfectly prepared to give them
their chances, the truth of it is, that Liberal Democrats are distinctive,
because we have mapped out the agenda, we believe that you can't change this
country unless you're prepared to change the way that it is governed. We
believe that you cannot build a strong economy unless you're going to have a
dynamic market-based economy, in which enterprise and small businesses are an
essential part. We believe you have to have stability through an independent
central bank, something that Labour disagrees with. We think you have to be
clear about Europe and especially the part that Britain will play in a single
currency, which Labour are confused about. We believe it's absolutely
important that you should incorporate into your economy the environmental
imperative, by shifting the basis of taxation, which the Labour Party hasn't
even touched.
Now those things are different, they are
distinctive, it may well be the Labour Party comes to them, but we must wait
and see whether that happens.
HUMPHRYS: You could take any political party,
could you not, and say this is something with which Joe Bloggs agrees, this is
somebody with which Joan Smith disagrees, but on the whole, overall, we are in
broad sympathy, therefore political parties come to be born. There are
differences in your party, there are differences in the Labour Party, there are
differences in the Conservative Party....
ASHDOWN: So the answer is...
HUMPHRYS: And it's not suggesting that the
electorate is stupid, to tell them...
ASHDOWN: You're taking, if I may say, a
peculiarly sort of metropolitan mathematical view of politics. The truth is
that you don't win elections by adding together votes in the comfort of a
studio like this, what you do is you win them by putting forward your policies,
that's what parties are about.
HUMPHRYS: But you're not going to win the next
election are you, you're not going to become Prime Minister?
ASHDOWN: I see, so you now think you can predict
the next election?
HUMPHRYS: Do you believe you're going to be the
next Prime Minister?
ASHDOWN: Do you believe that you are wise at a
time of such movement, to seek to predict the next election from two and a half
years out. When you couldn't predict the last one from two days out.
HUMPHRYS: No, but what we can do is look in the
history books, can't we, and we can look for those sorts of lessons that
history teach us.
ASHDOWN: John, accept one thing, you can't read
the crystal ball, you didn't last time, you failed, you got it wrong, I don't
mean you personally, but the BBC, lock, stock and barrel...the journalists and
to be fair, myself, we all got it wrong. Why waste time trying to predict what
we know we cannot predict. The job of me and, if I may say so, the job of you
as well, is to tell people not how to predict the unpredictable, but what we
stand for, and Liberal Democrats stand for a distinctive independent third
force in British politics, which increasingly people are voting for, and
increasingly they want, and I'm determined they should get that.
HUMPHRYS: Paddy Ashdown, thank you very much.
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