Interview with Paddy Ashdown




       
       
       
 
 
 
 
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                                 ON THE RECORD 
 
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1                                 DATE:  24.9.95
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JOHN HUMPHRYS:             Well Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Liberal Democrats is at 
his home there in Yeovil.  Not deliberate I assure you Mr Ashdown, not 
suggesting your party is 'out of sync'.  But you must at this stage be 
regretting that you dumped equidistance? 
                                                                         
PADDY ASHDOWN MP:                      John, I don't think I've ever seen a 
clearer example of a total waste of money by the - On The Record's budget than 
the so-called focus group you've called together.  The people who you called 
together represent the central belt of Scotland, where the Party hardly 
exists.  If you'd have done a genuine survey - and, I always think that when 
the Press aren't prepared to report the story they report opinion polls.  But, 
if you'd taken a genuine focus group, taken from, for instance, the South or 
the Southwest, or even the Scottish seats that we hold, at present, I think, 
you'd have got a very, very different picture.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              What?  You've written off the rest of 
Scotland, have you!   
                         
ASHDOWN:                               No, by no means.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, if you think it's entirely 
reasonable to go to a part of the country where you're hoping to make gains but haven't 
yet.  That's entirely reasonable.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               But, the Party is at four or five per 
cent in the central belt of Scotland.   It's at about thirty per cent in the 
Southwest and probably more.  And, in those seats in Scotland where we have 
representation you'd have found it much greater. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, what we need is a reputable 
organisation -  a commercial organisation that specialises in these things and 
ask them to get together a focus group.  It's standard practice.  
 
ASHDOWN:                               What you did was bring together a focus 
group from the one place in Scotland, where the Party is considerably 
underrepresented, as indeed Labour is underrepresented in the West and 
Southwest.  It would be like going along to Cornwall, where Labour hardly 
exists and has five or six per cent of the poll and drawing a national 
conclusion from that.  But, let me, perhaps, advance the case a bit further for 
you.  I really do caution you, at this stage, not to rely on opinion polls.  
I'll give you a reason why, as an example.  At this time, in the last 
Parliament, an opinion poll was done, in the second half of the Parliament, 
which showed that Labour was going to win my seat in Yeovil.  Labour got eight 
per cent in the General Election.  
 
                                       Opinion polls at the mid term of a 
Parliament are not an accurate reflection of how a people will vote.  What is 
quite clear is that we have just finished a conference, our Glasgow conference, 
which was, by any standard, the most successful we've ever had.  We went into 
that the most powerful third force this country has seen for sixty years.  We 
came out of it, I believe, a Party more united and more clear about what we 
stand for and the messages we have to put across than either of the other two 
Parties will cover at the Party conferences.  And, if I may just finish: we're 
the only ones who've been absolutely clear, say exactly where we stand - no 
fudging - absolutely clear that every single vote that we get and every single 
seat that we win will be dedicated to three purposes.   
 
                                       Those purposes are: investing in people, 
Education the central place of that, cleaning up the mess in our politics, 
Constitutional reform - modernising Britain's Constitution - electoral reform - 
the centre place in that - and, building, at last, for the long term future.  
I'm much more interested in what happens in Britain in the next century than in 
the next Government.  I think, that's very clear and, I think, people will vote 
for it.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, you also came out of that 
conference 
having reinforced the impression in many people's minds that the Liberal 
Democrats broadly support the idea of a Labour government.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               No.  Justify that.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, your speech at the end of the 
conference.  I've been through it - yet again - this morning.  Read it word for 
word.  The whole message of that speech was let's do a deal.  You didn't use 
the words.  Of course, you never use those words but the impression very, very 
strongly - and, this is in the minds of many people - not just myself - is that 
you broadly support the Labour Government.  
 
ASHDOWN:                               Well, then, I suggest that you go back 
and read that speech again because it said nothing of the sort.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, let me ask you a direct question, 
then to clear this up.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               No, come on.  Let me give you a clear 
answer.  Throughout that speech, there was a single refrain and the refrain was 
very simple.  This is our guarantee to invest two million pounds in Education, 
to tell you where the money comes from, to put a penny on Income Tax, if that's 
the only way to do it, to regain public control over Railtrack, as a 
cornerstone as an integrated public transport system for this country.  To face 
up to the issues of Europe, to tackle the issues of the environment, specific 
and clear and the refrain that ran through that speech was this: if that's what 
you like, then, that's what you get; with every vote and every seat that you 
win for the Liberal Democrats at the next Election.   
 
                                       Now, that's about us.  Now, what we 
were doing at this conference - and, if you were to accurately report it I 
think rather than indulging in opinion polls - you might have recognised that.  
We were speaking directly to the people of this country, saying specifically 
what the other Parties haven't - what we stand for and what people get if they 
vote for us.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, you've told us- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               It's a challenge to the other Parties, 
the language to the British people.  But a challenge to the other Parties.  See 
if you can match it at your conference - being that clear about what you stand 
for.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              You've told us where you stand as far 
as the Tory Government is concerned.  You cannot see the circumstances.  You 
would not prop up a Tory Government and you've given us a thousand reasons why 
you wouldn't do that.  Now, unless my arithmetic- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               And, who can be surprised?   After 
seventeen years, if this Government loses it majority who's going to prop it 
up?  We're not certain of it (phon). 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Unless my arithmetic is horrendously 
wrong, I can only think of one other Party that is likely to form the next 
Government and that is the Labour Party.  Now, logic would suggest, would it 
not - that if you don't support the Tories as the potential next Government, 
there's only one other way you can go: Labour! 
 
ASHDOWN:                               On the contrary, it's perfectly 
possible for us.  I can think of ten - incidentally -  different combinations 
at the next election.  And, incidentally, John, I think, you're making a 
considerable mistake in trying to predict the outcome of the next Election. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No.  I'm not trying to do that.  I'm 
just pointing out the obvious arithmetic to you. 
                                                                  
ASHDOWN:                               No.  Absolute nonsense.  If you want 
the arithmetic, if you want to play this mug's game - OK - let's play it.  
Let's play it, not on the basis of opinion polls but let's play it on the basis 
of real votes in real ballot boxes.  The largest single text/test that we have 
had, since the last Election, was in May this year.  The biggest electoral 
test. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              That was local election.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               But what happened in it?  You see, 
you're relying on opinion polls.  I'm relying on real votes and real ballot 
boxes and what happened there was that the Liberal Democrats came second.  Now, 
if you want to play this mug's game - I've told you it was one - if you want to 
predict, then, predict from fact.  And, the fact says that we would be - on 
that basis - Her Majesty's Opposition.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No.  It doesn't say anything of the 
sort.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               Well, John, why do you- I mean, instead 
of pretending that you can predict the outcome of the next Election- 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, I'm not doing that - and you 
know I'm not doing that.  
 
ASHDOWN:                               Of course, you are.  You're saying: I 
know what the outcome of the next Election will be.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No. No. No,I don't know anything of the 
sort and I- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               What people want to know is what we 
stand for.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Look, you know and I know that neither 
of us can predict the outcome of the next Election. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               Correct.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Precisely.  But- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               What do your viewers want to see?   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              What you're always saying - if I may 
say so - is let's be straight with the Electorate. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               Sure.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Now, you don't believe that the Liberal 
Democrats are going to form the next Government do you?
 
ASHDOWN:                               I don't know and you don't know.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No, you don't know it. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               Here you go again.  You said you're not 
predicting the outcome of the next Election and the first thing you do is 
predict the outcome of the next Election.  I don't know and, John, if I may put 
it to you, I think, what your viewers want to know is not that you can look 
into a crystal ball - not this Sunday morning excursion into clairvoyancy.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No, I'm not trying to do that.  
 
ASHDOWN:                               What they're trying to do-what they 
want to know is what do you stand for?  Now, we have made it very, very clear 
what we stand for and we challenge the other Parties, we've challenged Labour, 
we've challenged the Conservatives to be as clear.  Where do you stand on 
Europe?  Where do you stand on Education investment?  Where do you stand on 
running a tight controlled economy on the market based economy?  Where do you 
stand on the environment?  Now, those are the issues that people in this 
country want to hear.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, they also- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               Not the fact that John Humphrys or 
Paddy Ashdown can predict the outcome of the unpredictable wrapped in mystery 
eighteen months away.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              You're not trying to do that and I am 
absolutely not trying to do that. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               But, you've just made a prediction.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No, no, no.  What I said was: what I 
said was: you don't believe that the next Government is going to be - let me 
just make a point just to prove that, if I may - from your own speech: It is 
our duty to make sure the next Government doesn't duck the decisions it must 
take if Britain's to be a success and so on and so on.  Note that phrase: the 
next Government.  You wouldn't hear John Major say the next Government.  You 
wouldn't hear Mr Blair say 'the next Government'.  You would hear John Major 
say: the Tory Government, which is going to be in power next time around.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               It's a good try but it won't wash, 
John because you wouldln't hear them saying any of the other things they're 
saying as well: we're prepared to be clear and honest about taxation, about 
where we get the money to invest in Education from.  Look: let me just give you 
an example, to try and show you what I mean.  George Bush lost a lead larger 
than Tony Blair now enjoys in the last year of his Presidency.  And, we live in 
deeply volatile times.  No one can predict what the outcome of the next 
Election will be.  And, although, it makes fun in metropolitan newsrooms to 
play round with opinion polls and to try and pretend that you can predict the 
unpredictable, you can't do it!   And, it's a mug's game to try.  There is no 
point, at this stage.  Certainly, eighteen months out, in us indulging 
ourselves in these wonderfully interesting hypotheses, interesting to the 
political commentators, interesting to the politicians but what interests the 
people of this country is what we stand for.  Now, for the Labour Party, there 
is fudge and duck and a blank sheet of paper.  For the Liberal Democrats, we 
have staked out brutally clearly in language which is simple and more direct, 
than I think any Party has achieved before, including the tough issue about 
taxation - exactly where we stand.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Alright.      
 
ASHDOWN:                               And, our message is deadly simple.  
Forget the hypotheses.  Forget the unpredictable.  The more you vote for these 
things the more you get them if you vote Liberal Democrat - dead simple.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, what I'm suggesting to you is that 
having dropped your old policy of equidistance, you have made those things more 
difficult to achieve and let me give you a couple of reasons, well let me give 
you a couple of reasons why that might be the case.  You've thrown away - I 
would suggest to you - the support of many potential Liberal Democrat voters 
because..
 
ASHDOWN:                               Nonsense! 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              - well - you say: nonsense but a lot of 
your support, historically, has been tactical.  Many people have voted Liberal 
Democrat to keep out the Tories, or more specifically, in this case, to keep 
out a Labour Government.   
 
                                       Well, now, they are prepared to go all 
the way.  Many of those to Labour, rather than stop off at the Liberal Democrat 
corner shop.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               It's a great attempt, John, but it 
doesn't stack up!  I mean, here you are, again, predicting when you can- 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              I'm not predicting anything of the 
sort! 
 
ASHDOWN:                               If I could finish, right?  You're 
proposing a hypothesis, why don't you look at the facts?  Did it happen at 
Littleborough and Saddlewoth.   A seat- 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Yes, it did, as a matter of fact, if 
you're asking me a direct question?  You should have expected to sweep the 
Labour Party away at Littleborough and Saddleworth and you didn't!  They did 
terribly well.  They ran you a close second.  
 
ASHDOWN:                               John, you've been listening to too much 
of Labour's propaganda.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Oh, no.  I've been looking at the 
figures.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               Well, then, look at these figures.  
Labour got, at the end of that campaign at Littleborough and Saddleworth  
exactly the same vote as they got in the May Elections of this year.  They 
advanced not one iota.  I'm afraid you've been overswept by Mr Mandleson's 
(phon) spindoctoring.  Labour, at the end of one of the worst campaigns, one of 
the most tawdry and unpleasant campaigns, fought in this country for a very 
long time, got exactly the same vote as they started with.  Now, there's your 
point.  Why predict the future when you can read the ballot box?   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well let's look at something we can read 
as opposed to predicting then and other bits of the evidence,  that I was 
suggesting to you why dropping equidistance is going to cause you problems.  
You've given the Tories quite a big stick with which they can now beat you. 
They can say, can they not, indeed they are saying, we heard it in that film 
they're saying: "Vote Liberal Democrat you will let Labour in by the back door. 
You're actually voting effectively for the Labour Party if you're voting 
Liberal Democrat and that's what they are now able to say. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               Well let them say it.  I mean of course 
the Labour...the Conservative Party is going to grab onto what sticks they can 
in a pretty miserable position to try and ensure they survive.  But what our 
conference showed, so very clearly, was precisely what you get if you vote 
Liberal Democrat.  There's no other party in Britain: not Labour, certainly not 
the Conservatives, who are prepared to face up to the tough decisions of what 
we need to cut road congestion, to make sure that we have a properly 
intergrated public transport system in this country, that's prepared to take 
the tough decisions in order to be able to retain public control of Railtrack, 
which is the mechanism for that.  There's no other Party that's prepared to say 
not only that they'd like to invest in Education but how much and where it's 
going to go and where the money will come from.   This is what people vote for, 
if they vote for us.   
 
                                       I don't know what the outcome of the 
next Election is.  You could have any one of ten possible outcomes. The Liberal 
Democrats are not going to try and put-we're not going to use the power people 
give us to put back a government that has been in power seventeen years if it 
loses its majority in the House of Commons.  But the Liberal Democrats could be 
the government - who knows, I don't predict it - because I think that kind of 
prediction is nonsense but it's technically a possibility.  We could be Her 
Majesty's opposition.  That would be what could happen if the May elections of 
this year carried forward.  We can be a minority Party in a Hung Parliament, in 
which case we would have the options of sitting on the opposition benches or 
working with another party, the Labour Party perhaps, if we agreed about the 
things where we stand but Labour doesn't tell us where they stand.  What I'm 
saying to you John is at this moment, let's do this programme again, in a 
year's time, close to the election, and I'll try and be as honest with you as 
we've been so far about happens.  But at this moment it's a mug's game.  It's a 
waste of time. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              That is a deal.  We'll do it again in a 
year's time. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               Done. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But let's pick up what you just said 
there about the possibility of you having to work with the Labour Party in 
government.  That's- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               -or having to oppose them. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Or having to oppose them alright.  But 
let's pick up the possibility...for the moment, for the moment.   Now, what I 
suggested to you, a couple of the ways- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               You're playing hypotheses again, but if 
you want to play the game go on.        
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No, no, no this is more because I'm 
about- 
 
ASHDOWN:                               It's meaningless, utterly meaningless.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              I'm about to give you, if you'll allow 
me, I'm about to give you a couple of hard facts, things that Jack Straw said 
this morning.  Now what I'm suggesting to you, I've given you some reasons I 
think why dropping your policy of equidistance has caused you problems here's 
another one. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               I don't see the ballot box John. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Alright, but let's deal with this 
particular problem then as I see it, or rather as perhaps as Jack Straw sees it 
at the moment because he spoke about it this morning.  You have weakened your 
bargaining position with the Labour Party, in the event that you are going to 
have to bargain with them, or do some sort of deal.  I know you hate the phrase 
"do a deal with them" but he said this morning, quite clearly on the 
constitutional reform issue "there are no promises on the part of a Labour 
Government in the first year, on a Labour Government to introduce measures 
leading to constitutional reform - no promises.  Or indeed in the first term. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              John, I'm not bargaining with the Labour 
party, I'm staking out our position for the public of this country. I think 
what you know about that, what you know about constitutional reform is exactly 
where the the Liberal Democrats stand and a clear commitment to reforming the 
voting system which many, many in the Labour Party are in favour of.  Indeed 
the vast majority of the new, so-called moderniser Labour members of parliament 
are in favour of proportional representation as we are.  I am not talking to 
the Labour Party.  I know you find it difficult to believe because I think all 
of you in Westminster are tied to this picture of the whole of Britain as 
though it were shaped in the same shape as the Chamber of the House of Commons. 
I'm speaking to the people of this country and I'm saying if you're serious 
about reform, constitutional, modernising Britain's political system, clearing 
up the mess in our politics, an essential, a fulcrum, a key part of which is a 
fair voting system. There's only one party that will deliver that and if that's 
what you want, the more you get the more you vote. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But I was following up your suggestion 
that amongst others admittedly, that you may have to deal with a Labour 
Government at some stage on this particular issue and this issue 
 
ASHDOWN:                               So what? 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              So what?  Well, so what.   
 
ASHDOWN:                               Let me see if I can give you an example, 
John.  Education, absolutely crucial.  Mr Blair says it's his fashion, Mr Major 
says it's his passion, Mrs Shephard said today in the newspapers that Britain's 
schoolchildren now have got a very low levels of literacy - fine.   But where 
did they- where's their commitment, where's their commitment to investing in 
education?  None of them do that either, so what we want to do is to put 
forward a very clear programme for what needs to be done in this country, 
including some of the tough messages, having an honest debate about taxation, 
not ducking and running with the kind of proposals Mr Blair made today 
 
HUMPHRYS:                               Yeah, but you've made it- 
 
ASHDOWN:                                And about windfall taxes, which are 
absolute nonsense and will not make sense over the long term.  But facing up to 
those realities, now there are a raft of things, a raft of things which are 
going to be important to that: PR's one, it's very very important. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                               Right.  
              
ASHDOWN:                               It's vital. But it's not the only one 
and that's why the important thing for us at this moment is to speak not to the 
Labour Party, not to Jack Straw whose opinions on PR have been known for a very 
long time but to the people and that's what we have been doing and with respect 
to you, that's what we are going to continue. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              What you made clear also and you've 
repeated it in this programme, is that you may find yourself in a position, not 
of having to do deals, let's lose that phrase altogether from the category if 
you prefer.  But there is only one party with whom you can deal now because 
you've said you won't deal with the Conservative Party, you won't prop them up 
and what Jack Straw said this morning, on the question of proportional 
prepresentation which you have just raised, is not only may it not happen in 
the first year or indeed possibly the first term of a Labour Government, but 
that he will endorse first past the post.  Now that's going to make it very 
difficult for you isn't it.  
 
ASHDOWN:                               That's not new from Jack Straw.  I mean 
really, I thought this was a news programme, not as I said a sort of Sunday 
excursion into clairvoyancy of what's going to happen eighteen months-. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              And you don't think it's interesting 
that Jack Straw should repeat that view, if you're saying he's repeating it 
at this time. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               It is of precisely no interest or news 
value at all. That's a view that Jack Straw has held so far as I know for ten 
years and to have a programme like this in which we might be discussing what 
of our taxation system,  how are we going to pay for them and what does this 
mean, are we really going to be a high tax party - which we're not - we're 
going to be a promises with the bills attached party a tax switch party.  Now 
that's the interesting thing.  To reiterate a Jack Straw statement which is ten 
years' old does seem to me to be rather less than you'd expect from a programme 
dedicated to news. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Yes, but you see we can do those sorts 
of things only very seriously.
 
ASHDOWN:                               But that's what people want to know 
John, that's what they want to know.  They say what does it mean when you say 
you're going to be honest about taxation, what does it mean when you say you're 
going to pay for these things, how are you going to pay for them?  Now that's 
what people want to know.  It's much much more interesting than a very erudite 
conversation between you and me on a Sunday morning about what might happen 
eighteen months from here in circumstances none of us can predict. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But the extent (I don't know whether 
that's your telephone ringing or ours - or your front door perhaps) but the 
extent to which you can push forward those policies rests on the position that 
you find yourself in... 
 
ASHDOWN:                               And we will see that as we get up to the 
election and we'll have to face up to that when we get up to the elections and 
we'll have to be clear about that when we get up to the election and that is 
eighteen months away so what on earth are you spending so much time talking 
about it now for? 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, I will tell you why because if you 
are going to be in a strong position in eighteen months from now, or whenever 
it happens to be, you have to be leading a united party, a party that is 
solidly behind you and knows where it's going and one of the other things that 
I'm suggesting about having dropped the policy of equidistance is that you risk 
dividing your party over this hugely important matter. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               Oh really.  I mean again John you must 
deal with the facts.   I mean this is a bizarre construction on a debate which 
was held in public in front of the television cameras, presumably your people 
were there in which the policy in which we said that we would be clear about 
making sure that our vote was not used to prop up this government, no quarter 
for the Tories but no let up for Labour, but we'd talk to others, was - I think 
there was seven or eight hundred people in the hall, five people voted against 
it.  The party split - what on earth do you get that from?  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Paddy Ashdown, I'd like to pursue it but 
we've run out of time. 
 
ASHDOWN:                               We will in due course.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              We will I'm sure. Thank you very much 
for joining us this morning. 
 
 
 
 
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