'2010 is the year'

On Sunday 21 December, Andrew Marr interviewed Lord Kinnock, Former Labour Leader

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Labour's elder statesman Lord Kinnock says he's not expecting an early election.

ANDREW MARR: Lord Kinnock, maybe I can start with yourself.

The last time the Labour Party were proposing to the people that taxes should rise, they lost the election.

LORD KINNOCK: Yes, in rather different circumstances.

And indeed the tax rises that we proposed back in 1992 were directly required to fund rises in old age pensions, particularly, and would have affected a miniscule proportion of the overall electorate.

Now we're in a different situation where it's very, very important that means exist to mitigate the effect of the commitments that the Government have made, necessarily made to stimulate recovery from a very serious recession.

ANDREW MARR: But you don't think that it's the same mistake again - actually going to people and saying you're going to vote for us and we'll raise your taxes is in the end suicidal? People will say well thank you for the extra public spending and then vote against the tax rises?

LORD KINNOCK: No, people have got the commonsense to know that first of all the bigger and the earlier the commitment to combating recession is, the more likely it is to succeed. And, secondly, the sooner you start on feeding the public coffers as it were, the lower is going to be the overall cost. And that's realised.

That's one of the reasons, of course, why looking at the situation of our economy and the global economy, people understand that Gordon Brown and his government are best equipped to lead us out of this particular period of difficulty afflicting everybody but of course felt in every household and business in Britain.

ANDREW MARR: Do you think it would be acceptable to go to the country next year before this has played out, or do you think the Government now has to wait until...

LORD KINNOCK: Well, I don't think it's a question of acceptability. What I do know is that the Prime Minister is utterly committed, as he says, to "getting the job done". "The job" is to secure the restoration of growth in the economy and combating unemployment, and that's what he's going to keep on doing.

Now I'm not saying that elections are absent from his consideration - he's a politician, you'd expect him to think in terms of elections. What I do know is that that's a long way down in his list of priorities and his utter preoccupation is serving the country by building recovery from recession.

ANDREW MARR: And presumably by the middle of next year unemployment, judging by everything that we can tell at the moment, will still be going up; we'll still be mired deep, deep in this recession, and that would therefore be far too early to try and take a verdict on?

LORD KINNOCK: I don't think that that's going to determine his view of when the election should be.

When you talk about the middle of next year, the unemployment effects of what's happening now will then be evident - as everybody knows, unemployment is a lagging indicator - but I think what everybody will be concentrating on is the prospect of a recovery, and I think that by the back end of next year, the very early part of 2010, the difficulties will have evened out and you'll see an upturn.

Now that in itself will be a major achievement given the scale and the depth of the difficulty affecting the world economy, and it will demonstrate the worth of making the early and big commitment to combating recession, which has been made by this government.

ANDREW MARR: We've now got a firm deadline for the troops coming back from Iraq. Given that, what do you make of the whole episode now - now that it's effectively over?

LORD KINNOCK: My view is unchanged from the short time after the end of the war, if it can be termed like that, and that was that the effort to topple Saddam Hussein was justifiable. I made inquiries at the time and was reassured several times that post-war preparation was comprehensive, and in depth it proved not to be.

So I consider that whilst the effort to topple Saddam Hussein, end his regime was entirely commendable, the utter failure to make post-war preparation has committed ourselves and the United States, of course, to an unending obligation so far as Iraq is concerned and the sooner our troops are out, the better. But that won't change the fact that we will have to sustain various forms of cooperation and commitment in order to help them build a civilian administration, have something that really represents a democracy, and secure an economic recovery.

ANDREW MARR: And the inquiry, whenever it comes, is going to be uncomfortable reading, isn't it?

LORD KINNOCK: I think that it will be uncomfortable for a few, but necessary for a very large number of people.

ANDREW MARR: Turning back to the domestic situation - realistically, given how bad things are, can your party win again?

LORD KINNOCK: Yes, yes, for several reasons - one of them of course being the way in which the recession is navigated - but the people who will accomplish the improvement are the last people on earth who would want these circumstances. There are other reasons.

That's the record of ten years of sustained growth; high employment, low unemployment; stable and low inflation. All those things contribute. And the other thing that'll help us, of course - and I suspect William to come in at any second - is the complete failure of the leadership of the Opposition to offer a tenable, tangible way to run the country.

ANDREW MARR: Well we will talk about that in a moment. But just before we do, one other thing that strikes me at the moment is we keep hearing that there's great sense of self-belief and invigoration inside the Government at a time when public spending is high, there's going to be high tax rises coming in in due course, nationalisation is back. Is it because actually after the long tourist trail of New Labour your party has returned to its Socialist roots?

LORD KINNOCK: I would like to think that the Democratic Socialism in this government has always been evident, as it was under Tony Blair, and if you had time I could tell you, I could tell you why.

ANDREW MARR: (over) Peter Mandelson, arch nationaliser.

LORD KINNOCK: Well Peter Mandelson's back, but not dominant. And the reality is that the Government attends to the job in hand, uses the sensible implements at its disposal, including public participation in the ownership of banks. And of course nationalisation in the United Kingdom has only ever been used for rescue. It's much more Red Cross than red flag and, consequently, that's what we're seeing now.

ANDREW MARR: But the part privatisation of the Post Office might be one stage too far.

LORD KINNOCK: Well that's very interesting. It's obvious that the Post Office is in need, acutely in need of pretty dramatic treatment, and I think that it's quite possible that the joint participation of a successful private enterprise with a record of achievement in providing public postal services might be one of the useful means of doing it.

It'll mean trauma not just in the political parties, but it'll mean trauma in the public generally, but something has got to be done that hasn't yet been tried to secure an improvement in the standard of public service in the Post Office in this country because it has deteriorated.

ANDREW MARR: And you yourself could live with another slew of job losses and private capital coming into the Post Office from a foreign company?

LORD KINNOCK: Well it isn't a question of a slew of job losses. So far as the jobs are concerned, the people most experienced plainly in providing the Post Office services that are useful to the public are the people currently working in the Post Office services and their commitment is strong. They do need much better management and much stronger leadership. There's no question about that.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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