................................................................................ ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 2.3.97
................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. Can the Tories recover in time for the General Election? I shall be talking to Michael Heseltine and suggesting they CAN'T because their strategy has failed. And what of the Liberal Democrats? Is Labour about to do for them too? And will any of it really matter if Europe ends up deciding how we are to be taxed? All that after the News read by Jennie Bond. NEWS HUMPHRYS: Somerset - Liberal Democrat country. Or is it? We'll be reporting that their grand plan to turn the West country a shade of yellow may be foundering. And all because of what's happening up there in London. And over there in Brussels they're cooking up plans to take over the government's taxing powers. Are we going to end up with tax demands from "La Revenue"? Michael Heseltine has made two forecasts recently. One was that his Party would be given a kicking in the Wirral South by-election. The other - that they will win the General Election by sixty votes and edging up - sixty seats that should be of course. He was right about Wirral South. But that was easy to predict. If he's to get the other prediction right, the Tories will have to achieve the most spectacular turn-around that's ever happened in British politics. And he's the man who's been asked by the Prime Minister to hold it all together - the glue that's meant to stop the campaign falling apart. When I spoke to him earlier this morning, I suggested the reason they are in such a mess is that the Party has no coherent strategy for fighting the election. MICHAEL HESELTINE MP: No, we have a very clear strategy, now that it's for real, now that we are going to face the key Election question, who is going to govern this country for the next five years and the strategy is twofold. The first is to explain to people that the new confidence they feel, you can see it in the retail sales, you can see it in the housing market, you can see it the fall in unemployment figures. The new confidence they feel is not luck or God-given, it is because the policies that we as a Government took are working and people, millions of them all over the country are seizing the opportunities. That's the first and very important positive part of the strategy. The second is to make it clear to people that simply because it was difficult to achieve, Labour is a threat, it isn't guaranteed that the levels of investment, that the fall in unemployment, that the rise in living standards will go on. It's achieved only with the right policies and the right responses from people and Labour threaten both. HUMPHRYS: It's interesting that you say Labour threaten both, because you have been absolutely consistent in saying "we are going to win this Election, the Conservatives are going to win it by sixty seats and rising". You've said that to me a number of times. HESELTINE: and nudging up... HUMPHRYS: ... and nudging up, precisely. And yet, Mr Major says "unless we can change people's policies, people's approach to us, there is a real danger. We will have, we will have a Labour Government". Now, how do you square those two? HESELTINE: Absolutely because the Prime Minister and I agree, as does the Cabinet, that we have got a limited period in which to put over this very clear message. The Conservative policies are delivering results and Labour threaten them. That is the message we have to make absolutely clear and when we do it, which we will, then we will win the Election. HUMPHRYS: But you see, you say "we will win the Election". Let's try and draw an analogy of - I don't know - a ghost train if you like at the fair. You go in to the train, knowing for sure that when you come out of the tunnel at the other end, everything will be alright again. Now you say that is what is going to happen. The Prime Minister says well
actually it may not happen, and his tactic is to scare us into thinking that it might happen. But you are saying "look,there is no way we can lose this Election". HESELTINE: Oh, there is a way, if we do not do what the Prime Minister is saying, which is and what I've just said, get over that very clear, simple message, we have helped people to achieve results, they are threatened by the Labour Party. We are going to get that message over and because we are going to do it, we will win the Election. HUMPHRYS: So you're flatly contradicting him, aren't you? HESELTINE: Not at all. He's saying, if we didn't get it over, then of course we wouldn't win the Election, but he and I both agree, we will get it over. He is determined, the Cabinet is determined, and you will find the Conservative Party will fight to win this Election, as it fights to win all Elections, we may not have won the Wirral by-election, but we've lost by-elections before. The only thing that is interesting about virtually every recent by-election since 1983, we've won them all back. We also won four General Elections. HUMPHRYS: So scaremongering, no point in it, because you are going to win. HESELTINE: Oh, it requires a huge amount of effort to take the determination and the conviction and turn it into reality, but the commitment is there. HUMPHRYS: But you are telling us, categorically time and again, we will win, you put a figure on the number of seats, as you say yourself. The Prime Minister isn't saying the same thing. HESELTINE: The Prime Minister is saying exactly the same thing, but he is explaining the efforts that have to be made and he's saying to people frankly and rightly "look you can't take these things for granted." HUMPHRYS: But you can take them for granted. HESELTINE: Oh, no no no no, I am saying, we've got to make the efforts, but I know we will make the efforts and what the Prime Minister is doing is to say to those millions of people who are sharing in this rise in prosperity, who have benefited from the extraordinary battles that the Conservative Party has had to fight to achieve these changes "don't sit back and somehow assume this is God given. You are part of a country which is is winning in the world because you and the Government brought about the changes that were necessary to win. Don't assume it's automatic". HUMPHRYS: Right, so if at the end of this interview, as I've done in the past said, what's going to happen, you won't say we are going to win by sixty seats or more, you'll say - we may win. HESELTINE: I will say we are going to win with a majority of sixty, nudging up. That is an attitude of mind, it is a manifestation of determination. We are determined to win, we deserve to win, the arguments for us winning are clear and in my view irresistable, and we are going to win that General Election. HUMPHRYS: One of your problems of course in getting that message across, and the reason I used the word "muddle" at the beginning is that it's still not quite clear who is actually in charge. Now, we heard Brian Mawhinney, the Chairman of the Party, say this morning "I'm in charge". Other people seem to think you're in charge. HESELTINE: Who? HUMPHRYS: Oh John Redwood told me on Friday... HESELTINE: Forgive me...(laughter)...I've got this cough you know.. HUMPHRYS: Quite so..John Redwood, former Cabinet Minister. HESELTINE: John, let's keep on serious politics. HUMPHRYS: I thought John Redwood was a serious figure - is he not? HESELTINE: The Prime Minister has made the position absolutely clear, he has spelt it out, and rightly so. He is the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. He is therefore totally in charge of the overall determination to win. Brian Mawhinney is Chairman of the Party and therefore has the responsibility for the campaign. I help the Prime Minister and I help Brian Mawhinney. There is not a sliver of cigarette paper between us and no matter how hard the journalists try to prise us apart, they will fail because the reality is that we work extremely closely, we know what each other's jobs are and we respect that position. Brian Mawhinney is in charge of the Conservative campaign and will remain there until polling day, when he will be the Party Chairman that delivered the fifth Conservative election victory. HUMPHRYS: Right, but let's look at the message then that you're delivering. HESELTINE: That's very important. HUMPHRYS: The message - now muddle here, I would suggest to you as well, because you're trying to persuade the electorate that Labour is a danger - New Labour New danger - we've seen it many many times now. But you're also telling us at the same time that they have stolen your clothes. Well now, it's very hard to see how a Party can be a danger if they're pursuing the same policies, or have the same policies, the same approach as yourselves. HESELTINE: Only if you are deceived by the language. They haven't stolen our policies, they've stolen the language, they don't have policies, they have language. HUMPHRYS: Mr Major said "Gran'ma's footsteps, they're stepping in our footsteps" HESELTINE: The language - the language. Let's just take, take - I don't mind which area you want to talk about, but let's take education, which I happen to think is of fundamental importance in this Election campaign. The Labour Party today control most of our education authorities, the local authorities, Labour control them. If they knew what to do about raising standards in education do it today, now. They could just get their local councillors in and say : Look we've got a Party policy, we're going to stop the rot in Islington, I Tony Blair am going to bring my son back, put him back into a local authority school. We will work together to achieve these results. I'm going to ring up Harriet Harman and say that's she's really misunderstood - Labour now knows what to do about education. Of course they don't, they don't. The truth is that their policies for the improvement of our education system are to go back to yesterday, to take away the power from the teachers, from the parents the governers that we've given by delegating powers, local management of schools, and put the local authorities back in charge. The worst education authorities in the country are Labour. If they knew what to do they could do it now. HUMPHRYS: But you're not getting the message across are you? People believe that what you're saying on the one hand is: they've got our policies. On the other hand you're saying they're a new danger. HESELTINE: They are a new danger because they have substituted soundbites for policy. Now I've dealt with education .. HUMPHRYS: You can't do things until you're in government can you - that's the whole point. HUMPHRYS: Oh, you can if you're in local government. That is the whole point. New Labour runs our local authorities, disastrously, badly. So, the words have changed, the disastrous policies are there to be seen. Now let's talk about the economy because that of course is where the ability to help people comes from. If you haven't got a growing economy, if you haven't got more money, then you have got only one alternative, and that is to take money from someone and give it to somebody else, and that becomes divisive and bitter, so growing the economy is the test. We've got the fastest growing economy in Western Europe. We want to keep it that way. What's Labour want to do - they want the European social model, minimum wage, social contract, powers for the Trade Unions, that's what they want. The unemployment in Germany went up by half a million in one month last month, whereas here it's been falling for four years. HUMPHRYS: All that may or may not be true. But, you're not getting the message across. This is the problem. Not even with the people who are your traditional supporters - big business. We hear time and again from leading businessmen that they're not scared of Labour at all. They've heard what you've said, they've heard what they've said, and they've concluded - many of them have concluded, you've heard them say it yourself: We're not worried about them, we're prepared to give them a chance. HESELTINE: Well, I don't hear much of that. HUMPHRYS: Well, Sir Bob Reid good, modern the end of century Brits, that's how Bob Reid described them. Now there's a tough old cookie if you like, he's been around a bit, he knows how many beans make five. HESELTINE: There are business people, there always have been, who have supported Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot. HUMPHRYS: Oh, you've not had it like this before. HESELTINE: Oh, they've been there, there've always been these business people who've thought for whatever reason that the Left of politics had a solution. I'll tell you why actually, because if you get to run a big company, you can easily delude yourself that you can run a country the same way, and as you look at the country you say: If only you'd put business people in charge it would all be alright. That forgets of course all the complexities of politics and the many demands of politics. But the real thing that matters is, does the business community of this country want a tax on the privatised industries which would put up the prices of gas, water and electricity. HUMPHRYS: Well they've thought of all these things, and they've concluded many of them, that they're not .......... HESELTINE: No, no, no, they have not concluded these things at all. There's no evidence of any significant statistical base that big business or small business thinks that Labour is anything other than a
danger, and you'll find the odd one - I can find them, you can find thme, but by and large there is no ground for thinking that business wants what Labour stands for. Taxes up, Trade Union privileges back, the dangers of the Social Contract, the dangers of a new tier of local bureaucracy across England, Wales, Scotland, a disastrous interference with the flow of decisions we need to keep this country competitive. HUMPHRYS: Let me give you another reason then, why you may be seen to be in a muddle, and that is divisions at the top of your party - the so-called "grandees" in fact I think the chairwoman of your own constituency here, in Henley-on-Thames, said that she's worried about this. You're at each other's throats time and time again, we've seen it in the last week all over again haven't we? HESELTINE: Well, I don't agree with that you see. I think that .. HUMPHRYS: That it's happening. HESLETINE: No, no, I tell you ... look you ... HUMPHRYS: Ted Heath - Norman Tebbit attacking you. HESELTINE: .... come on - the fact of the matter is that in today's media world guys like you spend your entire time trying to find a phrase, a word - you do, you do.... HUMPHRYS: Norman Tebbit chose to write an article for The Spectator. Nobody forced him to - it was his own language - he wasn't being interviewed. HESELTINE: As you well know you are talking about people who are now today, the Cabinet of the Conservative Government, and they are a united Cabinet, clearly in charge of one of the most successful economies of modern times. It's preposterous to suggest that they're at each other's throats. I don't quote you Dennis Skinner, I don't quote you Peter Shaw. HUMPHRYS: I mean Dennis Skinner has not been a former leader of the country or the Prime Minister, Ted Heath has been. He hasn't been a chairman of his party. HESELTINE: And Peter Shaw? and what about the rows between Cook and Brown - at each other's throats all the time. What about the... HUMPHRYS: You say this, they may be doing it in private, but they're not doing it in public. HESELTINE: What about the endless debates about what to do with John Prescott. Did you see the ludicrous thing last Sunday, the ludicrous thing, we were told that if a Labour Government was elected John Prescott was going to be given this all singing and dancing vitally important job. Do you know what the job was - it was the job that Peter Walker had in 1970 under Ted Heath and I suppose Ted, no-one will claim that Peter Walker was at the top end of the Cabinet at that time. HUMPHRYS: So when a former Chairman of the Party attacks the Deputy Prime Minister, in print, in his own words, in an article that he chose to write in The Spectator, two months before an Election, you say that is completely insignificant, it doesn't matter, it doesn't tell us anything. HESELTINE: I don't think it does. HUMPHRYS: And when Ted Heath, former Prime Minister, embraces Labour Party policies a couple of weeks, a couple of months before the Election, you say that doesn't matter. HESELTINE: I think if you have a Party, led by a Prime Minister with a united cabinet, delivering the most extraordinary economic success this country could remember.. HUMPHRYS: The Party is more than the Cabinet. HESELTINE: Of course. But I think it is frankly disproportionate to take people who are not members of the Cabinet, not been a member of the Cabinet for some time, and to put them on the same level. Who..if the Conservative Party achieves the level of victory which I'm telling you it's going to do, the Cabinet is going to be drawn from those that John Major choses and that Cabinet would, without any shadow of a doubt, be of a predictable number of people in the House of Commons. Those are the people you are entitled to say are speaking today for the Conservative Party. And it's just.. HUMPHRYS: Only them? - nobody else is allowed....unless you're in the Cabinet you're not allowed to speak to the Conservative Party...John Redwood... HESELTINE: What you're trying to pretend is that somehow or other John Major's Cabinet is in a muddle. That is not the case. HUMPHRYS: I didn't even use that expression. I pointed out to you what is happening in the party today. HESELTINE: Then you've got to talk about what Peter Shaw is saying, about what Dennis Skinner is saying.. HUMPHRYS: But they're not saying it publicly, this is the point. HESELTINE: Peter Shaw did say it publicly. He did say it publicly. The fact that the Labour Party is deeply divided on all sorts of issues. I've just been reading today's papers about the fact that the old Labour Party are resisting the new people that Tony Blair wants to bring in - great rows at constituency level. We all know that so let's be frank about it. What Tony Blair has done is to put a sort of sticking plaster over the Labour Party. HUMPHRYS: Which is what you failed to do. HESELTINE: Yes but we don't believe in sticking plasters. We believe in real policy. HUMPHRYS: ..have these arguments in public would you. HESELTINE: We're in Government, we're in Government. HUMPHRYS: So you're happy to have these...you haven't got a sticking plaster because you can't stick it there. It won't stick, you keep trying to stick it but it keeps falling off. HESELTINE: You have to take decisions. You have to have policies, you have to have answers, you cannot live with soundbites, simply saying: "trust me and it'll all be alright". You cannot get away with that sort of thing. If I in Government had changed my mind on every important issue of modern things, like Tony Blair: CND, the Trade Unions. HUMPHRYS: Alright, let's leave soundbites then. HESELTINE: No, no, this is important. CND, Europe Trade Union reform, privatisation, punitive tax rates, he voted for them all, supported them all. Now he says - oh well, that's all gone. But I tell you this, if you were employing someone for the top job and he said: my single greatest qualification I got every judgement wrong and I've changed my mind you wouldn't employ him. HUMPHRYS: Alright, but let's look again at the effectiveness of your campaigning efforts and this is what I'm talking about throughout this interview. Muddle and concern from the leadership at the top, another thing, another area where you are not getting the message across consistently is that over Europe. Now people are hugely concerned about what you all stand for over Europe. You said a long time ago that you would be deeply concerned if individual parliamentary prospective candidates had their own manifestos on Europe. They had their own manifestos on Europe. We learned this morning that ministers in your own Government have their own personal manifestos on Europe saying things that you did not want them to say - are they defying the leadership? HESELTINE: Well we'll get to that when we get to the Election campaign. HUMPHRYS: Well no those are already printed - get to it when to get to the campaign - they're already printed. HESELTINE: The important thing and you're right to raise Europe and absolutely delighted you have. The important thing about Europe is to win for Britain, that's the test. Now in this Government John Major, brilliantly, secured opt-outs of the Social Contract and of the Economic and Monetary Union, so people could make up their mind in the light of the facts. But what he didn't do, was to abandon Britain's self-interest and what is the consequence - unemployment we have the highest proportion of our population at work in Europe. Inward investment - they're all coming here. It's not charity, all these American, Korean, Japanese companies, one thousand six hundred German companies, a thousand French companies, coming to this country to escape the European social model which Labour want to impose here. HUMPHRYS: Yes, but why tell Labour, why not tell your own ministers like Tom Sackville of whom we heard this morning, he's got his own leaflet, he's printed it, sitting there in some vault in London. HESELTINE: You heard what Brian Mawhinney said on your own programme earlier today, he said.. HUMPHRYS: He said he had no..he didn't know what they were saying in their leaflets and he's the Chairman of the Party... HESELTINE: No, no, he did not. What he said was that any statement that Tom Sackville had made was made before the Cabinet had put forward our united view.. HUMPHRYS: But I didn't hear him say I'm now telling him he has to withdraw that, scrap that leaflet, burn it, get shut of it. HESELTINE: But you are trying to deal with hypothetical situations which may or may not develop. When we get to the Election campaign, there will be a clear united policy of the Cabinet, there will be a manifesto, that is what we will campaign on and that we will be elected on. HUMPHRYS: So you'll tell Tom Sackville not to distribute those leaflets that he's had printed? HESELTINE: You will not get me to get involved in a detail of what individual people.. HUMPHRYS: How is this detail? HESELTINE: Because we have not got to the point in which we are fighting an Election campaign. When we are fighting an Election campaign and when we have an manifesto then you can ask me questions about what will happen when the Conservatives win - which we are going to do. HUMPHRYS: We are weeks away. HESELTINE: But I am not going to get involved in speculation about what individual members of the Conservative Party may or may not do. I'm not going to do that. HUMPHRYS: But here we are weeks away from an Election campaign. We have ministers putting out a different message from that of the Government and you're saying to me: I'm not going to comment on that. That illustrates the divisions of the party. HESELTINE: No, it illustrates the great dilemma of being in Government. What I want to talk about is Europe. I want to talk about the policies, about the facts, about the consequences, about the achievements. What you want to talk about is what one or other person may or may not do in hypothetical situations. HUMPHRYS: Certainly if they're in Government I do, yes. HESELTINE: But the fact is the Government's policy is the one that is delivering the jobs, the inward investment, the deregulation, the achievements that we are finding because our trade with Europe is expanding so quickly. That is the Government's policy. That is what the Government is committed to if there's another Conservative Government, which I believe there will be, that is what the policy will continue to be. That is what you should ask me about. HUMPHRYS: I note you said 'if' there's another Conservative... HESELTINE: Which there is going to be. HUMPHRYS: Which there's going to be, before you send out any phoney press releases. HESELTINE: Which there is going to be. HUMPHRYS: Sixty seats and rising. HESELTINE: Nudging up. HUMPHRYS: Nudging up. HESELTINE: Just get the quotes right. HUMPHRYS: Michael Heseltine thank you very much indeed. HESELTINE: Thank you.