................................................................................ ON THE RECORD JACK STRAW INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 25.1.98 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. Tony Blair thinks we don't understand properly what his government's trying to do and he's put Jack Straw in charge of explaining. I'll be talking to Mr Straw about that - and asking him whether the government's only got itself to blame for distracting attention from its policies. That's after the News read by CHRIS LOWE. NEWS HUMPHRYS: Departmentitis - that is the new sickness affecting the Cabinet. The symptoms include Cabinet Ministers getting so preoccupied by the affairs of their own departments that they lose sight of the big political picture and they don't keep reminding the nation of the great project that the government is engaged on. Or that, at least, is the diagnosis of Dr Tony Blair. He told his ministers so last week. But does he really believe that's the condition causing his government problems? Well, apparently he does, because he has even prescribed a treatment - and that involves the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, leading a campaign to restore our faith in government and its big project. Mr Straw is with me. Good afternoon. JACK STRAW: Good afternoon. HUMPHRYS: The reason, let me suggest, that you're not - the real reason you're not getting your message about the big project across is that what we're hearing instead is that the leadership is at war with itself and that's what's making the news. STRAW: Well I think, by the way, we are getting our message across. HUMPHRYS: What did you have to do... STRAW: Hang on a second, but we're not getting it across as well as we thought. But, you last spoke to me on Friday morning, indeed I spent more time with you this week than I have with my family. HUMPHRYS: People may be talking. STRAW: I know people may indeed be talking, John, it would make a great story. But I went off to King's Lynn on Friday afternoon and seven hundred people turned up to fill the largest hall in King's Lynn to hear me talk about the big picture but also about the detail of our policies. Now, one of the problems we've got is we're in a kind of lull between the post election euphoria - and that went on for six, seven months, I think, and the delivery stage of our policy. So we're having to say, look, we are doing all these things, and by God we are, we're doing things at an enormous pace if you look back historically, things that David Blunkett is doing on education, what's happening in health, all the huge changes that are taking place led by Gordon Brown with the Welfare to Work programme and many other areas and indeed I say in the Home Office area, but these are going to take some time to come through. And what that inevitably means is that these other matters you suggest, are going to get more coverage than would otherwise be the case. But in terms of the overall pace of government, it is exactly as Tony Blair set out in the Manifesto, which I've brought along just in case... HUMPHRYS: Carefully happened to have it to hand. STRAW: I happened to have it to hand. And what - but it is interesting actually to see what Tony set out in the Manifesto ten months ago. He says first of all, we've made it our guiding rule not to promise what we can't deliver and I think we are delivering what we've promised and not promised anything we couldn't deliver. What follows is not the politics of a hundred days which dazzles for a time and then fizzles out. Not the politics of a revolution but a fresh start, the patient re-building of renewing this country. Renewal that can take root and build over time. HUMPHRYS: You're not going to read the whole thing are you? STRAW: No, no, only if I need to. But, I think that, what has happened in the last eight months is what Tony set out there, but inevitably there have been some distractions, one has to deal with those as well. HUMPHRYS: And it's because, well you call distractions, because of those distractions, as you put it, some people would put it rather more strongly than that. But that all of those other things that you're talking about aren't getting the publicity that you want them to get. It's a different story that we're reading in the newspapers and you can't blame anybody else for that except yourselves. STRAW: I haven't blamed the newspapers, have I? HUMPHRYS: No, no. I'm merely offering you that thought. STRAW: Thank you. This is politics. I mean I think there is an irony about all this though, which is that what was thought about New Labour in opposition, was that the thing that we were really brilliant at was presentation and indeed after a number of false starts and eighteen years of practice we became pretty good at it towards...particularly once Tony Blair became leader in the summer of 1994. What wasn't noticed sufficiently was that we're also, actually, very good at developing policies. Now, going into government, the policy preparation that we undertook in opposition has turned out to be extremely effective. And that's why in one department after another we have been able - in the now hackneyed phrase - to hit the ground running, and departments were really surprised that we've done so much detailed work, that we're able to say to officials, actually as the election begun, this is our blueprint, look at it, tell us where we need to fine tune it, but we want to have legislation ready very quickly and in the Treasury that was true with a vengeance. What is interesting is that that translated into government - the kind of organisation of presentation which we had in opposition, has not translated as well into government because in a way you couldn't prepare for that the different nature of government while you were in opposition. And it's that that we've got to look to. HUMPHRYS: So, in other words, what you're saying is you have lost the presentational skills, or failed to continue, failed to develop, to deploy the presentation skills, presentational skills that got you into government, or helped get you into government. STRAW: We've not lost them at all and we're still a very formidable fighting machine but we certainly need to fine tune them. I mean, John.. HUMPHRYS: What's going wrong then in your interpretation, where is it going wrong? STRAW: I've just explained. HUMPHRYS: You've explained. STRAW: Government..you asked me to explain, I've done my best to explain. I've said, I've not suggested it's all perfect because it isn't. HUMPHRYS: No, no, in what respect, in what sense have those presentational skills that served you so well in opposition, failed you in government? STRAW: It's not a question of failing us. It requires different organisation in government because government is so much more complex, there's so much more going on. I mean one of the things that even surprises an old hand like myself, and I've been around in politics for a long, long time, is that in opposition you really have to be shouting in order to get heard. In government if you blow your nose that becomes a story. I mean, there is a huge difference in terms of attention which is paid to the individual foibles of politicians, all politicians are going to have foibles. But the magnifying glass is much more powerful on what happens to individuals in government than it does in opposition. And I think all of us knew that intellectually but haven't properly clocked that emotionally. HUMPHRYS: If you start in government fighting amongst yourselves - which is what's been happening, then of course that magnifying glass is going to blow that up very large indeed. People are going to be very, very interested in that because of all the things it tells them about where you might be headed. STRAW: Yes. People say that and I read these stories, I read them with some regularity these days. HUMPHRYS: There's a lot of them. STRAW: I read them on Thursday and then I went, we get to Cabinet about fifteen minutes before it starts, ten/fifteen, and there's a lobby outside the Cabinet Room where members of the Cabinet gather and I'd just been reading... The Daily Mirror ran an analysis, so-called, of who hates who in the Cabinet and by the time you'd finished, I mean everybody was hating everybody else. I get there and I thought this is funny, 'cause these two guys according to The Daily Mirror hate each other, and here they are not just doing business but sharing a joke as I know they have done for a long time. HUMPHRYS: Well they would, wouldn't they. I mean what do you expect them to do, you don't expect to walk into that lobby and find them punching each other on the nose or throttling each other. STRAW: Not in the privacy of the Cabinet Room. Actually given the pressures on people, this is a Cabinet which I think works very well and works very well together. Now, it's always true and always has been true historically, if you read - as I know you do John - historical biography, that there's going to be an intense interest in the personal interplay between different members of the Cabinet. But that doesn't alter the fact that on policy issues we've been, I believe, very effective. I mean, let me just take the Welfare to Work programme. HUMPHRYS: Well you did a minute ago and I'd prefer to move on from that, if I may. STRAW: But, let me take it again because there is a programme which people in opposition derided Gordon Brown for. They said he couldn't do it, they said that if he tried to set this Windfall Tax it wouldn't work, we'd end up in the European Court of Justice. I mean these were the serious stories being run in the newspapers this time last year. We got into government, it was introduced in the first Budget, it's now happening and that policy alone, that programme alone, is for the first time going to provide a stake in society for millions of people who've been part of this Conservative great under-class. HUMPHRYS: I take that point. But.. STRAW: One policy which is of huge importance and it's one of the reasons, by the way, why for all these distractions, on the best evidence we're running about twice the level of support than the Conservatives. HUMPHRYS: But let's stay for a moment with this idea that everybody in the Cabinet loves each other and that it's all hugger mugger there. STRAW: I didn't quite say that. HUMPHRYS: You got awfully close to it. STRAW: Yes. HUMPHRYS: Absolutely. But let me - a terribly old cliche - no smoke without fire. As you say, the papers are full of the stories, now those stories and you did say earlier you weren't going to blame the press, so you better not do that now, I suppose; the papers are full of stories based, not just on unsubstantiated rumours, they don't go away as you know, those political correspondents, political editors and make them up. They talk to people, they talk to spin doctors in particular, it's the spin doctors' job and they come away with quotes and those quotes, and if they appear in the newspaper in quotation marks as you know, that's what the guy said, or the woman whoever it may be. It's happening, isn't it, and the impression is that perhaps the spin doctors are out of control. Maybe it's they who are causing the problems for you? STRAW: Well, there have been advisors to government ministers over the years, over the centuries and these days they're called spin doctors, they used to be called political advisors or official spokesmen to the Prime Minister, or spokeswomen to the Prime Minister, sometimes they've been. They have a job to do, sometimes what they say is taken in quotes, sometimes it has to be said, that political journalists may exaggerate what's going on, but that's separate John from, as it were, the big picture, what we are concerned about. HUMPHRYS: I understand that. But what I am suggesting to you is that you are damaging your big picture getting across and you sort of acknowledge that and what I am trying to do is to understand whether it is your view, 'cause you have talked about the effectiveness, you have pointedly talked about the effectiveness of presentation in opposition. I'm wondering whether it is your view that, it's certainly the view of many people, that the spin doctors, since you've been in power, have actually not been doing it frightfully well. And what they've been doing, you see, is waging war on behalf of their own little camps, or big camps. It might be Mr Blair's camp, it might be Mr Brown's camp, it might be somebody else. All having a go at each other. STRAW: I think they have been doing the job pretty well and I think, historically, they have been doing it because if you compare it for example with what happened under the previous administration, the Major administration, they've been doing it brilliantly. What has been recognised by all - this comes back to my original point - no point frowning by the way John, I- HUMPRHYS: I-I-It's my demeanour, I fear. STRAW: Your demeanour? Right. HUMPHRYS: I'm sorry about that. Wrinkles. You get them when you get older. STRAW: Right. OK. There's a point I made when I started. It comes back to the point that whilst the preparation we made in Opposition for policy developments turned out to be extremely good, the preparation we made in terms of presentation was not as effective and we couldn't just move the systems we had in Opposition into Government. That's why a great deal of time and attention has been paid to strengthening the centre of Government. We've now got the Strategic Communications Unit; we've got better media monitoring and that should help to bind the way the Government operates at a media level. HUMPHRYS: Right. But, you've got to get a grip on these people, in other words, because you can't go around talking about Chancellors being psychologically flawed and the like, can they? Whoever it happens to be. STRAW: No they shouldn't but let me just come back to my meeting. HUMPHRYS: So what are you going to do about this point? As you say, they shouldn't, what's going to happen about that? STRAW: Well, let me just come back to talking about my meeting in Kings Lynn because what is interesting, I understand why the newspapers take-pay great attention to these personalities. HUMPHRYS: Because they're fed it! STRAW: And they're-No, but also - it's partly because they're fed it, it's also because it's sometimes easier to write than some of the policy issues and that's-there's no doubt about that. HUMPHRYS: Easier to write because they're fed it. STRAW: And also, it's one of the consequences by the way of the shift in the role of political journalists - away from, for example, reporting Parliament and what happens not just on the floor of the House but in Committees, to reporting on gossip, and that's a significant change. HUMPHRYS: You're looking for a Golden Age possibly, but anyway. STRAW: No, no, no. Well, I've actually-It's not a Golden Age but I've measured a different age. It was I who did the research on the change in the way political journalists operated, and their retreat from policy to personality has I think been - is - well marked and it's happened in the last ten or fifteen years. But it's going back to this meeting in Kings Lynn. What is interesting was I spoke for about fifteen minutes and then there was an hour of questions from all-comers. This was not a Labour Party rally of the new Labour faithful where they had to show their cards, as it were, as they came, and recite a mantra - it was anybody. HUMPHRYS: Not like the one I went to in Dudley? STRAW: No, exactly like the one you went to in Dudley! HUMPHRYS: No, no, because they had to show their invitations then. STRAW: But anybody was able to ask questions and anybody did. No one asked me about this stuff, the flim flam, that's appearing in newspapers. What they asked me was about the detail of our policies - and particularly, since I was there as Home Secretary, the detail of our policies in Home Affairs. There's a huge interest in that and a thirst for change. There's also considerable interest in our whole approach to try and get away from this cynical attitude towards politics to giving people a greater say and involvement in the political processes, which we are doing through our Constitutional change. HUMPHRYS: But that is the point, isn't it? You've got to stop this other sort of thing getting into the national newspapers, dominating the stories about you. How are you going to do it? SHAW: Well, how we do it is in the way that I have described but first of all we have to recognise- HUMPHRYS: Well I'm not sure you have quite. STRAW: Well, otherwise maybe I should come to John Humphrys Political Advisers Inc. and- HUMPHRYS: Oh, Heaven forbid! Heaven forbid! That'd be your end. STRAW: That would be my end? Right - OK. Well, if I'm left to answering the question myself, John, rather than having you ask the question and answer the question at the same time. HUMPHRYS: Well I don't think you've answered that question, you see. You said that you- STRAW: I may not have answered the question as you want me to but-. HUMPHRYS: You've acknowledged that something has to be done, you've acknowledged that it isn't going very well. What you haven't said is what you are going to do about it. STRAW: Well, now-Can I just answer the question? I've tried to answer the question. Sometimes I don't answer the question as you would wish, but that's a different point from not answering the question! OK. First of all I have described what I see as the problem, which was this difficulty of translation from Opposition into Government terms of presentation. And the fact that we're in this period - post euphoria, pre delivery period - where people are still- the sense of excitement of a new Government has gone but people are still legitimately asking where the beef is. So we have to get people through that period, we also have to keep concentrating on the range of changes which we've introduced which, in my judgement, are already affecting the way people think about the society and about themselves. Let me just give you one other example - that's on Europe. I mean, Britain in Europe is a completely different country compared with- HUMPHRYS: Can I come to that in a minute because I am going to come to that. STRAW: Right. HUMPHRYS: That's-that's down. STRAW: Is this really a promise for today? HUMPHRYS: A firm promise- a firm promise - and we never break our promises as you know at the BBC. Because you talked about the speach that you made on Friday. STRAW: Yeah. HUMPHRYS: Now one of the things that you said in that speach was that the great project, part of the great project, was to create new politics of the radical Centre - a new Coalition - you wanted to reach out beyond the traditional Left/Right divides and I quote: "where we can work with others we will do so". Why did you say that? Because isn't the Labour Party itself a broad enough church to deliver that? STRAW: Well the Labour Party is a broad church but I think that one of the things that really undermines politics during both the Thatcher and the Major period was this view that if people weren't one of us you wouldn't take any notice of what they were saying. Now that was a change, that was a change Mrs Thatcher introduced. In-Up to then in Parliament, if you read Hansard of any period, say from the War up to the end of the Seventies, there was a serious trade on the floor of the House of Commons and in Committee, in ideas. Now, OK, of course, there were also sharp exchanges and I support the principle of adversarial politics to bring out the choices that should be available in British politics, but there are plenty of things where there's no reason at all why Conservatives or Liberals should not have as good an idea as anybody else and that should not be accepted. Now there was that kind of trade. That went. I mean we, by the way, contributed to it in the early Eighties. I'm not just putting it all at the door of Margaret Thatcher, but it did go. And it got worse, ironically, paradoxically, under Mr Major because he was a weaker character than Mrs Thatcher. We want to get away from that. And all of us have worked very hard in terms of our style as well as the content of our policies in the House of Commons for example, that when someone comes up with a good idea and puts it to you during the course of Questions or Statement, you don't say:"That's rubbish" because the person's a Conservative or a Liberal. If it's a good idea it seems to me you ought to say:"That's a good idea, have a look at it". You judge ideas on their merits not from where they come from and I think that is one way in which we have a great responsibility for raising the standing and status of politics. HUMPHRYS: But when you talk about reaching out beyond this traditional divide and working with others, the implication of that seems to be that you're not talking just about other individuals or individuals within the body politic, you're talking about the groupings as well and in that context the most important, obviously, from your point of view - we've seen you working very closely with them already - are the Liberal Democrats. Are you saying that you want a closer relationship than you now have with the Liberal Democrats? STRAW: Well, what I- it's notorious almost that my view about the Liberal Democrats electorally is that since they're putting up candidates against us, we should have an engagement with them and I developed that approach in the last five years. But I've also - we've been consistent about that and said if we can, as it were, build a popular front of the mind with them, why not? Now, in the last two years we have developed a popular front of the mind with the Liberals. We had the Joint Consultative Committee on the Constitution which Robin Cook and Robert MacLennan chaired and that's been very important actually because it's meant that we were able to rehearse the arguments over a range of Constitutional changes and see whether the Liberal Democrats and us couldn't agree on basic principles. And I believe it's one of the reasons why we're getting through our process of Constitutional change not only more swiftly than many ever anticipated but, I think, in a better form. Now, why not? And if you take my area of business, I mean I have got responsibility for a lot of Constitutional change anyway - European Convention of Human Rights. Now we don't own this, this was actually a convention which was drafted principally by a man who later became Conservative Lord Chancellor. We don't have a monopoly view on this. I'm delighted that Liberal Democrats have engaged with us because if you get that kind of engagement it then gives the people, the British people, some confidence that you're thinking about the issues not just about your political position. So if we can carry on in this vein, so much the better and just take the area of Criminal Justice and Immigration Asylum. It's actually in my interests as well as I believe in the country's interest for me to try to develop as broad a concensus as possible on these issues and where people say: "Look Jack, I'm not sure you should be doing that, why don't you do that?" to say, well, let's look at the argument, not who's advancing the argument. HUMPHRYS: The logical extension of that, then - if you're working that closely and as you say you are - I mean, Paddy Ashdown on Cabinet Committees, Lord Jenkins leading the Commission on Electoral Reform - all that. No reason on Earth why somebody like Paddy Ashdown shouldn't - at some stage - be invited to join the Cabinet, is there? I mean, he's gone off to ask his own members whether he thinks they ought to do that! No reason why he shouldn't, is there? STRAW: Well, there's a very large jump between co-operating with another political Party and having that legal Party being a member of a Cabinet of the other political Party? HUMPHRYS: Well, only under the old rules. Only under the old approach. This- STRAW: Well, I'm not saying, I'm not saying it could never happen. There's no huge necessity on the Labour Party for this to happen, at the moment because we have- HUMPHRYS: Desire? STRAW: -a majority, in any event. Does it matter, I mean-whether it were to happen would be a matter for whoever was the Prime Minister but there are all sorts of- HUMPHRYS: But, you seem to have moderated your own position, as you say. You - and you didn't actually use this language- STRAW: No, I know. HUMPHRYS: -but you were a bit of a bareknuckled fighter not so long ago, you know. STRAW: Oh, I mean, listen- HUMPHRYS: Saying Liberal Democrats to Jack Straw and he'd- STRAW: No. As long as the Liberal Democrats are putting up candidates against us, we have to recognise them as political adversaries. HUMPHRYS: OK. So, if Paddy said: Look, we won't do it next time. We'll talk about that particular seat or this particular seat. In that case, you'd say..- STRAW: But, I-No. It's a long, long way down the track. Normally, you only get a Coalition between two Parties where there's an arithmetical necessity for it. HUMPHRYS: But, that's the old politics, though, isn't it? You don't work on the old politics. STRAW: But, what we're doing. First - no - one step at a time, John, in the words of the hymn. What we're doing is seeing if we can't co-operate on the areas where we can co-operate. Now, the most fruitful area is that of Constitutional change. We've got this Joint Consultative Committee - Cabinet Committee - where we have regular meetings and that is producing benefits for the Liberal Democrats as well as from us. We're able to engage in...- HUMPHRYS: And, there's no reason, then, why it shoudl not? I'm not asking you to tell me it's going to happen this week or next week, even. Or, even next month. But, there's no reason, ultimately, why that kind of thing shouldn't happen. STRAW: Well, look, look, John. I know - I mean - part of the purpose of this interview is to get at the truth of what I've said to you. Another part of the purpose of the interview is like this is quite understandably is to give a headline for John Humphrys next morning. John Humphrys on ON THE RECORD says this or that. HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw says it, actually. It's not John Humphrys. STRAW: But, under questioning from the great John Humphrys. If you're saying to me: am I about to say there will be a place for Paddy Ashdown in the British Cabinet in the next two or three years- HUMPHRYS: I'm merely saying that it is conceivable - that's all - just conceivable. STRAW: I don't-If you-I wouldn't put money on it in Joe Coral's - I mean, that's- ok? HUMPHRYS: Alright. STRAW: Is that a reasonable answer? HUMPHRYS: Well, that's-If you think it's a reasonable answer, then, of course it's a reasonable answer...- STRAW: Well, you usually adjudicate on my answers as well. HUMPHRYS: On the contrary. On the contrary - never express an opinion. The betting shop is kind of open, isn't it? I mean, that's the thing, you know. The odds-if the odds were really different. STRAW: You can never say never in politics. HUMPHRYS: Right. There we are. STRAW: Is that alright? Is that the answer you wanted? HUMPHRYS: There you go. I promised we'd talk about Europe. So, let's talk about that. STRAW: Right. OK. HUMPHRYS: Tony Blair wants to create a patriotic - indeed, he believes there already exists a patriotic alliance on Europe. Isn't it rather offensive to use that expression, to put that word 'patriotic' there
because what it says is: if you don't agree with us, you're not patriotic? STRAW: Well, I don't think it's offensive, at all. I mean, what used to be the case is that these words like 'patriotism',
'nationhood' were words which the Conservative Party had copyrighted. HUMPHRYS: And you excoriated them for doing so! STRAW: No, we didn't excoriate. We excoriated them for copyrighting. We didn't excoriate them for the fact that they used the words. HUMPHRYS: Well. STRAW: Indeed, I can remember making a number of speeches over the years to say why is it that we've let the Conservatives have all the best tunes? That they have stolen the language of persuasive politics. HUMPHRYS: So, you've stolen that back? STRAW: Well, we haven't stolen it but, of course, these are words which ought to be available for any political Party, if there's a resonance behind them. HUMPHRYS: But, if-The only resonance can be: if you're not in support of the views we take on Europe, you're unpatriotic. STRAW: Well, of course, other people can say this but I mean what- HUMPHRYS: Well, what else? What other implication is there...- STRAW: What Tony Blair and Robin- HUMPHRYS: Robin Cook? STRAW: -and the rest of us are saying is this:- Robin Cook - yes - is this that we want to see a strong Britain within Europe and the way to achieve that - as I have seen in the eight months that we've been in Government is by standing up for British interests but not for abusing our friends in Europe but by working with them. HUMPHRYS: Abusing your friends in Britain instead by suggesting they're unpatriotic if they don't go along with you? STRAW: No, no. If-If-But, what I think this phrase does is causes the public to think whether the Conservatives' narrow tactics on Europe. After all, they are the people who've always claimed that they are the patriots, that their narrow tactics on Europe which cause us to be isolated in Europe and, therefore, for British interests to be damaged. Whether those are sensible? Now, I don't believe they are and- HUMPHRYS: Not being sensible is one thing. Being unpatriotic is quite another. STRAW: Well, objectively, if the result of the approach of say the approach that Mr Hague is now adopting is to undermine Britain's interests, then, I think, it's reasonable to say this is not patriotism in the best sense of the word because it's not standing up for Britain or defending Britain's nationhood. HUMPHRYS: Isn't the reality here that you don't actually want-you say you want a serious debate on those but you don't! You want us to see it in terms of the good guys and the bad guys. It's a rather sinister kind of marketing technique - almost Orwellian, in the way that you're doing it. STRAW: I don't think- HUMPHRYS: I mean, the way you use 'the people's this and the people's that, the people's Europe, the people's Lottery, the people's whatever-it-happens-to-be. It's that use of language that's slightly worrying to a lot of people. STRAW: I don't think it is, as a matter of fact. I mean, of course, language can be used in all sorts of ways. But, I do go back, John, to the direct contacts I have with the British people - apologies for using that phrase but it's- HUMPHRYS: Well, it's different. STRAW: That's good. Along-Alongside the meeting - extraordinarily well-attended meeting I did at Kings Lynn - last Friday, I do very regular open air meetings in my own Constituency. Stand up there about every six weeks. I stand up on a soap box. I talk for ten minutes. I take questions for an hour. Anybody can ask me a question about anything and they usually do. What's interesting is they don't ask me questions about whether this Cabinet Minister or that Cabinet Minister is not keen on. What they're asking about is the reality, the content of our policy and there's broad support for what we're doing - been very strong support for what we're doing - but they want to know more and they want to be reassured that the approach and strategy that was set up by Tony Blair in the Manifesto is one we're following - and, we are. HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw, thank you very much, indeed. STRAW: Thank you. HUMPHRYS: And that's it for this week. The full hour next week, until then, good afternoon. ...ooooOooo...