WESTMINSTER INSIDERS - UK POLITICS – 23rd May 2010
Whether they read 'The Times' or 'The Guardian', if you ask me, the
poor old British voters must still be waking up every morning wondering
what the heck happened on their way to the election. But, meanwhile,
their cool, new PM David Cameron's coalition cabinet of pollies who,
just over a fortnight ago, were abusing each other on the campaign
trail, has already rolled up its sleeves to try and work out - well,
basically - how to sleep with the enemy? But, for a moment, cast your
mind back to a week or so ago, when this very odd marriage of political
convenience between the Conservative Cameron and Nick Clegg, leader of
the soft-left Liberal Democrats was in its first full blush in the rose
garden at 10 Downing Street.
NICK CLEGG, ENGLISH DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: This is a new government,
and it is a new kind of government.
There were jokes and smiles aplenty but, behind all the political
platitudes and bonhomie, this ideologically odd couple would have to
have been daunted by the task ahead, let alone the gigantic risks they
were taking to grab power the way they did. In short, former political
opponents are now faced with working closely together for a 5-year set
term.
DAVID CAMERON, ENGLISH PRIME MINISTER: It really does look and feel
different. Indeed, many of us are sitting next to people that we've
never sat next to before.
Not to mention solving the UK's potentially crippling debt problem with
Europe teetering on the economic brink, the contentious migration
issue, of course, plus, vote-losing basics like 2.5 million Brits out
of work - the highest unemployment figures here since Margaret
Thatcher. So, is it true love or a one-night stand for Britain's
look-alike, 40-something, close enough to ideologically incompatible
double-act? Well, that's exactly what we asked our 'Westminster
Insiders' and, if they don't know, God help the rest of us is all I can
say!
GEORGE NEGUS: Well, thanks very much for giving us your time
in
these "interesting times" in the UK, to say the least. It is pretty odd
that a Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, who thinks that Nick
Clegg, his Deputy Prime Minister, is a bit of a joke, and you've got
Nick Clegg, a Democrat, a Liberal-Democrat, from a totally different
party, who is Deputy Prime Minister, who actually things that David
Cameron is irrelevant. So, where does that leave the country?
CLARE SHORT, FORMER LABOUR CABINET MINISTER: It simply means that
nobody got a majority in the House of Commons, and we're going in for a
big cuts program, and a minority government - which would really be the
other alternative - would have a very great difficulty carrying its
program. So, they made an alliance and they negotiated a package and, I
think for the country, given that New Labour was going to, and had to,
lose, it's better to have the Lib Dems there pulling the Tories to the
centre and stopping them being Thatcherite.
GEORGE NEGUS: Well, how come - all the trite phrases are
coming out -
strange political bedfellows, etc - but they are.
JACKIE ASHLEY, COLUMNIST, 'THE GUARDIAN': They are very strange, and
GEORGE NEGUS: This is a marriage of convenience which a lot of
people
are saying could end up being a one-night stand.
JACKIE ASHLEY: Yeah, and it's no secret that the Lib Dems really wanted
to get into bed with Labour, with whom they are much more naturally
coherent, but Labour just didn't have quite enough seats. Another 10
seats, perhaps, and that would have worked but, as it was, the
parliamentary arithmetic just didn't add up, you see. Plus, the Labour
negotiators were not as willing to give up so much as the
Conservatives.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT, LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: The members and the
activists are very anti-Tory so, as Vince put it on the crucial night
of the meeting - as Vince Cable, sorry, put it - we hate the Tories, he
said that. Our heart is very much -
GEORGE NEGUS: "We hate the Tories?"
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Yeah, we hate the Tories!
JACKIE ASHLEY: You can't say that any more! You can't say that now!
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Well, instinctively we do. Our hearts said we
wanted not to do a deal with the Tories, but our heads said we had to
and, as Jackie says, it was the numbers. The numbers were just not
enough to be able to have a stable government.
GEORGE NEGUS: But what you did was make it possible for the
Tories, a
sworn enemy a few weeks before that, end up running the country, thanks
to you.
WILL HUTTON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, WORK FOUNDATION: I think all parties are
coalitions and, I mean, the Conservative Party is a very big church. On
its right it's got some very right-wing people by international
standards. But then you have - Cameron and the people around him, you
know, he likes to boast that he is a Liberal Conservative and I think
CLARE SHORT: Well, except he worked for Michael Howard and produced
that very right-wing manifesto before, so what is he?
WILL HUTTON: I think he's a Liberal Conservative, that's what I THINK
he is.
GEORGE NEGUS: What does that mean?
WILL HUTTON: It means that you are - it means that you take poverty
seriously, you're more internationalist.
GEORGE NEGUS: You want to feed some people who are not so
well-off?
WILL HUTTON: You're are not just blindly pro-business. You actually
think about - you might be critical about financiers and banks, but you
might be for
JACKIE ASHLEY: You see, Will himself is a Liberal Conservative now,
presumably. Now you have joined them, you are a Liberal Conservative.
WILL HUTTON: There is a definite distinction between a Liberal
Conservative and a kind of "Hang 'em, flog 'em, I eat what I kill," you
know
CLARE SHORT: Hate immigrants, hate Europe.
WILL HUTTON: Euro-sceptic Thatcherite right. The Tory Party is this
spectrum. What the Liberal Democrats have done is actually give the
kind of centre of gravity of it is Liberal Conservative, Liberal
Democrat, and I think that is broadly what the British public voted
for, and that's what they wanted, and they didn't want to give the
Conservative Party an absolute majority.
CLARE SHORT: But they wanted to get rid of the government.
WILL HUTTON: They wanted to get rid of what they, frankly, correctly
saw was an administration that had run out of energy and, by the end,
was very (inaudible).
GEORGE NEGUS: So, to use the phrases of people like Charles
Kennedy,
former Lib Dem leader, right, he said his political compass was very
confused. He wasn't quite sure what it was all about. Somebody else in
your party talked about doing a pact with the devil.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Well, it is not a pact with the devil.
GEORGE NEGUS: They don't think this is too smart a move.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Charles speaks for many of us but, the fact is,
we had to do it.
CLARE SHORT: If they could have had a big majority with the Tories and
a small majority with Labour, they would have gone with Labour -
Labour, minus Gordon Brown. But the numbers were not there. Therefore,
I don't think the negotiations ever got…
WILL HUTTON: They were nearly there.
CLARE SHORT: Oh, they were not.
WILL HUTTON: I think there is a story there. The Tories and the Lib
Dems and the Labour had a 10-seat majority over the Conservative Party
and they could have done the supply and confidence deal with the
others, and they could have had a stable government for two or three
years actually, but the difficulty was that too many people in the
Labour Party felt defeated, weren't prepared really to do the deal with
the Lib Dems, so there was a general feeling - I mean, the Labour Party
weren't actually tigerish enough about wanting this deal, and they
should have got rid of Gordon Brown at midnight on Thursday night and
said, "It's yours, Harriet. You're deputy leader, you are going to lead
the negotiations." But Gordon clung there for three days before he
finally It was hopeless, you know.
GEORGE NEGUS: Matthew, we will talk about the voting system,
which is
obviously at the core of all of this.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Exactly.
GEORGE NEGUS: What I guess I'm saying is when people walked in
there as
Conservative voters and voted for the Conservative Party, they did not
expect to end up with you bunch of soft lefty troublemakers as part of
their right-wing government as it were, right?
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: No, but they've got it. They've got to live
with us.
GEORGE NEGUS: And, similarly, your people, when they are
voting for
Nick Clegg and for whatever the Liberal Democratic Party these days
stands for, not to help the Tories get into power, the sworn enemy.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: But that's why the system really matters
because you are basically in a situation where a third of people voted
Tory, and a bit under a third of people voted Labour, and a quarter of
people voted Lib Dem. So there was nobody got what they wanted, and
they couldn't get what they wanted under this system. If we had the
Australian system, with the alternative vote, people would then have a
second preference and they would have been able to express that.
GEORGE NEGUS: One of the trite phrases I saw, which I thought
was
great, was "This was an election where everybody lost."
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Exactly, exactly.
GEORGE NEGUS: Not that nobody won, everybody lost.
JACKIE ASHLEY: No-one got what they wanted.
CLARE SHORT: Yes, but the truth is, the country wanted to get rid of
the government, which was tired and had irritated everybody, and they
didn't want the Tories. And, so, in a way, this compromise does
reflect, and I think it will stop the Tory right-wing. The cuts that
they've got to bring in are phenomenal. They're more than even Thatcher
cut, and everyone just remembers the Thatcher era as cuts, cuts, cuts,
so it's going to be very painful. So, at the moment, the country is
quite pleased with the deal. The polls show people like it - two
parties working together.
GEORGE NEGUS: Early days.
CLARE SHORT: Yes, yes, yes, and we're still in the honeymoon, but, as
it goes on, it is going to get harsh and, you know, if you are cutting,
it is him or me. People lose and win. And I think, after a couple of
years, that will corrode it.
JACKIE ASHLEY: If it turns into a mess, which it very probably will, as
Clare has said, because I think these two parties don't cohere
together, then surely we should have another election rather than be
stuck with a mess for five years, that's all I'm saying.
CLARE SHORT: But I am saying it will happen, because if it the crumbles
in the way But I think two years to deliver the horrible economic
package not quite as nastily as the Tories would have done on their
own, is a responsible, good thing. And then if it crumbles, we'll have
another election.
GEORGE NEGUS: Sounds to me like the country is not on a
knife's edge,
it's just on a wing and a prayer. I mean, nobody really knows how this
is going to work out at all.
CLARE SHORT: No, no, no!
JACKIE ASHLEY: No, none of us know.
WILL HUTTON: There are some big reforms they have committed to, in
fairness to them. I do think the reforms that the two parties committed
to on banking and the financial system are very profound, and Labour
would never agree on
GEORGE NEGUS: Europe? Are they going to agree on Europe?
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: There are constitutional reforms too - we need
to talk about that.
WILL HUTTON: The civil liberties and the constitutional reforms are
very important and long overdue. On Europe, it's a kind of - they have
managed to temper some of the worst Euro-sceptic instincts of the
Conservative Party, but not all of them and I think there will be
tensions over Europe.
JACKIE ASHLEY: They are quite lucky that there are no big decisions
coming up soon.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Can we talk a bit also about the House of
Lords? I mean, Australians will be amazed to know that we still have 92
people in our senate, our upper house, who are there because of their
parents and grandparents. I mean, unbelievable! That is going to stop.
We're going to have an elected upper house. That is in the deal.
JACKIE ASHLEY: If that happens, if that goes through the House of Lords
- that will be a good thing.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: If necessary, they will be a lot more peers to
vote for it to make sure it does. It is in the deal, in black and
white. Now, that is classic, straightforward Lib Dem policy. 1911 was
the last time there was some reform of the House of Lords. 100 years
on, we are going to make our upper house elected. That is a major,
major change that will be irreversible.
GEORGE NEGUS: And the Tories in the Lords are going to vote
for that?
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Yes. Enough of them will.
GEORGE NEGUS: Let me quote something from a person you
obviously know,
I don't - Lord Adonis - who was heavily involved, as I understand it,
in the Labour attempt to get a deal. He said this, "This coalition
brings together Britain's biggest spenders and its biggest cutters, its
most ardent Europhiles and Europhobes. If this government lasts five
years it will have defied every conceivable law of political gravity."
CLARE SHORT: But I am saying it won't last five years, but I still
think it is a good thing.
GEORGE NEGUS: Even though we're making it up as we go along?
CLARE SHORT: You must remember when Harold Wilson was there, we had two
elections in 1974 and we had the Lib-Lab pact, and there wasn't a
majority, and they brought sick people in to get things through and
every vote you had to keep giving something to the Northern Ireland
parties. I mean, we have been here before. We've had very close results
in very difficult economic times, so I don't think this is so shocking.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: In October 1974, the government won by three
seats - I remember because I was standing - and that government went on
until 1979, so it is perfectly possible to do it.
WILL HUTTON: If the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats do, for
example, and I'm not saying that they going to do this, but they could,
if they decide to take on the four big banks in Britain and
'trust-bust' them, and have a Standard Oil moment, like they had in
America in 1911 with the great oil company Rockefeller had, and say,
"These banks are too big - We're going to trust-bust them," but
Matthew's instincts are to do that, so is the Business Secretary, and
so, extraordinarily, is the Prime Minister's. If they do something like
that, something really big like that, and they introduced political
reform, and there is a referendum on PR, and they get the deficit under
control, they will survive five years and they will win again in 2015.
This is very fashionable to say this, but it's very fashionable to be
bearish and pessimistic, but it might just succeed.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: It is not our instincts, it is in our
manifesto. It is what we have been saying, it is what Vince Cable
believes, is the most important reason why he became the most trusted
man in the country. It really matters.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can we just talk to Will about Will's position?
You have
been given a very important job by David Cameron.
WILL HUTTON: Well, it is A job.
GEORGE NEGUS: You have become a political eunuch overnight or
something. I guess this is what I'm saying, everybody's values,
everybody's ideology has gone out the window.
WILL HUTTON: I've been asked to lead a fair pay review about
introducing a multiple of 20 to 1, top to bottom, in the public sector.
Why top people's pay in the public sector has run away….
GEORGE NEGUS: But why did they pick you?
WILL HUTTON: and, also embedded in that is what is the impact of the
private sector on public sector pay, I am a profound believer in
fairness as capitalism's indispensable value. I argue for this in my
book. When I am approached by either the Conservative Party to conduct
a review on something that I feel passionately about, what am I
supposed to do? What AM I supposed to do?
CLARE SHORT: He's not a politician!
WILL HUTTON: I'm going to sit in my tent and wait for an administration
that's going to and I felt I should step up to the plate and give it my
best shot. I may not pull it off, and I'm sure I will get lots of
brickbats, but, you know, I felt I should try to do it.
CLARE SHORT: Absolutely right, no question. The country has become too
unequal. Will has always stood against that. He is not a politician
from another party and he has been given the chance to maybe reduce
inequality. So he would be wrong to turn it down.
WILL HUTTON: I am glad you think that. I did sit up half the night
thinking about it, but that's where I ended up - I said, "I have got to
do this."
JACKIE ASHLEY: This bringing in all the outside talents is something
which Gordon Brown did. He brought in what they called G.O.A.T.S -
Governments Of All The Talents. And, one by one, under Gordon Brown,
the goats left because it all came to grief. Now, I wish Will well, and
I hope it doesn't come to grief, but, by and large, they tend to find
that the outsiders come in, do their report, spend a lot of time and
get a lot of publicity, and the government of the day listens to its
own party and says, "Thanks very much", on the shelf.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Because Gordon took no notice of them.
JACKIE
ASHLEY: Exactly. That's what I'm saying will happen to Will.
GEORGE NEGUS: It strikes me that, at the moment, what this
country has,
what Great Britain has, is not a government, but a mechanism that has
been concocted to enable the country to keep running. That's about it.
It's almost like you've managed to take politics out of politics.
JACKIE ASHLEY: That's why I say we should have another election before
too long because I don't think this is a coherent…. What
does it stand for, this government? It's not coherent.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Just a minute, we are having to learn something
new. In Australia, they're used to having coalition governments, which
work perfectly well.
GEORGE NEGUS: I don't know about perfectly well!
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: But, you know, as Will said, every party is a
coalition. That Labour government, '74 to '79, I was a special adviser
in it. I was with Roy Jenkins, we were a party within a party, we were
European and eventually we split. So there were lots and lots of
tensions within that government, but it still lasted. The Conservatives
again had the same thing under John Major. We are just having to get
used to a new thing where there are splits within a coalition that are
more open.
WILL HUTTON: For the public, it is out there in the open for all to see
it.
GEORGE NEGUS: So is it new politics - a new conservatism or is
it a new
form of chaos?
CLARE SHORT: No, I tell you what as well, in this current politics,
because of the 24-hours media, you get power sucked into the leader's
office, and you get very poor consideration of all the options. The
Cabinet doesn't work - the House of Commons became a rubber stamp. I
think now because it is an open coalition, as opposed to the coalition
that all parties are, there will be better consideration of options. I
think governance will work better.
WILL HUTTON: I think that is a very important point because the
intersection of 24/7 media with the prime minister in a first past the
post system - a party that has only got a minority of the vote -
behaves exactly as Clare has described it. You try and control the
media agenda, it becomes highly centralised, and what is going to
happen is that the secretaries of state in the various departments will
be very, very important. Vince Cable will be hugely important in
business, Christopher Huhne, who runs the environment department, will
become very important. Michael Gove, who is on the right, will become
very important as an education secretary because the temperament and
ideology of the secretary of state will really dictate that policy.
CLARE SHORT: And the cabinet will flush things out.
WILL HUTTON: I think it's going to be really, really interesting.
GEORGE NEGUS: It's close to running out of time. I would like
to put
this to you. This is an article last weekend in your old paper.
"Welcome to Britain in 2010, where money plus class equals power. The
establishment is back at the heart of government. "It is as if the last
100 years never happened." Now, that doesn't sound like progress to me.
JACKIE ASHLEY: Two of the top private schools, Eton and Westminster,
are both running the country now. In a country where we are worried
that social mobility is going backwards, not forwards.
CLARE SHORT: And the whole parliament has got more public school people
than before.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: It's not going to happen in a minute, but just
wait until we kick out - it's about 30 old Etonians in the House of
Lords on the hereditary list. Just look at when that changes - the
whole of the upper house is going to change.
GEORGE NEGUS: So what do you think they are thinking out there
- out
there, all over this country - not out there in London, because it is a
totally different planet, if you ask me, politically - out there, where
people are already disillusioned with politics. Generally in the West,
in our country and your country, they must be saying, "What is all of
this about?" There must wake up every morning and say, "What is
happening in my country? I won't be turning up for the next time I have
to vote."
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: They're not saying that at all.
WILL HUTTON: There has only been I think a couple of grammar-school
educated or state-educated prime ministers since 1945. Harold Wilson
was one and Edward Heath was another. I mean, the two most successful
post-war prime ministers, Clem Attlee on Labour's side, and Tony Blair,
were both educated at top private schools. Unfortunately, this is a
very, very, and remains, a very class-bound country. A lot of
Australians got on a boat because of it, and they were right to get on
a boat and go to Australia. It remains a very class-bound country and
that article actually points it out.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: On your question, people like it. Just talking
over the weekend to people the polls say people like the idea. Talking
to ordinary non-political people, I'm amazed how many people come up to
me and said, "Good luck to you - working together - give it a go." The
mood of most people is that they really want it to work and give it a
try, and that's where we are at the moment and, having had the awful
anti-politics feeling because of the expenses scandal, I think that has
been cleansed and people are saying this is something new that is worth
us having a shot at.
CLARE SHORT: People like the idea of parties working together. Whether
they'll like it in practice we will see in six months to a year.
GEORGE NEGUS: And, as I said, you appear to be taking parties
out of
politics as well. It becomes this melange of people with ideas about
how to run the country.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: There is an agreement. Give it a go, I think,
is the attitude.
GEORGE NEGUS: Let's go around the four of you, because we are
running
out of time. If we were sitting here in two years' time, would there
still be a….
JACKIE ASHLEY: Well, remember, in two years' time Labour will have
sorted itself out. Hopefully, they will have a new leader, presumably a
Miliband, Ed or David seem to be front-runners.
GEORGE NEGUS: They didn't get wiped away.
JACKIE ASHLEY: They will have sorted themselves out and this new funny
coalition will have had a very bad time with all the cuts. So, I think,
in two years' time Labour will be looking much stronger.
GEORGE NEGUS: If in two years' time we are talking, would
there be a
Liberal Conservative Coalition government, or whatever we are going to
call it, in two years' time, or three or five?
WILL HUTTON: There will be a Liberal Democrat Coalition Conservative
government in two years' time.
GEORGE NEGUS: Five?
WILL HUTTON: I don't think so. But the Liberal Democrats won't bail out
until they get the referendum on AV, and that's going to be two years
away, and the Conservatives are not going to want a bail-out while the
economy is still going through the impact of these very severe cuts
that Clare has talked about. I'll be very surprised if there is a
general election before three years.
CLARE SHORT: The government is going to become very unpopular, so I
think it's a good arrangement, but it is going to be very tough for
them and it gives New Labour a real chance to recreate itself but I
think it may take longer than a couple of years. I predict another
election in two or three years.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: I think we still will be there in two years'
time. I think we will have forced through a referendum to move to the
Australian voting system, which is absolutely brilliant for the
Commons, and we will be getting on with electing the House of Lords,
and I think there would be a lot of interest for all of us in sticking
together. And then there will be an election in five years' time when,
under the Australian voting system, we can compete vigorously with the
Conservatives.
GEORGE NEGUS: And this is what it's all about in the long-run.
The
voting system is what it is all about in the long-run.
LORD MATTHEW OAKESHOTT: Absolutely.
JACKIE ASHLEY: Unless they managed to fix it by, I think, this
undemocratic fix, I don't think it can last for more than a couple of
years. I think the Lib Dems are the party in the most danger because
they'll be seen to be swallowed up and I think a huge number of their
activists are very cross that they voted Clegg and got Cameron, and I
think Labour will regroup. So, I think in a couple of years' time the
political landscape will look very different.
GEORGE NEGUS: Thank you, and thank you to all of you, and I'm
really
pleased that we cleared that up!