CLAIRE SHORT INTERVIEW - Wednesday 16th May, 2007
GEORGE NEGUS: Ms Short, when you resigned from Tony Blair's
Cabinet you described him as being dictatorial and having weakened
British democracy. Now that he has ridden off into the proverbial
political sunset, do you think Britain is better off or worse off
without him?
CLAIRE SHORT, BLAIR CRITIC: First thing he hasn't ridden off
yet. I
mean this announcement has been trailed and trailed and of course he is
not going until after the G8 and the EU summit so we have got another
month or so of this. I think he is a tragedy actually. I think he wants
to be liked. He is terribly good at presentation but he is so kind of
fundamentally insecure that he hasn't allowed proper constitutional
arrangements to work. The Cabinet doesn't work, the Civil Service are
pushed out. He has some clever appointees around him and he makes
policy by announcing things to the media and that means mistakes are
made, policy isn't thought through, endless reorganisation of
everything, the public services are very demoralised and the terrible
enormous tragedy of Iraq and the Middle East.
GEORGE NEGUS: When he came to power in 1997 he was the knight
in new
shining political armour, we heard a lot about the Third Way in
politics. What went wrong? You are describing Tony Blair as you see him
now but you worked with him for a long while. He persuaded a lot of
people that he knew what he was doing.
CLAIRE SHORT: Firstly in '97, it was the Tories were tired and
Labour
was winning. John Smith would have won in '97. Tony had an extra sort
of presentational flair and he was young and had a young family and
probably added some more votes. But it isn't true that he kind of
created Labour's victory, it was coming anyway. First term Tony Blair
did terribly good presentation but on minimum wage, devolution for
Scotland and Wales..
GEORGE NEGUS: He wasn't all bad?
CLAIRE SHORT: Of course not. I don't think any government is
ever all
bad unless you are thinking of the revolting dictatorships. I mean,
even Mrs Thatcher, with this distance, some of us can see that it
wasn't all bad. He was following Labour policy. By the second term he
was very much He started to get into this quest for legacy, wanted to
leave some impression behind him, didn't want be known just as the man
who was great at spin and focus groups. And then of course he got
involved with Bush and the consequences of September 11 and lost his
judgment on the wisest way of dealing with the problem of Osama bin
Laden and so on and lost it really.
GEORGE NEGUS: Do think his problem - I mean, you're sounding a
bit like
his psychiatrist rather than a former political colleague. Do you think
his problems were political or personal, behavioural?
CLAIRE SHORT: I think that - and this is I mean he has
repeatedly
talked about what is his legacy in all the briefing from Number 10. He
started wanting to leave some big legacy behind him - that he got this
record of being elected so often. And instead just seeing the legacy as
the record of everything you do when you're in power, he was looking
for sort of big gestures.
GEORGE NEGUS: If I can interrupt you there, the biggest legacy
that he
seems to have left is Iraq and that's hardly a positive.
CLAIRE SHORT: Absolutely. No, absolutely, that is it. After
September
11, 2001, the attack on the Twin Towers, he wanted to be shoulder to
shoulder with Bush. I think most people agreed that in the going into
Afghanistan I think the errors there came later. But then on Iraq he
obviously - we now know from the leaks - gave his word to Bush very
early on, said very different things to his cabinet and parliament. We
now know there was a lot of deceit in it.
GEORGE NEGUS: Do you believe the he lied to the British people?
CLAIRE SHORT: I don't think there is any question about that,
it is a
matter of record. We now know from the Downing Street memo that leaked
that he knew early on that Bush was determined to go, that he had given
his word to go with him when he was saying to Parliament, "No, we will
go only through UN and we hope to avoid war, and if Saddam Hussein
would give up his WMDs, there needn't be a conflict." There is no doubt
there was deceit. I think he probably thought it was in the interests
of Britain and the world to get to war and a bit of deceit on the way
didn't matter. But most people in Britain - high 60% - think they were
lied to and that the war, the Iraq war was a desperate mistake.
GEORGE NEGUS: So when you saw him the other day heart on
hand... or
hand on heart, he said really believed that he was doing the right
thing. How did you react to that? Did you believe him that time?
CLAIRE SHORT: I still think he thinks he did the right thing.
And I
mean, we do, don't we? That's what I said. I think he thought a bit of
deceit was necessary to get us to war with Bush and that was the right
thing to do. As one of the commentators said, Hitler thought he was
doing the right thing, Mussolini thought he was doing the right thing.
That isn't the point. We all have our opinions.
GEORGE NEGUS: He wouldn't be too thrilled to hear you
comparing him to
Hitler and Mussolini.
CLAIRE SHORT: I'm not comparing him, I'm making the logical
point that
there has been lots of monstrous politicians who have been convinced
they were doing the right thing. That is not the only test. The test is
- yes, we've all got our views and convictions but then you need to sit
down with colleagues who bring in a different range of expertise and
thrash out the options and make sure things are thought through and
that you've got it right. And that is the bit that Tony is very bad at
and that's why..
GEORGE NEGUS: Sorry, you supported the invasion of Iraq when
he first
took Britain into Iraq, and then you resigned over that very issue. I
mean, that is a bit of a somersault from you, isn't it?
CLARE SHORT: Well, I supported us proceeding through the UN
and I had
said on the radio that if we didn't do that, I was going to leave the
government. And then Tony Blair engaged in a negotiation with me,
saying what would it take for me to stay. I said, "You should have gone
through the UN. We should have moved on peace on Israel, Palestine
first. And if there is to be military action in Iraq there should be an
absolute guarantee that is a UN lead and internationalised
reconstruction in the interests of the people of Iraq." And to keep it
short, he absolutely….. Well, he got President Bush to
declare his support to the road map, which should have led to the
establishment of the Palestinian state by the end of 2005, and an
absolute promise there would be a UN lead on reconstruction. And on
that basis I agreed to stay. And then those promises were broken.
GEORGE NEGUS: No doubt we could talk a lot more about that.
Can we move
on to Gordon Brown because we're looking at a Gordon Brown.. It appears
to be almost a certainty for him to replace Tony Blair. You said about
the time you resigned, "I am profoundly ashamed of the government. The
Labour Party has lost its way." You believe that Gordon Brown, from
your point of view, can rescue the Labour Party or is it just going to
be Brownism as a follow-on from Blairism, there will be no difference
between the two?
CLARE SHORT: This is the big question because of course Gordon
has been
close to Tony. They've fallen in-and-out but he's been sort of The two
of them have led the government for this 10 years and all the economic
policy and lots of the public sector reform has been driven by Gordon
Brown. So he can't say, "I'm a totally different creature to Blair." On
the other hand he is much brighter than Blair, he's much better read
than Blair, he does detail in a way that that Blair doesn't do.
GEORGE NEGUS: A bit boring? Hardly personality-plus.
CLAIRE SHORT: He is less of a presentational man. He is not
boring as
an individual to spend time with but he is not so good at presentation
and charm. He knows intellectually I mean, Labour is not popular - we
only got 27% in the recent local elections in Scotland and Wales as
against the Tories' 40%. Gordon knows he needs to give a fresh new
impetus to the government. And that is the big question - will he be
business as usual, can't escape from the old practices, or can he come
with something fresh that makes the country think, "Ah, we have got a
new government, it's not the same old stuff, I will trust..." He will
get a couple of years as prime minister, the question is whether he can
win the subsequent election.
GEORGE NEGUS: Ms Short, thanks very much for your time.
Absolutely
fascinating talking to you. Thanks again,
CLAIRE SHORT: Cheers. Bye-bye.