................................................................................ ON THE RECORD CONSERVATIVE DISCUSSION RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE 16.1.94 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: So, Charles Clarke, first perhaps from your perspective. How do you think Labour, as an analyst - looking at it from that view - how do you think Mr. Major got into that mess over back to basics? CHARLES CLARKE: I think he got the whole thing the wrong way round. He achieved a slogan with no substance before he'd established the policies. What one ought to do is firstly, establish your policies and the uniting theme around them, based on a proper analysis of public opinion and political opinion. Having sorted out the policies, then establish the package, the presentation, the slogans and then, thirdly and finally, get out and make the case in Party Political broadcast speeches, advertisements and so on. I think they seemed to have pick the slogan "back to basics" without having any underpinning structure of policy and themes, and now they've got into the problem that's why they've come unstuck now. HUMPHRYS: John Maples, is that conceivable? I mean, do politicians and their strategists sit around like a group of ad writers from Saachi and Saachi, for instance, and say "Let's think of a good slogan, now. What can it be today? "Back to Basics" - that's it, we'll go with it". JOHN MAPLES: No. I think that at election time they go through the process that Charles Clarke has just described, of a considerable amount of research - seeing what the policies are, what defines those and unites those, and coming up with a slogan to use in advertisements - but between elections I don't think that's what you are about. What you're about is trying to get the Government right, trying to get the policies right, and I think what he was saying, if you actually look back to the speech, he'd talked about core values before he talked about back to basics, and talked about things like free trade and sound money, and teaching people, you know, the basic elements of education, respect for the law and being tough on crime. I mean, those were the things he talked about and I think actually those are the elements of policy which he ought to pursue and which do strike a chord with the public. Now whether or not back to basics turns into a happy or successful or catchy slogan or not I don't think really matters. I think what matters between elections, if you're in Government, is getting the policy right and what he was articulating was what he saw as the core of some of those policy areas where the Conservatives are, I think, sort of making the running. HUMPHRYS: Yes -- just a second Charles. Are you telling me that they don't actually sit around and think up slogans at all? That you don't have men and women sitting around with damp towels wrapped around their foreheads saying "Let's find a slogan"? MAPLES: Well, I think there's some thinking up of the sort of logos you see above Party Conference platforms and that sort of thing, but, no, I think it's it at elections that you really try to encapsulate your very complicated message into relatively simple slogans. I don't think that's what you're about between elections. HUMPHRYS: But you still don't you, I mean, you give briefings to journalists before big speeches and you say "maybe you ought to think about this, maybe this is what's going to be". MAPLES: That's I think what back to basics is. I mean what he's trying to describe here is, as I've said, free trade, tough on crime, you know, new policies on education. These sort of areas. And I think that back to basics does sum that up in a way, but I don't think it's really... I don't see it as being intended to be an all-enveloping slogan that describes what the Government's about. HUMPHRYS: Charles. CLARKE: John, what I feel is that John is absolutely right to describe the difference between elections and other times. But I think that what goes on between elections is only a less intense example of what takes place at election time. The lack of clarity I was talking about has meant all kinds of questions have been raised. Is personal morality part of the back to basics thing, individual morality or not? Is, for example, there to be a specific policy to try and penalise single mothers in relation to the Social Security budget in the Treasury? There's a whole series of different answers, different emphases have emerged from this campaign and because of a lack of precision in what the back to basics set of policies, themes actually were from the outset it's allowed both the Conservatives' opponents, in the Opposition, in the media and elsewhere to make hay, but also people within the Conservative Party who wish to emphasise different aspects of their own perception of back to basics, to make their own theme run and to pull it there, and it needed to be pulled together much more tightly than I think is being done. HUMPHRYS: But we're being sort of Monday morning quarterbacks here, aren't we? I mean, we're saying, look, it could have been done differently - I mean, they should have spotted all these coming up - but should they really? I mean, how differently would you have done it? CLARKE: Well, certainly Labour Party campaigns and strategies have had mistakes and errors in them over the time, but the mistakes and errors occur from not thinking through properly what is going to be the impact of what you do, and my belief is they didn't think through properly what back to basics was and how it would be, and how people would respond to it. HUMPHRYS: That is entirely possible, isn't it John Maples? MAPLES: Well, I think that the process of Government is much more complicated than the process of running a campaign and being in Opposition you're essentially running a permanent election campaign; if you're in Government you do it for about sort of six weeks before the election, and there are a whole series of areass where the Government is trying to find its way through very complicated areas. I think that all he was doing was reasserting where he started from in some of those policies - what the values were, the core values that he described, or back to basics, however he wanted to describe it and where he started from - I don't think it was intended to be a, as I say, an all-enveloping description of what the Government was about, and the fact that it let in debate at the moment on the private sexual morality of Members of Parliament, and I think that's an unfortunate accident - I don't think anybody could have predicted that happening - but it has, of course given the media a bit of a hook on which to hang this as a story, but I think that's a passing thing, that will go away. HUMPHRYS And it may be, Charles, may it not, that in a sense it's not going to cause enormous damage to the Government after all, because it will go away inevitably - it'll run out of Ministers who've done naughty things, for a start, presumably, and maybe what the Labour Party should be doing is saying "Look, let's not be distracted in a sense from this. Let's look at what our strategy presumably was and that is attack the Government over the economy, if that's wehat the strategy was". Was it? CLARKE: I think politically you and John are both right in saying that the immediate impact of these personal sex scandals and so on will go away. What I think won't go away is lack of clarity about what the whole back to basics theme means, unless that is specifically done by the Prime Minister and put into shape, and what I think that Labour needs to be doing, in addition to what it's already doing, is pressing the Government very, very hard about what the policies - not the personality aspects - the policies of back to basics ... (break in tape) ... and how they're in fact going to put them into effect in education, law and order, all the areas which some Conservative Ministers are now mentioning. That's the area for an increased offensive in my opinion now - to put more pressure on the Conservatives on back to basics. HUMPHRYS: And looking at it now, as we look back - I'm saying look back at it, we may be in the beginning of it, we may be in the middle of it now, John Maples - do you say to yourself, as a Tory strategist, "Yes, it actually was a mistake. Wish we'd done it differently". MAPLES: Well, I think that if somebody had known that around Christmas a whole series of scandals of one sort or another - relatively petty things, but to do with people's private sexual morality - were going to break, then they would have been much more cautious about taking back to basics into the area of family policy and single mothers. It wasn't the Prime Minister who did that, and actually the speeches that were made by Ministers about single mothers at Party Conference were made before the Prime Minister coined the phrase "back to basics". But I think what is interesting is that.. where we're talking about back to core values in these policies - education, the economy, sound money, free trade, housing and those sort of things - these actually are the areas of political debate at the moment. They are the areas in which there is a very clear distinction I think between the Government and the Opposition over which way policy should go, and I think that what they are doing is drawing attention to that. I think that he's right to continue to pursue the sort of policy development and changes that are taking place in those areas, and I do think that that is responding to something that the public want. HUMPHRYS: And maybe to that extent, Charles, we're going to be dancing to their tune if you go along with the back to basics now? If you keep it going in the way you've described. CLARKE: While back to basics is defined in terms of issues like law and order and education, Labour not only has no alternative but will wish to put the focus on the Government policies in that area. Tony Blair, for example, has been very, very keen to press in the whole law and order theme the Labour version of, as it were, back to basics, tough on the cause of crime as well as tough on crime itself. Education in the same way. And I think Labour will welcome the idea of serious debates about what are basic values in these fields and what the basic policy should be put in place. ................................................................................ ON THE RECORD LABOUR DISCUSSION RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE 16.1.94 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPRHYS: Charles, let's look at tax first. You're always, the Labour Party's always going to have problems with tax during an election campaign isn't it, so is the strategy now effectively to say, "actually you can't trust either party on tax, or let's try and negate the whole thing"? CLARKE: I think there are three things that Labour has wanted to do on tax, first make sure that it's understood that it is the Tories who are the tax-raising party, that's what that advertisement's about, that's what they've been trying to do right through the last year, I think with some success. Secondly, they have to convince people that paying taxes goes to improved services. Many people now believe that if you pay taxes it just goes into a bottomless pit of no value to them, and that's why I think Gordon Brown has launched at the beginning of this year his approach to raising, to hypothecating taxes, that's making taxes more related to particular services, to unifying tax and benefits for pensioners and so on, and I think you'll see over the year policies beginning to emerge which make the link directly between paying taxes and improved services, and finally I think they have to convince people that Labour can be trusted to run efficient public services, and that still remains a core Labour problem which runs - it doesn't just affect Gordon Brown, but the whole of the Labour front bench team. HUMPHRYS: Makes sense to you John Maples. Would you be doing much the same if you were - ? JOHN MAPLES: No, I mean I think that they have got a very serious difficulty here, because I know that the Labour Party during Neil Kinnock's leadership abandoned a lot of those traditional left-wing policies, not all of them, but quite a lot, nuclear disarmament, nationalisation, that sort of thing, and to a considerable degree state interference in the economy, but the thing that they very clearly stood for and I think still stand for is spending more money on public services, health, education, social security, whatever it is. HUMPHRYS: So are you supposed to. MAPLES: Yes, but I think this is the difference. I mean you know, we seem to have settled down at somewhere around forty per cent of the gross national product being spent on public services one way and another. The Labour Party's always telling us we ought to be spending more, always telling the public that they would spend more, and that's a very clear position. It's a perfectly respectable one, I don't disagree with it, but it's a respectable one and one can argue relatively easily, but it's got to be paid for, and I think that wherever the Conservatives are at the next election in terms of taxes, they will always be able to say that the Labour party are saying we should spend more on all these things. The only way they can pay for it is by raising taxes. I think this is one of those issues, that while it is not as easy for us now as it was a few years ago, because we've had to put up taxes this year, I think it's always going to be one of our issues and difficult for them. HUMPHRYS: But what Charles is saying you're saying might make sense electorally? Purely as a strategist, forget the fact that you're a Tory as well, if you can. MAPLES: I think it's very difficult for them to escape from it. I mean I think this is one of the defining differences between the parties. I mean there are some big differences and this is one of them. The whole area of how much of our national resources should be spent on public services. I mean I think there are other ones, and it's interesting that in your film you talk about the European elections. I mean I think there are very clear differences now between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party over what kind of europe they want, what they think its powers ought to be, and I think that we will clearly try to make the European elections about that, but mid-term elections as have by-elections become a sort of popularity poll on the governement of the day and inevitably they always do badly, because there are things that the public are unhappy about, they know they're not going to have to change the government and they've sort of essentially got a free vote. But I think the European elections are about much more than that, and if we can succeed in persuading people that here there is a real difference and I think from our point of view a rather dangerous difference, that you know what the Labour Party wants out of Europe is a much more federal Europe, you know the Social Chapter is to do with telling us how we regulate our working lives and much more how we regulate the economy. I don't think that's what people want and I think that we will try to show that there is a real difference there between the parties. HUMPHRYS: You're shaking you head there Charles? CLARKE: Just on the point of Social chapter John. All the opinion polling indicates that the British people want to share the benefits of the Social Chapter that are experienced elsewhere in Europe. I think Labour would be very happy to fight on that case, but if - sorry ..... HUMPHRYS: You say Labour would be very happy to fight on that case because that is what the opinion polls show. Let me take a slightly broader and deeply cynical look at this, and say, is that what you're actually about you strategists? Do you say, this is what the people want. We will find a way of selling that to them, or indeed giving that to them, because you don't have to sell it to them if they clearly want it, or do you say, gentlemen I have principles, folks I have principles. Are you going to find a way of selling - I mean what is a strategist for? CLARKE: What a strategist does is firstly say: what are the principles that the party you're advising wishes to put into practice. Secondly what is the state of public opinion and political opinion on those issues, thirdly what policies and what objectives do you therefore have within that context? HUMPHRYS: So you'll trim you principles if you think you can't quite sell the whole thing to the electorate? CLARKE: I think that all political parties that seek to operate in the modern world will take account of modern pulbic opinion before putting forward what their final policy proposal is. For example it would be ludicrous for the Labour Party to put forward the policies on which we won in 1945 to win in 1996, and it won't do it. HUMPHRYS: What about the leader of the Conservative Party at the next election now. It was said during the last one that you were terribly glad that -- you were divided in one election, you were divided about whether you wanted Mrs Thatcher to stay in power because somebody else would be more difficult to beat. Is that your view this time? CLARKE: My view is that John .... HUMPHRYS: In relation to John Major of course. CLARKE: Of course. My view is that John Major cannot win the next general election for the Conservatives, without some unimaginable transformation of his personal leadership qualities. I think that will become increasingly clear over the current year through the local elections and through the European elections and will lead Conservatives who want to win the next election to say we've got the change our leader in order to win the next election. HUMPHRYS: If, John Maples, a strategist came to that conclusion as well, and again I ask you if you can just step aside from your party for a moment and think of yourself as a strategist, if they came to that conclusion as well, would they actually say,"Look, you'd better think about changing the leader in time for the next election". Is that the role of the strategist? MAPLES: Well, the Conservative Party when it's in government doesn't use strategists like that, I mean the strategy is made by the cabinet ministers and by the Prime Minister, and so I don't think sort of questions like that really arise. I think that politicians do have principles. They go into politics because they believe in particular things that they want to pursue. Now clearly there are different degrees to which you can pursue something, whether you emphasise it or not is a question of timing, you can't do everything at once for a start; but I don't think it really is as cynical an exercise as you are suggesting, that what you do is go out and find out what the public wants and offer to give it to them. I think there are certainly things - you've obviously got to take account of public opinion in what you emphasise or when you try to do something you know is going to be difficult, but if for instance the conclusion that one came to is that the public wants an extra five per cent of our national income spent on public services and the taxes to pay for it, my view would be let them have it from a Labour government, because they'll get tired of it very soon. HUMPHRYS: Okay. Charles, a very quick final thought. If you really think that John Major cannot win you should actually go easy on him now as a Labour Party shouldn't you, so that they'd keep him there? CLARKE: I don't think there's any way that an opposition can play that kind of game. That decision is for the Conservative members of parliament and my actual view is that they should do what John Smith did this morning, and put maximum pressure on John Major, I think that's the right approach. HUMPHRYS: Gentlemen, thank you both very much.