Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 8 October, 2006 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Boulton:          I suspect stampeding towards the centre ground, I mean, you wish the party never left it really?

 

Major:            Well I don’t think it should have left it, I tried to get it back to the centre ground in the nineties more than it had been in the eighties.  We certainly left it in the eighties and at that time there was a Labour party that was unelectable so it was safe to move to the right.

 

Boulton:          And right do you think?

 

Major:            I think for the 1980’s it probably was right.  I think there were things that needed doing but once those things had been done the fact of the matter is you need to be in the centre ground of politics to carry people with you and to win elections and of course that is where the majority of people are.  It is necessary to make sure a political party doesn’t become divorced from those people and I think we did and I think David Cameron is entirely right to move back in that direction.

 

Boulton:          I remember you used to get very angry about the health service saying how you used it all your life, how the Conservatives had been in charge for at least half it’s lifetime so how could they be accused of not backing the N.H.S. and yet opinion polls then always used to show that this was predominantly a Labour issue.  Now, we have got an opinion poll today actually saying that people trust the Tories on it more.  What has changed do you think?

 

Major:            We have had nine years of Labour in government is what has changed.  I mean, here is a government that has had a huge majority, it inherited the best economy of any incoming government for fifty years or more -

 

Boulton:          - And it has maintained growth.

 

Major:            It’s maintained growth, it has also lost competitiveness, lost productivity, product taxes and generally introduced so many regulations that business feels absolutely hidebound.  I don’t think many of the economic indicators are as good as they were in 1997 but the difference is people have now seen the Labour government in operation and it is pretty difficult to argue that for all the extra money that has gone into the health service that the health service has improved correspondingly.  Many people would say that it hasn’t improved at all since 1997 despite huge sums of money so I think it is not surprising that people don’t trust Labour on public services.  I mean, just look at the last couple of days; you had someone suggesting 160 failing schools should be closed, I saw a march in my own constituency yesterday protesting against the proposed closure of a hospital in one of the fastest growing areas of the country, people are talking about bin collections once a fortnight rather than once a day.  Now, this is a massive failure of social policy for a government with a huge majority that has had a benign economy and has taxed more heavily allegedly to improve public services yet there’s no improvement.

 

Boulton:          David Cameron is saying he may well continue to tax this heavily as Tony Blair has done.

 

Major:            That is not what he said actually.  If you look back -

 

Boulton:          - Well he said he wouldn’t guarantee to cut taxes so they will stay where they are.

 

Major:            I think he is probably wise in saying that.  Margaret Thatcher when she first came in you may remember put up taxes, they went up at first and then they went down.  I think there is scope for tax reduction, I do think there is scope for tax reduction but I think it is very wise not to promise tax reduction until you are certain the scope is there.

 

Boulton:          George Osborne made the point that for the first time since Black Wednesday 1992 he felt that people were prepared to listen to the Conservative party on the economy again.  Do you think Black Wednesday had that catastrophic an effect?

 

Major:            Well, I have always found this rather curious, this is a very fashionable media view that Black Wednesday had this long -

 

Boulton:          - Well if you look at the polls  -

 

Major:            - You might also look at reality.  Sometimes there is a distinction between the polls and the reality.  It is said the Conservative’s lost their reputation for economic competence on Black Wednesday though as I recall the Labour party and the Liberal party were equally in favour if not more so of the Exchange Rate Mechanism but I push that aside.  Let us say they did lose it.  Everybody says a) they lost their reputation for competence in 1992 but b) nobody disputes the fact that in 1997 we handed on the best economy that anyone had seen for years.  Now, there’s a disconnection between those two facts.  We have lost our reputation in people’s minds, we didn’t lose our capability to put the economy right because patently we did put it right and I think it is time everybody started recognising the reality rather than sticking to the old myth.

 

Boulton:          So are you offended by George Osborne making that point this week?

 

Major:            No, I think George is following what many people have said.  I am not concerned about the past, that has gone, what matters is today and tomorrow but the reality is by 1997the economy was in good shape, Gordon Brown inherited a good economy- in fact when told so by his treasury officials he didn’t wish to know how good it was you may recall.

 

Boulton:          Is the party therefore right to say well, the lesson of that therefore is we’ll never join another ERM, we’ll never so long as the Conservative’s are in power join the Euro.  Is that the right response?

 

Major:            I don’t think I would join the Euro.  You may recall that I was the Prime Minister that negotiated the opt out to the Euro and there was always a possibility that the Euro would be a great success and it might be in our economic interest to join, that was always what I said.  But, it hasn’t been, I don’t think it is in our economic interest to join and I personally wouldn’t join.  You can’t say never, who knows what’s going to happen but I cannot myself foresee the circumstances in which I would wish to rejoin an ERM or the Euro currency.

 

Boulton:          You follow these things closely, do you know what David Cameron’s European policy is?

 

Major:            I think David Cameron’s European policy is to make sure we don’t sink too far into centralism and that in certain specified areas we perhaps try and reclaim a bit of responsibility back from Brussels to the United Kingdom.  I think that is his European policy but he must speak for that, not me, I am not longer in parliament.

 

Boulton:          What do you say to your old colleagues, Norman Tebbit one thinks of and Edward Leigh another, who are worried the party is going to start losing supporters to the U.K. Independence Party in particular and possibly even the B.N.P.?

 

Major:            Well I think if we were to lost any supporters in that direction I think we will gain ten from the other direction, from the centre.  The fact is that unless David Cameron pushes the right wing away - if you go back and look at what Tony Blair did in the nineties I think he was right.  He destroyed the left wing of the Labour party, it no longer became relevant.  Well, we have to make sure that the right wing of the Tory party doesn’t have the whole party dancing to its tune.  I mean, how many elections do they wish to lose by moving to the right?  The fact of the matter is the right wing is not in tune with the majority of people in the United Kingdom these days, they are still singing songs from the 1980’s and they are out of date and out of touch.

 

Boulton:          Is that Norman Tebbit and the rest?

 

Major:            I’m not dealing with personalities, I am dealing with the right wing as an entity.  I think if the right wing were to win their battle with David Cameron then the Conservative party will lose.  If David Cameron wins his battle with the right wing then I think he will win the election and become Prime Minister.

 

Boulton:          At the moment you think he’s winning so you would guess the next election will mean a Conservative government?

 

Major:            I think at the moment the attacks on David Cameron from the right actually help him in showing people that he is re-branding the party and bringing the party closer to the mainstream of British thought at the centre of politics, the centre of politics is a vague term but we know what it means, but bringing the Conservative party closer to the way people think.

 

Boulton:          Do you think it will be Cameron versus Brown?

 

Major:            I don’t know to be frank.  I have never been absolutely certain that it would be Gordon Brown who succeeded Tony Blair.  There have been lots of instances of heirs apparent who didn’t make it in the Labour party too, one thinks of Denis Healy, one thinks of Ray Jenkins.  And so it looks overwhelming as though it will be Gordon Brown, I can see that, but I am not absolutely convinced that it will be.

 

Boulton:          I appreciate that this may not altogether be friendly advice but what would be your advice to Tony Blair about his departure date?  Stay until next summer or go soon?

 

Major:            I don’t mean this unkindly but I was Prime Minister for seven years and I know when I left how mentally and physically tired I was.  I sometimes look at Tony Blair on television and I know how he is feeling, I know behind his eyes how tired mentally and physically he really is.  I actually think it is in his interest to go earlier rather than later but he would regard that as unfriendly advice and I wouldn’t have gratuitously offered it but since you invited me that would be my advice.

 

Boulton:          Let’s move on to Mr. Blair’s legacy because clearly we are now in the final year of his Prime Ministership whenever he goes, what will he be remembered for in your view?

 

Major:            Well, I think there are pluses and there are minuses.  I think on the pluses the destruction of the left wing of his party was very much to the benefit of British politics as a whole, I think that is a big tick in the credit ledger for Tony Blair.  I think the way he picked up the Northern Ireland peace process; we were well on the way to peace but he picked it up and carried it forward.  I think although it has been a question of two steps forward and one step back which was always inevitable, he is there now it think.  There will be minor things to be done but I think that is another very big tick in his ledger.  Where I think the negatives are are in the conduct of government.  I don’t like and never did like the spin culture that emerged.   Every politician since the dawn of time has put a gloss but there is a difference between a gloss and a complete re-spray making something seem absolutely the opposite to what it is.  I think that and the politicisation of the civil service is a big negative.  I also the think the huge extra taxes with no improvement in British services is a big negative and of course we have had two wars now.  One for which there were two justifications, one of which has turned out to be totally false and the second one which may be a noble objective but looks as though it has been very poorly planned and both of those will continue long after Tony Blair has left.

 

Boulton:          You’re talking about Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Major:            I am.

 

Boulton:          I suspect if it had been a Tory government at the time of 2001 that for certain Britain would have gone to war alongside the Americans in Afghanistan.

 

Major:            That may well be so but I am absolutely certain that if it were a Tory government we would have done what we did when I was Prime Minster and we went to war in the Gulf last time.  We would have had a clear cut strategy for what happened at the end of the fighting and we would have had an exit strategy for the conclusion of the war and the peace.  There patently was not an exit strategy, is not an exit strategy and there plainly was absolutely no plan for what to do in Iraq once the fighting had ended.  It was always evident that the fighting would be short and that the overwhelming power of America and Britain would win so where were the plans thereafter?  There were none.  And I also think if we had gone to war -There were two justifications for going to war, the first rather flimsy one was that Saddam Hussein had not obeyed UN resolutions, he hadn’t of course, he had flouted a lot of them, seventeen or so, but so hade other countries with whom we have not gone to war.  The second one very heavily played on by the government was weapons of mass destruction which has now turned out to be totally and completely wrong.  Now I think we would have been a good deal more careful about that.

 

Boulton:          Would you therefore hope that David Cameron will adopt a policy of saying we will withdraw the troops from Iraq -

 

Major:            No, no, no.  We are where we are and we have a responsibility, you can’t just scuttle out of Iraq now.  We are there and we have to stay there until we can produce something better but I think it is going to be a long time, I think it is going to be very difficult and I think it will leave a scar on Britain’s reputation and foreign policy for quite a few years to come.  I did, at the time, support going in and I supported going in on the grounds that I accepted what the Prime Minister said which turned out to be wrong and of course I knew from my own experience that they had had weapons of mass destruction ten years earlier.

 

Boulton:          What shall we do about Afghanistan?

 

Major:            Well again it is not a question so much of what shall we do, we are where we are and we have to stay there now - 

 

Boulton:          - With this level of troops?

 

Major:            No, no, no absolutely not.  When we went into Afghanistan I can’t remember the exact words but John Reid, the then Defence Secretary, gave the impression this wouldn’t be a fighting war -  

 

Boulton:          - He said he hoped a shot wouldn’t be fired.

 

Major:            He hoped a shot wouldn’t be fired.  We now have Des Browne saying we may have underestimated the Taliban, we have Tony Blair saying we didn’t underestimate it.  Well if we didn’t underestimate it why are we now in a full scale fighting war?  I would dearly love to know before they committed themselves to that what advice they took, what plans they made, what provisions there were for the army and what the exit strategy was.

 

Boulton:          Well, again, we are where we are.  What now?

 

Major:            Patently the troops are ill supplied.  I said months a go and repeat now; they need more helicopters, they need more armour by which I mean both body armour and armoured vehicles rather than soft top vehicles, above all they cannot stay there with five and a half thousand troops and complete the mission that now seems to be theirs. Though the mission is uncertain, I am not sure whether you know exactly what it is.  Is it to peace-keep?  Is it to nation-build?  Is it to destroy the poppy crop?  Is it to destroy the Taliban? -

 

Boulton:          - I have to admit I have been told different things at different times.

 

Major:            Of course you have.  We have been told all of those things and that is to be done by five and a half thousand troops.  When Tony Blair spoke of education, education, education he must have forgotten history.  He forgot the Afghan wars in the last century and more relevantly he forgot 120,000 Russian troops there for fifteen years up until 1990 badly beaten.

 

Boulton:          Well that sounds like accounts of despair, it sounds like you’re saying get out.

 

Major:            No, it isn’t accounts of despair, it is saying that to expect our troops to achieve the mission they appear to have been set with the modest number of five thousand or so troops they’ve got there and the ill equipment that they presently have is patently absurd.  They need more troops, they need more helicopters, they need more armour and they need some of the other NATO countries actually going down to Helmand Province which they are very reluctant to do.  The mission cannot be achieved there with the handful of troops that are there and it is not fair to the young men, basically very young men who are there as troops to leave them there in their present situation with their present task without better equipment and more help.

 

Boulton:          Couple of quick questions.  You made it clear you didn’t want to be in the House of Lords.  Never?

 

Major:            Who says never but I think probably not?

 

Boulton:          Would your advice to Tony Blair when he does go to be to follow your advice and largely drop out of politics and concentrate on other things?

 

Major:            No, I don’t necessarily think he should do that, I think it is very much a personal choice.  If he wishes to go to the House of Lords and make a contribution from there I think it would be entirely proper for him to do so, I wouldn’t urge him not to.  I think this is very much an individual choice.

 

Boulton:          You’d probably be happier if he avoids politics?

 

Major:            No, I am indifferent to what he does, I think he must make a choice that is right for him and his family.

 

Boulton:          And finally, it’s a relatively trivial matter but this whole argument of the veils which has occupied people, would you have asked people who come into your surgery to take off veils?

 

Major:            No I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t.  I understand why Jack Straw said what he did and there’s nothing anti-Muslim about Jack Straw and I think people who allege that are just plainly wrong but I certainly wouldn’t have asked people to do that.  It is a matter of personal faith for them I think I would have left that well alone.