TRANSCRIPT
Charles Kennedy - Liberal Democrat Party Leader
and John Humphrys
John Humphrys
It's twenty years since David Steel, who was then the leader of the Liberal Party, told his conference 'go back to your constituencies & prepare for Government' - a grand ambition, and a failed one. This time Charles Kennedy the newish leader of the Liberal Democrats has scaled down his ambitions, he has accepted that his party is not going to form the next Government. Realistic you might say, but then it raises a big question. Charles Kennedy is in our Westminster studio now for the second of our leader interviews. Good morning Mr Kennedy.
Charles Kennedy
John, a very good morning to you.
John Humphrys
You told me on On the Record back in October of last year 'we can win under the existing system' and yet last week, Liberal Democrat news said, our key objectives are to win more seats than in '97, to win more votes….what happened? When did you decide to throw in the towel.
Charles Kennedy
Well, I don't think that's quite my frame of mind at the moment. Presumably with the opinion poles moving in the right direction as we speak. No I think what I had also said is that we can win under the existing system, there's no doubt about that. This is such a roulette wheel the first past the post voting system - anything can happen. But equally, I've been at pains to stress, since I became leader, that I'm not going to make unrealistic claims. I'm not going to say things unless I actually believe them because people like you - quite rightly, professionally, and people listening to our discussion this morning, personally - will not believe them either. So, theoretically, we can win under the existing system; and who knows what will happen in the next three weeks, particularly with the way the Conservatives seem to be disentangling themselves before our eyes; but I do think that we are on course to win more votes across the country and win a bigger share of seats in the next House of Commons.
John Humphrys
Well, you might do that if you get a lot of tactical voting. Are you a colluding, or perhaps I can use a less pejorative, co-operating in any way with Labour, behind the scenes as it were, to promote tactical voting?
Charles Kennedy
The answer to that is no. And what I view in terms of tactical voting really is two fold, I neither condemn it nor condone it because at the end of the day people will do what they want to do with the privilege of their ballot in the privacy of the polling booth. But what tactical voting actually does raise is the corruption which is the first past the post system. If you like, it's a form of DIY PR as Dick Newby, who's Lord Newby, who's one of our principle players on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, has coined the latest acronym of this general election. People know that if they can't get their first preference then they will use their vote to at least try and stop something that would be, an even, a third preference and the sooner we go towards a fairer voting system so that we don't have this sort of thing happening the better it is.
John Humphrys
...but you see we were told that there was no collusion last time then we discovered reading the Ashdown, Paddy Ashdown the former leader's diaries, that that wasn't true…
Charles Kennedy
...I'm not keeping a diary...
John Humphrys
...sorry...
Charles Kennedy
Can I make it quite clear to all involved that I'm not keeping a diary…
John Humphrys
...no, you're not keeping a diary. Well that will be good news to many people in years to come, I'll bet!..what he said…here's one of the reasons why, what he said was that the Liberal Democrats secretly gave Labour a list of around seventy target seats so the two parties could prioritise efforts in different constituencies. This was actually handed over to Labour by Chris Rennard, now Lord Rennard who I think is still your party's Director of Campaigning isn't he?
Charles Kennedy
He is indeed, yes.
John Humphrys
And was that right then? And if it was right then, is it right now?
Charles Kennedy
Well, certainly we doubled our number of seats and Labour won the election with a landslide majority so...
John Humphrys
...so it's the right thing to do?
Charles Kennedy
...I suppose if you are looking at it in purely, party..maximising party advantage terms, then it was the right thing to do.
John Humphrys
So why is it not the right thing to do now?
Charles Kennedy
Well, it was in a very different context. You were at the end of eighteen years of single party government, there was an air of dishevelment about the Conservatives for all the well retailed reasons that we don't need to revisit here and so on. I think that we're in a very different position now. What I find interesting...
John Humphrys
...why?
Charles Kennedy
Well, for this reason; if you look at the campaigns of the three parties then you will see that each party, in it's literature at local level, as well as the energies and activities of the three party leaders, is quite rightly, in each case is focusing on those seats and those areas where it can maximise the electoral advantage for the party involved. And therefore all of us are having to concentrate on either seats that we're defending or we want to maintain in the next Parliament or seats that we want to win. There's no great rocket science to this, you can just tell it by following the geographic activities of the three party leaders.
John Humphrys
What's, if you are going into this election not to win it, as you acknowledged your objective is to win more seats, what's the…
Charles Kennedy
...that's not quite how I choose to put it...
John Humphrys
...well, the Liberal Democrats News- unless you'd like to disown your party newspaper - the Liberal Democrats News - 'our key objectives as a party' I repeat 'are to win more seats than in 1997', not our key objective is to win this election, 'is to win more seats'. So if that is the case people are entitled to say 'well look, what we're doing is voting for a kind of pressure group' alright, an important pressure group, maybe quite a few seats in the House of Commons, but why should we bother to do that, why should we bother to vote for a party who's objective is to try and win a few more seats so we can put a bit of pressure on the government - might as well vote for the party that's going to be in power.
Charles Kennedy
For two reasons, first of all I think there's a growing air of disillusion about both the Labour Party and the Tory Party as this election unfolds. And I think people are responding to a party that's telling it to them straight as it is, and that's important in politics because so many people...
John Humphrys
...well, straight up to a point
Charles Kennedy
With so many people turning away from politics, with so many commentators on the Today programme and everywhere else, saying we're going to have a low turn-out, people are not going to engage in this election, well I think that a party that is seeking to engage people in the political process, that on principle is important. Because the other thing is this, in sheer policy terms, let's just look back to the last election, the only party manifesto, for example, that had.
John Humphrys
Bank of England?
Charles Kennedy
Bank of England, an independence, operational independence for the Bank of England, a huge policy issue which really influences just about everything else in the country. The only manifesto it appeared in - the Liberal Democrat manifesto. Now if we had not been there putting that idea forward, there would not have been the credence or the credibility for that to be developed for what has become a central part of the economy of the country.
John Humphrys
Well, that of course is something we will never know, but you couldn't make it happen. You could merely put it in your manifesto. Maybe others pick it up, but that's what pressure groups do all the time.
Charles Kennedy
A) You can influence the climate of ideas…
John Humphrys
Which pressure groups do.
Charles Kennedy
Yes, and B) Look at the devolved structures that have developed within the United Kingdom...
John Humphrys
...alright...
Charles Kennedy
Student tuition fees, right? If we had not nailed our flag to the mast in Scotland, then Labour in Scotland would have toed the line of Labour at Westminster...
John Humphrys
...but look...
Charles Kennedy
...which means that they would have imposed tuition fees, as opposed to which what we've got is the abolition of tuition fees...
John Humphrys
...Yeah, let's just...
Charles Kennedy
...so they do make a difference.
John Humphrys
Let's just look, a quick look, at this notion that you are more honest than the other lot. All the statements in your manifesto are based on UK wide figures. They then go on to compare those UK figures with Labour's England figures. You know, Lib Dems will provide 10,000 UK hospital beds over five years, Labour plans 7,000, they mean in England. That isn't honest.
Charles Kennedy
No...that is...it is honest because...
John Humphrys
No, well of course it isn't. You're comparing, not comparing like with like. You're misleading us.
Charles Kennedy
No, it's inescapable. In fact, the 91Èȱ¬'s Economics Correspondent on Newsnight last night, Ewan Harris, was pointing out that it is honest because...
John Humphrys
Well our Social Affairs Editor, Neil Dickson, says it isn't.
Charles Kennedy
No, I don't think Neil Dickson said that at all. I listened to him on your programme earlier this morning. That was not the impression I drew from his comments.
John Humphrys
Well, he briefed me on this, I can tell you.
Charles Kennedy
Well, I listened to him too as a reasonably informed consumer of the 91Èȱ¬ and that's not the impression I was left with. What we're seeing is twofold, that it is difficult in the first term of a devolved economic as well as political structure to compare like with like, so what we're seeing is that on a UK basis these are the figures that we can put forward and they add up, and I don't think that any serious commentator, whether they agree with our policies or disagree with our policies, would challenge the notion that our figures don't balance. They do balance...
John Humphrys
...all right...
Charles Kennedy
...secondly, when it comes to devolution, looking at Welsh figures or Scottish figures, the argument is that you need a greater Liberal Democrat presence at Westminster because we want to increase the size of the block grant, the cake that goes to the Welsh assembly and the Scottish parliament so that they can implement further the national, the UK national aspirations that we're putting forward.
John Humphrys
All right. We're going to have to end it there. Edmond Davis, by the way, is our Economics Editor for Newsnight, but there we are. Charles Kennedy, thanks very much indeed.
Back to May interviews
Please Note:
This transcript was typed from an on-air broadcast and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the 91Èȱ¬ cannot vouch for its accuracy.
