Tag Archives: tories

Exclusive Paddy Ashdown Interview ‘I Am Devoted To The Liberal Democrats’

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Here is part three of our exclusive Paddy Ashdown interview. Take a look at part one and two.

That’s a good answer. In your diaries you are clear about how close you were to Labour before and after the ’97 election, and that PR was the price of coalition. Given that the Lib Dems eventually went into coalition with the Tories, with just a promise of a referendum on AV, how do you think events would have unfolded if you’d accepted a similar deal in ’97?”

I don’t know. I mean I can’t take you through the what would have happened parts of history. I suspect the circumstances would have been very different if we also had the referendum on a sensible system rather than a lesser sensible one. I don’t think you would have had the leading party in the country at the time deliberately doing what they could at the time to destroy the motion and the national newspapers at the time supporting them. That is the ‘what would have happened’ bits of history and we could all spend hours deciding how the world would be different  if Britain hadn’t won the battle of Waterloo; It’s very interesting but it doesn’t bear much relevance.

Paddy_Ashdown_3You also said in your diaries that you were worried that the party would start with Gladstone and end with Ashdown, what do you think was your greatest achievement as the Liberal Democrat Leader?

I have never ever believed that I am a good judge of my own achievements, I leave that to others to decide on what your achievements are. I was very proud to lead the Liberal Democrats for eleven years, I loved it, I am devoted to them. I was also very proud to be the International High Representative in Bosnia for the British Government.  No doubt I made mistakes in both of those jobs, probably quite a lot of them. When you have the privilege of doing jobs like that you can use it to your advantage and I quickly realised what I was good at and what I was bad at.

What do you think will happen with the Liberal Democrats in 2015?

I actually think all the polls now are wrong. I have to rely, as I always have done, on the good judgement of the british electorate, I think we have a good story to tell, we have been in government, everyone said we couldn’t do it. I think we have been more united than the Tories, tougher than the Tories, and played a really serious role in bringing our country through a crisis. If I know the British electorate at all well, when the moment comes, I think we’ll reap the dividends of that. I also think that the British electorate probably, having had the benefit of the coalition may not be very happy returning to absolute power in anybody’s hands. Also, having a coalition of some sort forces people to work together instead of spending all their time scratching each other’s eyes out. Maybe that is a much better system than what we had in the past. Those two things will help us I think.
Who Is Your Favourite Politician?

I think as someone said to me; ‘Who is my hero?’ and I said William Wilberforce who is as unlike me as you could possibly get, apart from Gladstone of course, who is the greatest Prime Minister this country has ever had both internationally and domestically, he was a man who said, “We did not march across the law of anti-slavery, we did not march towards a monument in the distance, we gathered friends like flowers along the way.” and I think he was an extraordinary politician.

Do you think we should have intervened in Syria?

No, I don’t. I’m against intervening in Syria while the opposition is so fractured and defused. Anyways, they’re being funded by extremist elements and encouraging extremist elements so, no, I thought that would lead us towards an engagement in what I think is a widening religious war. I did however think we should intervene in defense of one of the principles pillars of international law; a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has stood since 1926 and strained even Hitler and Stalin, and I thought that unless we were prepared to show strength to Assad, not by intervention because we wouldn’t have done, but there was a price to pay that was painful for breaking this principle of international law, then it would only have encouraged the wider spread of chemical weapons. So, no, I don’t think we should have intervened in Syria but I do think we should defend International Law and indeed one of the most important pillars of the international law that preserves some semblance of civilised behaviour in the prosecution of wars.

You testified against Slobodan Milosevic. Was that scary?

No, it wasn’t scary. It was more scary being bombarded by his troops. I mean, I testified about being in the middle of the Albanian villages when they were being bombarded by the main battle units of his army, that was much more scary.

I can understand that. You have done a lot of different things in your life. What is your favourite?

I think there is nothing I’ve done that will match my sense of pride of being a member of parliament for my own community of Yeovil. There is no thing you could ever do that matched being the representative in Westminster of the community you live in and love. So if somebody said you can have one line to put on your gravestone it would be ‘Member of Parliament for Yeovil’.

What was it like being an intelligence officer?

I was a perfectly ordinary diplomat

What is the best advice you have ever received?

Never stop learning.

Thank you Paddy.

 What do you think?

Exclusive: Paddy Ashdown On Clegg, The Tories, The Liberal Democrats & The NHS

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Part two of our Interview with Paddy Ashdown. Here he talks about politics. Part three will be up tomorrow. Let us know what you think. Part one, where he talks about writing and his books,  is here.

Do you mind if I ask you some political questions as well?

No, go on.

Would you prefer the Liberal Democrats to side with Labour at the next election?

That is a matter not for me or my preference but it is a matter for the British electorate voting in the ballot box.

Do you think Nick Clegg has been true to liberal values?

Absolutely. I think he is remarkable. I think he is…I am devoted to the man, I think he is one of the most brilliant politicians in Britain today. Hugely, publicly, under-rated. He’s got very, very good judgement. He’s got extraordinary courage and he is a liberal down to the marrow of his bones. So I think he’d undoubtedly make the best Prime Minister that you could have today.

He has a very hard job. Doesn’t he? 

It’s a thankless job. I did it for eleven years and let me tell you it is the most thankless job  because you represent the only philosophy: liberalism, that makes any sense.

He has it tough because generally people don’t seem to like the Tories

No they don’t like the Tories and I don’t like them either. I spent my life fighting them. If the public elects a coalition where the only coalition that can have a majority in the House of Commons inherently, mathematically, adds up to ourselves and the Tories do they really want people that don’t listen to them?, the public democratic view. And you better ask yourself what they like best. Do they really like the complete and utter corrupt mess this country was left in by Labour, which would have bankrupted young people for the next twenty years or do they like two parties that put aside their differences for the national interest and work together to get us out of the worst recession we have had since the 1930s and back on the path of growth. Which of these two would you prefer?

I agree with that, Labour left the country in a very big mess.

Absolutely. People have likes and dislikes in politics and what I’m interested in is doing what’s right for my country. That is what I have always been interested in and if the Liberal Democrats pay an electoral price for that, and I think they will by the way, if they did, if I was doing what I believed to be right for my country and helping it out of a crisis then I am proud of that and that’s what politics is for.

Do you think the Liberal Democrats made an error over tuition fees?

Yes, they made an error by promising it when it couldn’t be delivered. We’ve been in opposition for a hundred years, we haven’t been in government, so of course from time to time decisions which were driven to a certain extent by opportunism. I said at the time that we were making a promise that I didn’t think in the economic climate could be delivered. If we had been in government by ourselves I think we might have decided to sacrifice other things in order to deliver what we promised but we weren’t in government, we were in coalition. So, no, neither parties manifesto has been in operation. Both parties have had to make some compromises. I don’t call that anti-democratic. I call that the operation of democracy.

Do you think the NHS is being privatised?

What concerns me more than anything else isn’t who owns the NHS but how the public is served. How the citizen is served. For instance, even under the last government, under Mr Blair’s government, I had to have some health checks done and I went to a private organisation run under contract from the health service as an alternative means of delivering health services, that is; free at the point of delivery health services, and they did a wonderful job. Now I could have gone to a health service hospital, it’s all paid out of our taxes, it’s all paid by the national health service. One of those organisations was privately run, one was publicly run. It doesn’t matter who runs it. I don’t believe in private health but if there is a private provider providing to the health service under health service conditions and they can do it better for the costumer, then that is surely what you want. I mean I don’t believe the argument that says private/public is the necessary argument. I am strongly in favour of public services being offered free at the point of delivery and paid for on taxation, but who actually runs the organisation that delivers it is far less important to me than how well the citizen is served.

I agree with that. That is a question we get asked a lot but I got an MRI on my back and it was done through the NHS via a private company and they did an amazing job. Very professional, very quick.

Yes, that’s right. If you had a monopoly public service I don’t even think it would be a better public service. It needs competition. It makes people live up to the mark. I bet you there were more people abused and receiving bad service and ignorant service when the NHS was a public monopoly. I don’t believe in public monopoly. I believe in things being paid for either by taxation, free at the point of delivery but then who does that?, providing it is subject to inspection and national control is a matter of irrelevance.

 

Young people in politics, Part 2; Writer Fran Singh on her love of Labour.

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For the next article on young people in politics I interviewed talented and beautiful writer Fran Singh, 23. She has some great stuff to say.

1) Why did you get involved in politics and why Labour?

I got involved in the politics because of my parents. My dad is a nurse and has been in trade unions all his life and has been BME officer and treasurer for South Wales branch of Unison. My mum was a local politician (council and ran for AM in Welsh Assembly for Labour). The reason Labour was because it’s what I’ve always known, though there was a time when I was a teenager I shunned it entirely precisely because of that fact. As I grew up and began to form own opinions I realised Labour was where I naturally belonged even it wasn’t very rebellious. I just think being from South Wales, and growing up the way I did made me choose Labour. I think there is quite a big poor rich divide in Swansea, and a lot of snobbery about people who rely on benefits. We lived on a council estate in my teens and I soon came to realise not all these people were the dole scroungers you read about in the Mail and were victims of inequality. The Labour party in my view are the only party truly connected with the needs of working class people and have tackling inequality at the top of their agenda.

2) How do you think we get more young people involved in politics?

I really don’t know what can be done to engage more young people in politics. At the end of the day Westminster can be quite scandalous, but on the local politics and the day to day administrative running of national politics can be very dry and often boring. I think better representation in parliament would be the best start. Younger MP’s, black and ethnic minority candidates, more women and people from different backgrounds. Until people in parliament start looking a bit more like the general public and talking on the same level of the people they represent, people will switch off. I think young people will start to become more politically engaged now we are in a coalition come the cuts and rising unemployment which will directly start to impact on their lives.. They sort of woke up a bit at the last election.

3) What is the best thing about being political?

Everything is political. Everything you do, even most mundane things such as paying your gas bill has been shaped somehow from all that really boring stuff that goes on in parliament so I think it is really important people are political and take an interest. The best thing about it is the debate. It feels nice to have an informed opinion and be able to argue your point well. Everyone loves a good row in the pub with their Tory friend. If you know about politics you know a little bit about everything which makes you a good all rounder.

4) How do you feel about Ed Milliband as Labour leader?

I like Ed but I can’t say I was thrilled. In fact I think and I sat in shock shaking my head for about an hour until my colleague asked if I was alright. To me it felt like we were signing ourselves for longer out of power, but I really hope to be proved wrong. I am quite cynical and can’t get swept up in this new generation stuff. I don’t believe the media narrative that he is Red Ed, but you could see the label coming a mile off. Doesn’t matter if it is true or not if it can be used by the media and opposition it will be and shouldn’t be underestimated.

Last time the Tories were in power we had what was represented as a very left wing party and were out of power for ages. I think the people who voted him first choice (I voted DM) were wrapped up in idealism (which is by no means a bad thing, you need to have some optimism, core values and vision) but they neglected the reality. People in the Labour party are generally quite socialist and left wing, but they forget the country isn’t and you can’t make proper changes in opposition. Like the Red Ed tag David was branded a Blairite, everyone forgets Blair saw Labour be in power for three elections. A leader of the Labour party was always going to be left wing, they just need to not be an easy target and have cross party appeal and appeal to non Labour voters. The loyal labour voters are only a small part of the electorate.

5) Can you give me a good canvassing story?

Hmmm, haven’t been out canvassing in ages, slack at election as was during my finals. I went out during election with Emily Thornberry’s team in Islington and David Miliband came along. I knew then I wanted him to lead the Labour party, he was so charming and captivated the room when arrived, everyone just couldn’t stop looking at him. There was a big young crowd out for that too. Did have a rather embarrassing moment. My friend was filming me for a documentary she was making on young people and politics for the election. I was microphoned up and didn’t realise was recording and had my own Gordon Brown Gillian Duffy moment when I realised I’d been recorded for about 10 minutes talking about the then foreign secretary’s arse.

That’s so funny. Thank you Fran.