SKY NEWS – SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON – 10.00 – 1.10.17 – INTERVIEW WITH LORD HESELTINE

NIALL PATERSON: The papers today are dominated by talk of mutiny and back bench rebellions and as if Boris Johnson wasn’t a big enough problem, apparently even the Queen is none too happy with Theresa May’s leadership as well. It all feeds into a mood that is about as grey as the Manchester skies you can see behind me so will the party be able to put on a united front for at least a few days? Well your guess is as good as mine. First let’s hear from someone who has seen more than his fair share of party conferences, Lord Heseltine … [break in recording] …

LORD HESELTINE: I think that’s the sort of thing that he’s bound to say that bears no relationship with the truth. He has his views on defence policy that hark back to the more extreme elements of the Labour party of the 60s and 70s and 80s, his views on nationalisation were born in another century under Karl Marx and were tried extensively in this country and were a lamentable failure and his whole approach to society I think is to create an image of society which in practical terms doesn’t work.

NP: Still there has been something of a sea change, some of those ideas that underpin the neo-liberal revolution of the past few years, the free markets, the idea of deregulation and privatisation, people are coming round to a different way of thinking on every one of those.

LORD HESELTINE: You say people, there are some people. I spend a lot of my time with Labour councillors, Labour leaders in the real world and they are in dismay about the prospect of a Corbyn led Labour party so of course you are quite right to point out to an element of the Corbyn phenomenon, it has achieved a certain sort of vision for a certain sort of generation but I think you have to ask why, what is the background that has created this hunger for change? When you analyse that I find it common across the Western world in the post-2008 crash. It has produced an extremism on the right looking for very simple and very rather unattractive solutions to try and persuade people that there is something that is going to change the frustrations of their life – the frozen living standards, the job losses that have characterised a lot of the last decade – and the nationalism, the suspicion of foreigner, the immigration issues, they all bubble up in circumstances of this sort. Of course you do get an alternative, the other end of the visionary, you nationalise everything type of approach but the real issues that are undermining the stability of governments recently I think have got much more to do with those basic politic issues of uncertainty and fear and the immigration issue which is all part of it, the job insecurity. These are the issues and the frozen living standards particularly since 2008.

NP: Still I remember Theresa May making her first speech on the doorstep of Number 10, before even crossing the threshold properly, saying that now was the time to look again at the free market, now is the time to look at the corporate excesses that have brought so much pain to so many people and then she did pretty much nothing about it. Indeed now we have her at the Bank of England making the case for capitalism and not making the case for reformed capitalism.

LORD HESELTINE: Well personally I have always taken great pride in the fact that some of the great reforms of the free market have been led by Conservative administrations. I mean it was the Conservatives that took women out of the mines, children out of the chimneys in the 19th century, it was Disraeli who gave working men the vote, it was Neville Chamberlain associated with great public sector reforms and if you look at modern society it is driven in the main by a partnership between the public sector and the capitalist system but in a regulated climate. Regulations, the interference of government to insist on standards is actually the hallmark of civilisation, we do not live in a jungle economy.

NP: Indeed but at the same time, look at young people who are frankly deserting the Conservative cause in droves and many of them who would not have countenanced voting for the Conservatives a few years ago can never see themselves voting for them now, the reason being? Well they find it difficult to get a job, when they do have a job it is not paying them what they feel they should be earning and even when they do get a job that pays them a decent amount of money, they are finding it so incredibly difficult to get onto the housing ladder. We hear Theresa May talking about the social contract, that every generation should experience better conditions. In terms of the Conservative’s performance since 2010, the social contract has been broken hasn’t it?

LORD HESELTINE: Well I think that there are different causes affecting the young. It’s a lack of vision and it’s very difficult to see how in the context of Brexit you produce a vision. What every government has got to do is to have an effective programme, it has to have a vision as to the journey, purpose, where it’s going to be and then it has to have unity. Now in the conference which is about to take place, what we’re going to see in practice is a sort of full dressed but totally revealing political beauty contest in which the contenders will all be out there strutting their stuff and that is the worst sort of background for a government which ought to be concentrating first of all on its programme for government and secondly on the vision for where it should go. Now the vision is bound to include harnessing the forces of enterprise, a much better word if I may say so than capitalist, the forces of enterprise in order to serve the wider causes of the public.

NP: Now I didn’t of course want to discuss the Conservative leadership, political programmes on Sunday never delve into this topic but you dragged me onto it. Boris Johnson, there is a man with a vision, we have heard plenty about it, twice now for Brexit – what on earth is he up to?

LORD HESELTINE: Well we all know what he’s up to! He’s making sure that his present position is the most favourite to succeed Theresa May is maintained. It is a campaign, it has always happened, it’s what politics, competition is all about and Boris is a master of it. Whether he will win or not is another matter altogether but we all know what he’s doing.

NP: Master of it? Well that’s the point, he has had huge amounts of criticism from even some right leaning newspapers on the two separate occasions on which he’s decided to intervene. In your mind, given the problems that we’ve been discussing about where the Conservative party is right now, where the party is as regards young people, is Boris Johnson the man to sort it out?

LORD HESELTINE: Well personally, his views on Brexit are quite unacceptable. I understand who he’s appealing to, he’s appealing to an elderly part of the society, many of them members of the Conservative party and he is appealing to those elements of their personal conviction that he thinks are most likely to trigger support for him and I understand those arguments but they’re phony, they’re duplicitous, they bear no relationship. Look at Bombardier, what’s going on there, that’s the real world of international trade as anybody who spent any time in the export market fully understands and so talking about a world hungry for new British exporters to suddenly come over the horizon is just talking about something that doesn’t exist.

NP: You yourself have a degree of form when it comes to intransigence and insurrection within the Conservative party. Actually if you squint your eyes, the former MP for Henley, occasionally unruly mop of hair, ability to annoy female Conservative Prime Ministers, I mean do you think Boris Johnson is any way emulating what you got up to?

LORD HESELTINE: Look, I think that you have to redraw the character. I was the person that Margaret Thatcher relied on time and time again to carry through Conservative policies – the right to buy self-evidently, the battle against CND, the reduction in the size of the public sector in the various departmental activities, the work I did on the inner cities – all of this with the support of Margaret Thatcher. It was only on a specific issue that we clashed.

NP: And you resigned. Should Theresa May sack Boris Johnson?

LORD HESELTINE: Well I resigned, I think it’s very difficult for Boris to go on making the sort of interventions that he is and remaining in the government.

NP: So should Theresa May replace him?

LORD HESELTINE: Well I think that the case for sacking Boris is very strong, except in one crucial way, that the danger of doing it in the fragmentation of parliament today is perhaps a bigger risk and so leaving him there until he completely oversteps the mark is a wise thing to do. Whether it is right, and in most circumstances it would be wrong, in these circumstances it might be the only option.

NP: It strikes me that there are two separate issues here, one whether Boris Johnson has the ability to take over the leadership of the Conservative party, the second question follows on from that: if he has, is he the right man to beat Jeremy Corbyn at the next general election, whenever that might be?

LORD HESELTINE: My own guess is that the election will be in a couple of years’ time and I think the Conservatives are going to be lumbered with the failures of Brexit. I see no way in which the Conservatives can actually transform the performance of the economy in the two years from now to the next election.

NP: So who should be the next leader of the Conservative party in that timescale?

LORD HESELTINE: Well my view is quite clear, at the moment I haven’t seen somebody who is prepared to recognise that the song has to be changed, not just the singer. Interestingly enough, Ruth Davidson in the first break I’ve seen from the counter-Brexit side of the argument today, has begun to qualify the position but this whole thing is unsustainable. You cannot have a government in which various members of the Cabinet are voicing opinions which are not consistent one with the other.

NP: You say it is not sustainable but at what point does Theresa May either feel that she no longer has the authority to carry on or that the election process is set in motion?

LORD HESELTINE: I don't think it will be her decision. The point, and you asked the right question, is the point at which the parliamentary party says we’ve had enough.

NP: In terms of Brexit, do you think that the party will ultimately see this process through?

LORD HESELTINE: Well I hope not and there are grounds for believing it’s possible. Not likely, at the moment it looks as though that Brexit is likely to happen, but for my money events will intervene, public opinion will change and the party will realise that as Labour will actually become increasingly anti-Brexit, the Tories are going to be left lumbered with the responsibility for this thing.

NP: Do you ever find it quite lonely being in this position? As things stand there is not a single MP in any party at the moment who appears to agree with you. It’s yourself, it’s Tony Blair and to an extent it’s Vince Cable, do you feel you are on the right side of the argument given the weight of opinion against you in the House of Commons?

LORD HESELTINE: Well I know what a lot of those members think. They may not say it and I understand why they don’t say it, because politics is about tribes and there are great penalties to pay for appearing to differ from your tribe but I am not interested in any of those penalties. My question is, am I right? And I parade in support of myself. Every Conservative leader since Winston Churchill, all of whom believed that self-interest, Britain’s self-interest, was inextricably interwoven with Europe. I believe it today and I know large numbers of MPs do believe it too. Where is the voice who will change the song?

NP: You’ve been working for the party since the 1950s, how much difficulty, how much trouble is the Conservative party in right now?

LORD HESELTINE: I think there is a serious risk of not winning the next election if it goes on as it is now. I am appalled, I find it almost incredible having been in the House of Commons with Jeremy Corbyn for all those years so knowing something of his views and something of Labour’s views, I find it almost incredible to hear myself saying it but analysing the way things are going, looking at opinion polls and anticipating events as I think they’ll unfold, it is now a very serious risk.

NP: Lord Heseltine, many thanks for being my guest.

LORD HESELTINE: Thank you.