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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Welcome back. As part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, a Trust has been set up to invest in charitable projects not just in Britain but throughout the Commonwealth and it is hoped that the Trust will create an enduring legacy to the Queen’s 60 years of service. Well I’m joined now by the Chair of that Trust, the former Prime Minister Sir John Major. Very good to see you, thank you very much for coming in. So tell me about the charity, what are its aims, who precisely does it want to help?

SIR JOHN MAJOR: Well let me give you a bit of background first because I think it’s relevant. Normally on great anniversaries for monarchs, there are presentations to her from all over the Commonwealth, from governments, from local governments, from individuals. On this occasion the Queen said, well far better than doing that would be to set up a Trust which was established by all the heads of government of the Commonwealth countries and if people donate to the Trust we can then use the Trust for good causes right across the Commonwealth. We are hoping to do things that other charities haven’t yet been able to do. Firstly, we wish to raise as much money as we can, we’ll only be raising money during Jubilee year, that is until February 6^th next year and then we will take what we hope will be a chunky pot of gold, we will work with partner charities so that they have experience in delivering the schemes and we’ll look at schemes to help people from the very elderly to the very young right across the Commonwealth. The sort of things that we have in mind, no final decisions made yet of course but the sort of things we have in mind are to help people regain their sight. There are 44 million people in the world who are blind, 38 million with relatively simple operation these days could have their sight restored. Now imagine that for those individuals. We propose to use sport to help young people, we propose to work with the Eden Project to help produce urban food in deprived areas, both for sustenance and so that people have some food to sell for income. So it’s a whole range of schemes for that right across the Commonwealth.

DM: And presumably you have gathered the expertise on the board to oversee that. Tell me a bit more about the funding though, are you raising money from the public, from governments themselves, from companies? I presume the answer is all of the above!

JM: All of the above. All the 54 countries of the commonwealth agreed to set this up, all of those who are able, voluntarily I hope, are going to contribute to the Trust. Many areas of local government in the UK and right across the Commonwealth may do the same; industry and commerce we hope and the public too. We have our own website, you can donate through the website, www.jubileetribute.org and we hope people are going to do that. It doesn’t matter really if it’s one pound or if it’s a million pounds – plainly we’d prefer the million but if it’s one pound or a million it will be very gratefully received and we will use it wisely across the Commonwealth. Because we are working in partnership with established charities who are already familiar with the market, we can absolutely cut down on the bureaucratic costs and the money donated will go directly to people who are in need, as the Queen wishes, right across the Commonwealth.

DM: You mention the Queen’s wishes there and her role in coming up with the idea, does that really illustrate to you the degree to which she has devoted herself to public service, that – in the popular parlance – she gets it?

JM: Well she certainly does, anyone who sits down privately will know just how well she gets it. It’s extraordinary, she’s been there for 60 years, can you imagine any other public figure after 60 years in the public eye, who would still enjoy the affection and respect that’s awarded to the Queen? I can’t imagine anybody else and she has always had this great affinity for the Commonwealth. When she became Queen there were I think about eight countries in the Commonwealth, there are now 54. The Queen and the Commonwealth have grown up together and anyone who has seen the Queen on tour in the Commonwealth with Commonwealth heads of government or Commonwealth citizens, will realise how strong that affinity is.

DM: Tell us a bit more if you can, I know about the personal insights you have had into the Queen and, as you say, that remarkable popularity, a recent poll showing that 69% of the nation feel that we’ll be worse off without her. You sat down week in, week out when you were Prime Minister for nearly seven years, what sort of sense did you get of the Queen as a person. I know you can’t discuss the substantive issues you talked about, presumably there were many.

JM: Absolutely everything, there’s nothing that’s happened in the past 60 years that her Prime Ministers, from Churchill onwards, won’t have discussed with the Queen so she has a vast repository of knowledge but she also has an enormous amount of common sense. The Queen isn’t distant from what happens, you’d be very surprised how keyed in she is to what people think and how they think and what the problems are. They don’t flow past the Queen, she sees them, they’re in her State box every day and she picks them up on her tours around the country and around the Commonwealth, so she is very, very, very well-informed and any Prime Minister who doesn’t discuss these matters with her and then listen and contemplate about what she’s said is a very foolish Prime Minister indeed.

DM: Would you go so far as to say that she had an input into policy in that she had some good thoughts that you hadn’t had yourself?

JM: She doesn’t interfere in policy in the sense of saying I think you should do this and I think you shouldn’t do that but she will ask questions, she will probe, she will talk around the subject so that you get a flavour of what her opinion is but she is scrupulous about keeping away from matters political.

DM: I know she is probably one of the most adept diplomats in the world given the amount she has travelled, the things she has encountered and the slight problems she has overcome, including one of your predecessors as Prime Minister I believe at a state banquet, who managed to capture forty winks in the presence of Her Majesty, Ted Heath?

JM: It wasn’t a state banquet, it was a private dinner at number ten. The Queen was there, the Duke of Edinburgh was there and Ted Heath hadn’t been too well and was quite elderly and he was sitting between me and the Queen and he nodded off. I said to the Queen, Ted’s nodded off and she said, don’t worry, he’ll wake up in a moment, just leave him be! But she is very good at things like that. We had a banquet on one occasion, a state banquet and President Mitterrand and President Clinton had been seated way down the table and next to the Queen in protocol order had been two members of the European royal family. Now in protocol that was quite correct, in practical politics not very correct and court officials said it can’t be changed. We got to the Queen via her Private Secretary and it was changed very quickly indeed. I can always sit next to my cousin, she said, I can’t always sit next to President Clinton and President Mitterrand, and so the whole arrangement was changed and they sat on either side of the Queen.

DM: She can see the family any time she likes!

JM: Absolutely.

DM: Is there any element, Sir John, that occurs to you in this great debate we are having at the moment about social mobility in the county, how we have on the one hand this enormous affection for the Queen and most members of the Royal Family and yet we are saying at the same time that people who are born into wealth, leaving aside the Royal Family, you know, really they are given a better life chance than anyone else, it is much better if you pull yourself up by your own boot straps and work your own way, this should be a meritocracy. Do you see a bit of double think in our society with that?

JM: Well I suppose I did start from that position and so did many other people in public life but certainly social mobility is very important and I think that’s something the Queen understands and I think everybody else does. The maximum amount of social mobility we can achieve the better.

DM: Is that a problem? You mentioned your own experience and I remember your party election broadcast from the 1992 election …

JM: I had no idea you were so old!

DM: I’m afraid I was, you may remember me dogging your footsteps during the course of that campaign but you went back to your roots in Brixton, it was a memorable party election broadcast, you went back to your old family home and it sent the message out quite clearly that the Conservative party of the 90s led by you was not too posh, did not go to Eton, did work their way up, didn’t go to top universities. Well now the top echelons do and it’s seen as a criticism, is that a problem for the current Conservative party?

JM: Well if I recall I was criticised for precisely the reverse so the truth is you can never get it right and the fact is it doesn’t matter where people come from or what their life experience is, providing they project and look at the right policies in order to help other people. That’s the important matter. All this class conscious nonsense that we have so frequently in our country is a complete distraction from reality and when you actually go out in the country and talk to people that’s not what they talk to you about, they talk to you about housing, about health, about other matters, about the monarchy perhaps but they don’t talk in a class conscious fashion. I think that’s an obsession in the narrow opinion forming circle of public life rather than amongst people as a whole.

DM: Well, yes and no, I mean people do feel that the current Prime Minister and the Chancellor are out of touch with their lives, that they did not lead before they became politicians …

JM: If you want me to talk about that I’ll willingly come back and do so but I never mix politics and the monarchy and if you’ll forgive me I won’t now.

DM: Okay, well I wasn’t relating it to the monarchy, I just wanted to ask you with your experience as a former chancellor just before you go, perhaps you will comment on the euro travails. How big a threat do you see that as being to the UK economy and do you think the eurozone can hold the line?

JM: I think if was to start talking about the euro we would be here all week. I will willingly come back and talk to you about the euro, I have very clear view about it. You may recall I was the Prime Minister who kept us out of the euro by opting out of the single currency at Maastricht in 1991, not an entirely uncontroversial matter as you may recall. I decided to opt out for a range of reasons which I think have subsequently come true. It seemed to me that if you had a single currency for example that had monetary union but no fiscal union, it was a bit akin to a three-legged horse and so invite me back and I’ll willingly talk about it.

DM: Okay, we’ll have you back for that. What are you doing for the Diamond Jubilee then, where are you celebrating, where are you watching, are you taking part?

JM: I am hugely lucky, I’ve been hugely lucky and privileged, I’ll be on one of the boats on the great regatta next Sunday which I think is going to be unlike anything we’ve seen for a very long time. People really should watch that, they will have seen nothing like it before. I think they will see nothing like it again. I am equally fortunate to be at the great concert outside Buckingham Palace where the cast list gets more stellar by the hour, so I’m looking forward to both of those and then there’s the church service at St Paul’s so I’ll be fairly busy and fairly active but I’m really looking forward to it. It should be huge fun and I think there will be a national party. I am old enough to remember the parties at the time of the Coronation, a long time ago now, they were tremendous parties then and I hope and believe we will see it mirrored next weekend as well.

DM: We ain’t seen nothing yet. Sir John, thank you very much indeed for coming in. Sir John Major there on the Diamond Jubilee Trust.