Murnaghan Interview with Lord Jack McConnell, former Scottish Labour First Minister 15.03.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So as the election draws nearer and the opinion polls tighten, attention is turning towards which parties could work together to perhaps form a coalition.  One possible combination could see Labour in some sort of agreement with the Scottish National Party but is that possible?  What would it mean for the future of the Union?  Well Lord McConnell was the Scottish First Minister of course and leader of the Scottish Labour party for six years and he joins me now from Stirling.  A very good morning to you, Lord McConnell, now we’ve just had it on my programme and on others today, the Westminster leadership of your party, if I can call them that, still seem to be keeping their options open when it comes to doing a deal with the SNP, is that damaging Labour in Scotland?

JACK MCCONNELL: No, I don't think it has any real direct effect on voters and I can completely understand why leaders of both main parties have said they have not ruled out any options, at least until after the outcome after the election.  I led the election campaign in Scotland in 2003, we were going from one coalition into another likely coalition and there were two reasons why I wouldn’t rule out options.  One was that you want to fight to win so you’re not going to admit you are not going to win outright so you have got to fight to win but the other is, you have to keep your negotiating hand because no matter who you are planning to work with afterwards you need to keep some pressure on them to make sure that you maximise your influence over the final agreement.  

DM: Okay, so how’s that working then in Scotland?  We saw in the referendum on independence, we saw Labour voters voting for the SNP, can’t they still form the calculation, they still don’t have to go back because what you’re saying and many others in the Labour leadership seems to be yeah, you can still vote SNP and you’ll still get a Labour government perhaps?  

JACK McCONNELL: Well I think the direct opposite is true, that every vote for the SNP makes it more likely that David Cameron will be returned as Prime Minister and I think that’s becoming increasingly clear to voters in Scotland.  They might want to take that risk but certainly the outcome is more likely to be a Cameron victory if there are more votes for the SNP in Scotland because as I know and as people who have come out of election campaigns into uncertain parliaments where you have to start looking at coalitions or other agreements, the party with the most seats is the party that gets the first shot at government.  That happened to me in 2003, in 2007 when the SNP had won more seats than Labour in Scotland and they had the first chance to set up an agreement and they did so with the Tories and they managed to get through the first programme and the rest is history.  This is what happens in the aftermath of an election that is uncertain and therefore the key thing here for all of the parties, all of the parties, is to get out there, sell the message, win as many votes as they can and then put themselves in a position where they can negotiate for their manifesto afterwards.  

DM: But there is no evidence in the Scottish polls, is there, that that argument from the Labour side is working and Jim Murphy, the relatively new leader, doesn’t seem to have made any difference.  

JACK MCCONNELL: I always said that being leader of the Scottish Labour party was the most difficult job in British politics and I think that’s been proven again these past few months.  Jim has got a big task on his hands, he’s throwing all of his energy and creativity at it.  I think certainly for the longer term he has put the Scottish Labour party back on the front foot and he has made clear that their loyalties lie in Scotland and that they are going to fight for the ordinary people of Scotland but he still has some way to go clearly between now and May.  But we are still a few weeks away here, this is a very volatile, very, very volatile political situation.  Nobody could have predicted even in my example, 2007, nobody could have predicted that we would run the SNP neck and neck in 2007, I was 12% behind at the start of that campaign.  Nobody could have predicted in Scotland that Alex Salmond would win an outright majority at the start of the campaign in 2011 when Labour were neck and neck with the SNP and in the last election we saw opinions shift in the UK back and forward, to Nick Clegg, back from Nick Clegg, to David Cameron, back to Gordon Brown so I think six weeks is a long, long time yet for this campaign to run and all the parties should get off the starting blocks, sell the positive policies, try and dismantle the policies of the opposition and then let’s see what the outcome is.  

DM: But underlying all this, Lord McConnell, from the Scottish perspective is it seems the independence question hasn’t been settled for a generation as we were told it was after the vote there, there must be a lot of angry no voters who say well it’s still very much on the agenda.

JACK MCCONNELL: That’s a good point because I think one of the unpredictables in this general election might be those people who came out and voted no in September but perhaps hadn’t voted for some time.  The turnout was huge and the turnout ultimately was what ensured that the no campaign had a 10% majority at the end of the day and I wonder if perhaps in this general election that silent 10, 15% of Scottish voters who didn’t tell the pollsters what way they were going to go and didn’t really commit to voting in advance but who came out on the day and saved the day for Scotland staying inside the United Kingdom, if they might just turn out in May and surprise us all again so all bets are off in the Scottish election, there is everything to play for in my view.

DM: Absolutely fascinating, thank you very much indeed, Jack McConnell there, Lord McConnell, thank you very much.