Murnaghan Interview with Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat leadership candidate, 14.06.15

ANY QUOTES MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now what a difference an election makes.  Five years ago the Liberal Democrats were newly installed in government, riding on a wave of ‘I agree with Nick’.  Well now, as we all know, they’ve been left with just eight seats so where does the party go from here?  I’m joined now by Norman Lamb, one of the men hoping to be the Lib Dem’s new leader, a very good morning t you Mr Lamb.  So where do you stand?  It’s the debate we know is raging through your party at the moment as the discuss who should be the next leader, was it a price worth paying going into coalition or should you have stayed well clear?  

NORMAN LAMB: Well ultimately you have to ask the question, what are you in this job for, what’s the purpose of it?  And it must be to make a difference to people’s lives and you can only do that if you get into government.  We’ve been out of government for the whole post-war period, it’s done us clearly enormous damage but I absolutely believe it was the right thing to do, we acted in the national interest.  The country is better placed now than it was five years ago and I suspect that people will see with the Conservatives on their own in government, the absence of a constraining force that the Lib Dems offered.  

DM: But your party has nearly been destroyed. I mean you’re like one of those pilots in a Second World War film, the plane gets shot and they bravely sit at the controls and crash it into the target they’re attacking.  

NORMAN LAMB: Look, I think the great irony is this is in many respects a liberal age, particularly young people, liberal attitudes and yet this is the moment when the Liberal voice has been diminished in our country and so I liken us to a start-up.  The world changes very rapidly these days and I think we’ve got a massive market out there for us but we’ve got to connect with people again and we’ve got to talk to our values.  I think we made mistakes and in the run up to the election when we were all told we’ve got to say we’ll cut less than the Conservatives and borrow less than Labour, it defined us in relation to others, it said nothing about what we were, what we fought for, what our purpose was.   

DM: I can almost hear Nick Clegg saying that and he is still sitting on the benches with you, so he got that wrong did he because all he talked about was coalition …

NORMAN LAMB: Well it was a collective view, the communications people took that view but I don't think it talked to our values and I think we achieved an awful lot in government.  The cut in tax for people on low pay, it was the Lib Dems who forced that through against opposition from the Conservatives; the fact that we got £2.5 billion into schools for children from the poorest backgrounds and that is making a difference to individual children’s lives and that is something that I am personally very proud of and I’m proud of our work on mental health, fighting for equality for those who suffer from mental ill health.  So let’s hold our heads high, let’s recognise we made some big mistakes but let’s also absolutely focus on rebuilding.  Liberal values will be under threat in this parliament and we need to fight for them.  

DM: But that is the big divide then is it between you and Tim Farron because Tim Farron, as people are pointing out, he was always pretty critical of coalition and he was …

NORMAN LAMB: Well he voted for it.  We all collectively voted for it.  

DM: Of course, of course but he wasn’t in government, he didn’t have one of those positions that you had and he said he was a bit sceptical, he came on this programme many times and criticised some of the policies and some of the decisions.  That’s the main divide then is it between you?  

NORMAN LAMB: Look, I absolutely take the view that you step up to the plate when you have to and you play your role in trying to achieve the things that you believe in and as I say, I think we achieved some Liberal values in government and my work for example on introducing maximum waiting time standards for people who suffer from mental ill health, that makes a real difference to people’s lives.  It’s not commentating from the sidelines and I think if we want to be a serious political party – and I am really ambitious, I think the world changes so fast these days, it could catch fire and if we could connect with people again we can build a radical progressive Liberal movement of change and we could become very successful much quicker than many people are now ….  

DM: Ah, radical and progressive, so when you are asked that question at the hustings by Lib Dem supporters, the direct question is ‘Would you go into coalition with the Conservatives again’, your answer is?

NORMAN LAMB: Well first of all we concentrate on what we’re about which is the point I was making but secondly we should not say that we will rule out coalition with any particular party because then you become an adjunct to another party.  We are Liberals and …

DM: But you are not going to be in government are you, on your own?   You are not going to win 326 seats.

NORMAN LAMB: Not in the foreseeable future but look, that has to be our ambition.  In Canada, in Holland, the fortunes of parties has changed very rapidly and I think if you connect with people – the SNP managed to connect with people, Nigel Farage did.  His message is one of division, ours is one of unity but I …  

DM: But on that question I just posed to you, both those parties funnily enough before the election – well certainly not funnily enough with the SNP but with UKIP, they said no coalition, no coalition with the Conservatives.  

NORMAN LAMB: Well look, my view is that we fight for Liberal values, we fight to implement them in government and you have to act ultimately in the national interest but I’ll tell you this, a condition has to be that we would change a completely disreputable and discredited political system, voting system.  We have to introduce proportional representation.  It would destroy us if we didn’t but it is the right thing to do also.  We had 25 million people in this election voting UKIP, Green or Lib Dem and they got 10 seats in Parliament, that is an outrage.  All those people who voted UKIP, they’ve been cheated as well so we have to make the case, we have to lead the case for voting reform.  

DM: What about though the Lib Dem values, you talk about the Liberal values, do you think they do actually exist amongst the general public?  There is this very interesting research which I’m sure you are going to have a close look at or as close as you can, done by Liam Byrne for the Labour Party, that their expectation was that the Lib Dem vote yes, would leave the Lib Dems but that it would mainly go to them.  It turns out that large proportions of it went to UKIP and the Conservatives, the Lib Dem vote.

NORMAN LAMB: And I think it’s often people feeling they haven’t been listened to, feeling that they are marginalised …

DM: So it’s just a protest vote.  

NORMAN LAMB: But what is it a protest at?  It’s a protest at being ignored, be it feeling that they have no power over their own destiny, that’s at its heart what it’s about and actually that speaks to Liberal values.  For me it is about giving power to people, in their communities, individually in the way they receive public services – I fought for that in the NHS so that people could get a personal budget so that they had control of the money that was available to them.  If you give people control then they have less to complain about because they have control over their destiny and that for me is a fundamental central principle of what Liberalism is all about.  

DM: Mr Lamb, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed.  Norman Lamb there.