Can we begin by asking what your pre-election message to the party is? What is at stake in this election?
My pre-election message is: absolutely no complacency. We have to fight to win every vote. The choice is fundamental: the Tories haven’t changed, so it’s forward not back – we either carry on making the changes we have been making in Britain or you just switch the clock back to 1997 then carry on where they left off. Finally, I believe that New Labour is what got us here and New Labour is what will keep us here. You’ve got to combine the traditional values with the modern policy. If you hesitate on that, you’re lost.
It has been suggested that most of the public aren’t interested in the notion of ‘choice’, only that their local hospital or school is of a good quality. What is your response to that?
My response to that is very simple. Of course people want their local hospital or school to be excellent. But suppose sometimes it isn’t. In that case, people have got to have the ability to go elsewhere. That’s what they would do in any other walk of life. In the modern world, where we’re putting this amount of money into the NHS and education, you’ve got to give people the full range of services and choice. Otherwise they will go to the private sector and buy the service. If someone is waiting in pain and there is someone, somewhere else in the country, who can do the operation for them and they’re going to get it free at the point of use, what is the social democratic or progressive reason against us allowing them to do it? I honestly believe this one is a no-brainer.
I can understand the objections if the choice is the Tory choice. Their idea of choice is you get a voucher, which covers part of the cost, but if you can’t afford the rest, then you don’t get your operation. That’s obviously deeply inequitable – people with the money can afford to get care privately.
It is the same with schools. I’m a parent and I wouldn’t send my children to a school where I didn’t think they’d get a good education, as if it’s my civic duty. That’s not how people think; they think about their children. The best education policies arrive when you think like a parent, not a politician. It’s the same when you think like a patient, not a politician, or like a citizen who has had their house broken into or has been beaten up on the street. That’s when you get the policy right.
Why do you think many people appear to be happy with their own individual experience of public services, but believe the national picture is not as good?
I think the reason is perfectly simple. The difference is between their own experience and what they read about. Let me give you a classic example. The Health Commission recently surveyed patients’ experiences of accident and emergency departments. This was a glowing report but it had within it some very small differentials on the cleanliness of wards.
The subsequent publicity and press coverage, however, was all about dirty wards. You would not know from it that the vast majority of people said they got treated well in accident and emergency and the wards were clean. One of the things we have got to do – this is absolutely the essence of the campaign – is to get people to understand their personal experience, which is roughly 80 per cent positive, is actually the norm – it’s not the exception and they are not just lucky people.
Although poverty has fallen under Labour, inequality has grown. Does the increasing gap between rich and poor still not bother you?
I remember answering this in the last election, and causing a bit of a storm and I have thought about it since. What I meant by that was not that I don’t care about the gap, so much as I don’t care if there are people who earn a lot of money. They’re not my concern. I do care about people who are without opportunity, disadvantaged and poor. We’ve got to lift those people but we don’t necessarily do that by hammering the people who are successful. This government has engaged in policies that have been strongly orientated towards lifting people out of poverty. We could have given all the money we’re spending on tax credits to people as top-rate tax cuts. But we didn’t.
I also strongly believe that, for a lot of the poorest people in our community, some of this now is what I would call generational poverty. It’s not casual or haphazard poverty, which, with a bit of help, people can get themselves out of. It’s one generation having their children early in bad housing with no life to look forward to – to the next generation, its kids growing up in homes with no role model who works. I think that sometimes what those people need is actually not more money in their hand, but services that are directed towards helping them out of that. They may need training, childcare, Sure Start or better housing. It is not always about the cash.
I respect the worries about immigration and I respect the worries about asylum because I think people see a lot of life changing around them at a very rapid rate. But, having understood that worry, what’s the right way of dealing with it? I believe it is to try and engage people in an explanation of why all modern societies around the world are changing in their complexion and their nature. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. It’s about how economies and societies develop over a long period of time.
Where people are entirely justified – and this is part of the problem – is where there have been abuses of the system. We’ve talked to many people from ethnic minority communities who complain bitterly about the abuses. There are illegal people-traffickers and students who turn up to colleges that don’t exist and then stay in the country. People should play by the rules. I don’t, however, favour the Tory plans. I think a points system is far better than this quota stuff.
Looking back at 1997 and 2001, Labour won many seats due to tactical voting by Liberal Democrats. Aside from the issue of Iraq, many of these voters perceive the government to be hostile to civil liberties. They think you’ve only partially delivered on Lords reform and the commitment to look into the issue of PR. How are you going to win those voters back between now and election day?
The first thing, as with every other area, is to get people’s minds around what we’ve actually done. We have introduced human rights legislation for the first time in this country, where you can challenge legislation and executive power on a human rights basis. That was our innovation. We’ve got the Freedom of Information Act, devolution, and an elected mayor in London with the Greater London Assembly.
It’s true that we have also introduced, since September 11th, tough anti-terrorist legislation but we’ve done that in common with virtually every country in the world and it applies to a very small number of cases. I’m not saying there aren’t real civil liberties concerns but we’ve also got to be worried about national security. In respect of the House of Lords, I’ve given up more power than any prime minister before and we’ve removed the bulk of the hereditary peers. We have to consider how we take this constitutional reform agenda further but I don’t think people should ignore what we’ve actually done. The blunt truth of it is that people will wake up to a Labour or a Conservative government the day after polling day. They’re not going to wake up to a Liberal Democrat government.
Robin Cook has challenged your claim that there is no consensus on House of Lords reform. He says there is, it’s just that you don’t share it.
In that case his position should be unanimously adopted but it hasn’t been. I mean, it’s just not true. Some people are in favour of a directly elected Lords, some people – like Billy Bragg – favour the secondary mandate, and some people are in favour of a hybrid. Some people support an appointed upper house. Robin has very strong view for an elected House of Lords but that’s not the view of everybody. There is also no consensus, either, as to what the powers of any such body should be.
In most of the US and some parts of Europe the new right has adopted a tone that is moralistic, virulently anti-government and portrays itself as anti-establishment. Do you fear the same thing occurring here and how do you intend to ward off that possibility?
I think this is about ‘political correctness’, which is used in two quite different ways. If you talk about ‘political correctness’ when what you mean is equal rights for women, black people or Asians, that’s not ‘political correctness’, it is just equal status as citizens. But there is so-called ‘political correctness’ in the rules that are used to govern outdoor trips and the fact that a lot of teachers will not take their children on outdoor trips because they are worried about getting sued. Then there are issues of ‘political correctness’ on security grounds. The average British citizen finds it incomprehensible that people who preach hatred against our country are still here and they think it is ‘political correctness’. It’s not actually ‘political correctness’ that prevents us from moving them, it’s the fact that other countries won’t take them.
The Conservatives very deliberately run this line of ‘political correctness’ against us. I am the least ‘politically correct’ person that you could imagine in that secondary sense. What I mean by ‘political correctness’ is common sense being elbowed out of the way by over-zealousness, not about equality between people. The Tories are always trying to align those two different senses of ‘political correctness’, so that the person who talks about gay rights is then ‘politically correct’. The right do this very cleverly and, before you know where you are, a charge of ‘political correctness’ that begins about not wanting to discipline kids properly when they are misbehaving suddenly comes into opposing the equal age of consent. It is something you have got to guard against.
Both historically and internationally the left has had a lot of trouble renewing itself when it is in government. How are you working to avoid that fate in Britain?
So far we have, through New Labour. This is a progressive government. We are the only government anywhere in the industrialised world that for the past two years and for the next three is increasing public spending on health and education as a proportion of national income. We have introduced the minimum wage, the right to join a trade union, constitutional reform, and greater equality for people. What we are doing on maternity pay and childcare is immensely progressive. What we are doing in terms of the regeneration of our communities or helping pensioners or lifting kids out of poverty are huge, progressive measures. But I also believe that you shouldn’t screw up the economy, you should reform public services and you shouldn’t go weak on issues to do with law and order and national security.
I happen to think those things are right in any event, so I don’t have a problem with them. But I think some people on the progressive left feel that it’s a compromise to reform public services, impose fiscal discipline or have tough measures on antisocial behaviour. They think these are the concessions to the right in order to win power for the left. I don’t look at it like that. For me they are entirely justifiable in terms of left principle. When you mess up your economy, it’s not an act of leftwing progressive politics; it’s stupid. It’s not right or left, it’s just right or wrong.
If you don’t take measures on antisocial behaviour, the vulnerable people, particularly the elderly people in the poorest estates, suffer. If we don’t introduce choice we are stopping the people from poorer backgrounds getting the same benefit as people from middle-class backgrounds.
The biggest danger for any progressive party is the old delusions of the left coming back. Delusion number one – if the public is fed up for one reason or another it is because we are not leftwing enough. That’s wrong. The usual rightwing attack that is mounted on us is on tax, crime, asylum and Europe. The Tories attack on these issues because that’s where they think their votes are. They’re not saying Labour should be voted out because they are not doing enough for child poverty or investing enough in public services.
The next delusion is that we haven’t really changed the country, the right are still able to play their tunes. Wrong. What happens is that as a progressive government goes on, the tunes of the right become a bit louder. And actually you have got to take action to turn the volume down on them. All the time you have to be realising where the next attacks are going to come from.
The fundamental delusion is to compare this progressive government or any progressive government with perfection. No government is perfect. No government does all of the things that you want it to do. But what you have always got to do in progressive politics is to say, what is the choice? I have lost count of the numbers of people at various elections – where the progressive left is incumbent and then has gone on to lose – who have said that there is no difference really, it doesn’t matter. Three or four years later, they realise there was quite a big difference.
I always remember in 1979 the great delusion was that somehow Labour lost because it wasn’t leftwing enough. There are people who write nonsense in some of the newspapers today of pretty much the same ilk, just warmed up for the 21st century. This argument gripped the party between 1979 and 1983 and I used to say at party meetings at the time: ‘Why do they vote for Margaret Thatcher if they want a more leftwing Labour government? Why would they do something so irrational?’ But that was the mindset. That was why we lost. And if anyone is in any doubt about the way in which the political weather changes when you lose power, look at what’s happened to the Democrats since Bill Clinton left office.
You recently compared your relationship with the country to a marriage. Have you ever felt like filing for divorce?
No – but that’s not to say that the feeling is mutual. I am deeply committed to what we are doing and I can see the changes when I go and visit a school or see the investment there is in the health service. We have got to carry this on, or else we can go back with Michael Howard. He represents everything that the Tories stood for in the past, so you know exactly what you are going to get. You don’t have to gaze into the crystal ball: you just need to read the book. I can’t believe that we would want to go back to that.