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Podcast Summary: The News Agents - "Ken Clarke on the Budget from Hell"
Episode Overview In this episode of *The News Agents*, hosts Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, and Lewis Goodall welcome Lord Ken Clarke, a veteran politician with over 55 years of experience. They discuss the upcoming budget, the political landscape in the UK, Brexit, and the challenges faced by the current government.
Key Points Discussed
Introduction of Ken Clarke
- Background: Lord Ken Clarke is a prominent figure in UK politics, having held various cabinet positions under Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and David Cameron.
- Political Longevity: Elected in 1970, Clarke has witnessed significant changes in UK politics.
The Importance of the Upcoming Budget
- Existential Budget: The budget is seen as critical for Labour leaders Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, with high stakes for the government’s future.
- Clarke’s Perspective: Reflects on the gravity of the situation, likening it to some of the most challenging economic times in the past.
Reflections on Political Culture
- Cultural Changes: Clarke contrasts the deferential political culture of his youth with today's more confrontational and media-driven environment.
- Accountability: He observes that governments were more accountable to the House of Commons and their backbenchers in earlier times.
Clarke's Political Philosophy
- Political Interests: From a young age, Clarke was deeply interested in politics, influenced by post-war austerity and the welfare state.
- Conservative Ideology: He believes that the Conservative Party in his youth was more reformist and progressive compared to its current state.
Assessment of the Current Government
- Performance Evaluation: Clarke criticizes the current government’s performance, citing poor policy choices and lack of clear vision.
- Call for Action: He emphasizes the necessity for tax increases and spending cuts to stabilize the economy, reflecting on historical precedents where such measures led to recovery.
Critique of Key Political Figures
- Rachel Reeves and the Labour Party: Clarke expresses disappointment in Reeves’s handling of her first budget, suggesting it was poorly executed.
- Keir Starmer's Leadership: Describes Starmer as an intelligent man but lacking essential political skills, impacting his effectiveness as a leader.
The Political Landscape
- Public Sentiment: The current political climate shows widespread public discontent with traditional parties, leading to the rise of populist figures.
- Dangerous Moment: Clarke warns of the implications of voting for polarizing figures, highlighting a serious threat to democracy.
Discussion on Brexit
- Consequences of Brexit: Clarke reflects on the long-term impacts of Brexit, acknowledging its transformative effects on UK politics.
- Future of EU Relations: He speculates on the possibility of rejoining the EU or its institutions in the future, emphasizing public sentiment regarding economic impacts.
Personal Reflections
- Life After Politics: Clarke shares insights from his personal life, reflecting on aging, loss, and his satisfaction with his political career.
- Legacy: He expresses pride in his service and reflects on the values he upheld throughout his career.
Key Takeaways
- Experience Matters: Clarke’s extensive experience provides valuable insights into the current political landscape, emphasizing the importance of accountability and reform.
- Judgment on Policy: His critique serves as a reminder that sound policy choices are crucial, especially in times of economic distress.
- Political Environment: The episode underscores the significance of leadership qualities and public sentiment in shaping political outcomes.
Conclusion The conversation with Ken Clarke in this episode of *The News Agents* provides a comprehensive view of the challenges facing the UK government as it navigates a critical budget. Clarke’s reflections on his career and the evolution of politics in the UK highlight the importance of experience and sound policy in addressing contemporary issues.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Lewis Goodall:This is a Global Player original podcast. Next week will be a big political week. The budget, perhaps the biggest political moment of the year. Much rest economically, perhaps much more rest politically, for the futures of the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who perhaps incredibly feel as if they are hanging by the most slender of threads. One man who has seen his share of budgets, including his own, come and go, is Lord Ken Clark, Chancellor of the Exchequer for John Major in the 90s, Health Secretary, Education Secretary for Margaret Thatcher in the 80s, Justice Secretary for David Cameron in the 2010s.
0:45Lewis Goodall:His was a political career spanning half a century, becoming an MP in 1970. Today, he enjoys his perch in the Lords, but few can claim his political longevity. nor now his experience of political history. As Reeves faces what could be a make or break budget, we've come to Nottingham, in the county that Clarke represented in the Commons for all those years, to speak to the man himself about the political moment in which we are in, and all the many more that he has lived through. Welcome to the News Agents.
1:25Ken Clarke:The News Agents.
1:27Lewis Goodall:Lord Clark, Ken Clark, thank you so much for inviting us into your home in Nottingham. For people who are listening rather than watching, you are smoking one of your vinegar cigars, which you were just telling us about.
1:39Ken Clarke:You didn't tell me that you didn't mind if I smoked. I don't mind at all. I'm getting too laid back in my old age.
1:45Lewis Goodall:No, that's absolutely fine. I was particularly intrigued that you said that you smoked one on the way back from the health centre this morning. Absolutely. Is cigars your remaining vice now, Lord Clark?
1:55Ken Clarke:The only one I confess to because it's so evident. A decent brandy in the evening, but I actually can't think of any... I generally don't think I've got any other vices.
2:07Lewis Goodall:I mean, you're a politician who was always famed for having many interests, though, many hobbies.
2:13Ken Clarke:Yes, well, the media used to get frightfully excited about the fact I used to go to Ronnie Scott's jazz club and I was a bird watcher and all these kinds of things. He said, well, I think, you know, I'm actually obsessively interested in politics. I have been since I was a little boy in short trousers. But you become too obsessive. It's absurd. You've got to take part in real life. And, you know, I'm almost as keen on football as I am on politics and cricket. And Formula One motor racing, I follow quite closely. closely.
2:48Lewis Goodall:Well, I want to talk a lot about contemporary politics and get the benefit of your experience on that. But since you mentioned your childhood, I mean, you have had an extraordinarily long political career. Very few politicians have had as many jobs as you've had and seen as many governments sort of come and go. I just wonder if you could just sort of compare the political world of your childhood and also when you first entered the House compared to today, when you left the
3:16Ken Clarke:It's amazing how the culture of a country can change in one man's lifetime. So, you know, as a little boy, I was following the Attlee government, which is one of my great governments in my lifetime, I think, created the welfare state. And you were born in 1940. I was born in 1940. By the time I was seven or eight, I was reading my dad's newspaper, following Stafford Cripps Budgets. The world in which I lived then, the near bankrupt austerity of post-war England and the political exchanges were just quite totally different to the actual style of politics, the content of politics. Indeed, I was first elected in 1970 as one of the seats that we gained from Labour that gave Ted Heath his majority.
4:02Ken Clarke:An election that few thought the Conservatives would win. No, they didn't. It was a bit of a surprise. We were even behind in the polls at one point in the campaign. But in the end, we didn't have much of a majority, but we won it. And the House of Commons then, political exchanges in the newspapers, brought no relation to now. The world was deferential towards politicians then. And the reporting, although you still had tabloid newspapers and lots of gossipy stuff and all the rest of it, actually earnest reporting of policy issues and debate was there. If you took the Times, the House of Commons debate every day was reported.
4:49Ken Clarke:There was a page of the House of Commons and the speeches that had been made in the chamber the day before. The most helpful MP to me was the coal miner who had beaten me at Mansfield the election before. Don Concanon, who became a very good minister, was one of about 30-odd miners. Don had finished his last shift in the middle of his election campaign when he got elected and beat me in 66. And our side had real Knights of the Shire. Not idiots, all of them. Some of them may have the style of Tweedy Knights of the Shire, but were pretty shrewd men. Did you ever feel out of place? I was one of a whole lot of people like me who'd come in.
5:32Ken Clarke:I was one of the first of the 11-plus boys who came in on the Conservative side. And so I think my intake, this was all beginning to change on both sides of the House. There was a start of it. But it was all a much more powerful body. People took marm on notice of it. Governments were genuinely accountable to the House of Commons and seriously accountable to the House of Commons and accountable to their own backbenchers, but certainly accountable if there was any real feeling in the House of Commons. whereas in recent years I think more and more everything's obsessed by the media and day by day we get half a dozen opinion polls every week and lots of young men are hired in number 10 to follow them and try to glue themselves to see if they can glue the government to improving its position in the opinion polls it has changed the sort of people in the House of Commons has changed I mean, they're all graduates now, most of them.
6:38Ken Clarke:And the ones who are unlucky enough not to become graduates are educated people. And it's not the full cross-section of the population that it was when I first arrived.
6:50Lewis Goodall:Were you always political?
6:52Ken Clarke:What was your earliest political memory? Well, as I've said a moment ago, I just started reading my dad's newspaper and was hooked on the politics. I don't make it up. I mean, I've told the story many times before. In my primary school, this was in a pit village in Derbyshire, in my primary school, a couple of us were asked to come out in front of the class, say what we were going to do when we grew up. And my mate who was called up, he said he was going to be a lorry driver or something, you know, pretty reasonable. And I said I was going to be an MP, rather to the amazement of my teacher, let alone the class, because I was following politics and got hooked in it and never wavered.
7:34Ken Clarke:You can't be certain you're going to be an MP just because you want to be. But I remain obsessed and I became very political when I was a student, got engaged in national student conservative. That's where I decided I was a conservative.
7:49Lewis Goodall:Do you think that you were ever, I mean, you hinted at it, you didn't come from a very conventional conservative background. You were part of a new generation of conservatives. Yes, a generation of 11 plus boys. Indeed. Do you think that you ever suffered in your political career at any point from snobbery towards you within the Conservative Party or more widely? No, no. I was never aware of it.
8:10Ken Clarke:No. No, I can say that. I don't remember anybody rebuffing me in any. I mean, obviously, there were some people who fitted more naturally into what in those days was very much the rather like a St. James Club, the atmosphere of the smoking room and in and around the House of Commons. I can't see why you fit in. Yes, precisely. In those days, there were no problems in smoking anywhere you wanted until the campaigning began. Quite rightly, the campaigning began. No, no, there was never any resistance.
8:46Lewis Goodall:Why did you become a Conservative? Because, again, with that background, you could easily become a Labour.
8:50Ken Clarke:When I went to Cambridge, I joined all the political clubs. I hadn't decided which party was going to have the privilege of having me as a member. I was taking part in the union, but I wasn't particularly... In my first year, I became a Cambridge University Conservative Association guy. The reason was, if you think back to those days, I'm in the late 50s now, the Conservative Party was the party that was modernising, was taking us on from the post-war world. Butler and his followers, my great hero Ian MacLeod, Ted Heath, Reggie Maudling, they were beginning to get the country to take off in the 1950s.
9:30Ken Clarke:The Labour Party was the party that was absolutely rooted in the Attlee years. They hadn't moved on from... Post-war welfare state. Post-war welfare state, nationalisation, dominated by the trade unions. And I just thought that the Conservative Party was the party that wanted to change things. Harold Macmillan, who was the leader when I was first actively involved in the Conservative Party, put on this air of war and all that, and the country gentleman, and he was a country gentleman, I suppose, by background, but he was quite radical and quite reforming. He'd even lost the whip before the war for being too left-wing and anti-appeasement.
10:15Ken Clarke:And so it was an actively reforming, improving party. and here was the Conservative Party doing things and the Labour Party had got itself a bit stuck in the world of the 1940s.
10:30Lewis Goodall:You allude to just how many governments you've seen come and go, some of which, of course, you were a member of. How would you assess the current government's performance so far in the 16 months or so it's been in office, 18 months?
10:42Ken Clarke:It's made a pretty terrible start. I think that seems to be universally accepted. It took over, as several governments have in my lifetime, a really dreadful situation. I mean, you know, trying to be a bit balanced. The governments of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were dreadful and did great harm, particularly to the economy. And in some cases, the standards of public life. And Rishi wasn't making much progress. Rishi was doing his best. Rishi was OK. But he was really getting nowhere. and the Labour Party was also unpopular because of the protest votes being cast for other parties and the way the votes were fragmented between the various parties.
11:33Ken Clarke:An unpopular Labour Party won an enormous majority. And I hoped, I had high hopes of them, I hoped they would begin to sort things out, because I am a patriot. Just because they're not my political party, I don't want the British economy to be wrecked. I want the British economy to succeed. I would like to see living standards rising again, not falling as they are for many people at the moment. And I think a political opponent like me even has been disappointed, badly disappointed, by their performance so far. And why do you think that is? Why do you think they've struggled? I think they made the wrong choices of policy and they don't have clear, medium-term, long-term visions.
12:21Ken Clarke:I was always a rather cognitive and reforming politician. I was always controversial in most of my jobs because I kept changing things and the public don't like change. But I did have a kind of agenda. I knew where I was hoping to put relevant bits of my portfolio in two or three years' time. Now, you might be right, you might be wrong, because if you're wrong, you're in terrible trouble if you make a Horlicks and you're making things worse. But if things go right, however unpopular you were in the first place, you will wind up popular and supportive. The public will forget that they were opposed to what you did.
13:00Ken Clarke:I mean, Blair just carried on with all the Thatcher reforms of his admirer of Thatcher, and he carried on with the health and education reforms because they'd worked. and actually carried on with what had been our successful economic policy in the end. This government has made a dreadful start and Rachel Reeves, I used to get into trouble before the election with some of my colleagues, I used to say nice things about Rachel Reeves who I thought looked quite promising as Shania Chancellor. Her first budget was absolutely disastrous and she's thrashing about And now she's made things worse, a little bit worse, by conducting an absurd debate, trying things out in public and floating things so that her special advisers can see how it plays in the opinion polls and announcing things and then dropping them again, creating an even gloomier atmosphere.
14:00Ken Clarke:and they've got to get it right and they've got to put their tin hat on they've got to raise taxes they've got to cut and strain the growth of public spending cut public spending they've got to begin to get this huge burden of debt off our back and they've got to concentrate on doing things that actually make us attractive to investors improve the performance of our industries and our services and well as far as I can see for the last month they're faffing about again. What would you do if you were Chancellor now?
14:36Lewis Goodall:You know what the budget process is like. I think I would.
14:38Ken Clarke:You have to raise taxation obviously. The debt burden that they've inherited is extraordinary. If you told me as recently as when I was Chancellor that I was going to live to see Britain with a burden of debt of about 100 % of our GDP almost. it was around 30 30 percent or so the interest on our debt would cost the taxpayer more every year more than the entire budget for defense the army the navy the air force the whole lot put together i wouldn't have believed you and it makes us at constant risk of a financial crisis if the people we're hoping will lend us money suddenly get a bit worried that we might default.
15:26Ken Clarke:We're not far from that at all.
15:28Lewis Goodall:But the argument is that we're overtaxed. Some people argue that we're overtaxed already, that people's cost of living pressures are enormous, and that therefore increasing income tax on national insurance is problematic. We are overtaxed,
15:40Ken Clarke:because again, the state has expanded. I mean, in real terms, this government is now spending far more than the Blair government ever did. Many of our public services are in terrible trouble. There are lots and lots of lobbies now, big organised lobby groups who put forward on every subject known to man all kinds of quite compelling, quite good arguments about things you might improve. The only remedy they have is you spend more money on it. And it's no good imagining that if you just let the state keep expanding each year, borrow more money to do so, that it isn't all going to end in tears. Politics is tough.
16:22Ken Clarke:You don't get easy options. You have to react to events. And right now she has to raise taxes, cut public spending, resist these lobbies and do it in some way. Which is, she's decided that this is in the best national interest. This is what the British economy needs to be put back on its feet. She might be amazed. She might repeat. If she'd done that, she'd wasted one budget already. But if she'd done that, she might be able to relive for the Labour Party the experience of Margaret Thatcher in her first term, where we were hated halfway through because we'd done all the right things, including Geoffrey Howe's 1981 budget, which raised taxes and cut public spending.
17:11Ken Clarke:It worked. Things started getting better. 1983, we had a decent majority. Do you think that she has...
17:19Lewis Goodall:Her argument today has been, she did an interview with The Times, where she said that she is sick of hearing men in particular, perhaps men like yourself, Lord Clarke, mansplaining to her how to be Chancellor.
17:31Ken Clarke:I'm an ardent feminist. One of the amazing things that's happened in my political lifetime is the number of women in politics. I have served under three women leaders of my party. I have served in cabinets with lots of women. I think when I look, I think the House of Commons, one way to which it's improved when I look round, is it's not quite 50-50. We're nearly there. It's one of the great things that's happened in my lifetime, the triumph of feminism. It's no good thinking that she's being criticised because she's a woman. That is deceiving herself. She's being criticised because her first budget, all she did was borrow billions more, and then the tax she chose to raise was the worst possible tax to choose, a tax on employment and on employers.
18:22Ken Clarke:This year's school leavers, this year's graduates from universities, find that the jobs market's completely dried up. for large numbers of them. Why? Because her choice of tax was catastrophic to think that putting up employers' national insurance was the right thing to do. Income tax, and the ones they stupidly ruled out in their manifesto, is the fairest tax. The more you earn, the more you pay. And the rate's higher the more you earn. It's the basic tax. I never liked putting it up. I reduced it from the mad levels that used to exist before me. But right now, the straightforward thing is to raise income tax, probably by a couple of pence, which was slightly deflationary because it takes demand.
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19:11Ken Clarke:She said she was going to do that or indicated she was going to do that and has now indicated that she worked. She tried it out. I mean, we used to have a thing, again, in my day, and it only started dying out in the Blair government, really. silly name we gave it was budget purder what it meant was that everybody connected with the treasury chancellor all the way to the doorkeeper went silent before a budget the reason for that you upset the market you could actually cause a bit of a panic you could people start trying to make money if you started hinting what you were going to do and so on well hugh dalton famously It was an absolute sin to leak any part of the budget.
19:52Ken Clarke:She's presided over not a very well organised debate, but she keeps floating things and trying them out. Well, do you think that, I mean, let's be brutal, Lord Clark, do you think that she's up to being Chancellor? If she makes any more frightful messes, so far, I regret to say, I mean, bear in mind, I am a Conservative. I'm not politically in line with her anyway but she's a nice woman I'm sorry to be probably being quite strong in my criticisms of her if she ever my chance were to watch this she doesn't get upset but the honest truth is I don't think she is up to it no the two catastrophic things she's done are to make the wrong choice of taxation in the budget to make no attempt to cut public spending and now to run this absolute debate.
20:46Ken Clarke:Sensible investors in most areas of life have not been investing for the last month or two because so much uncertainty and doubt and gloom has now descended on a talking about our economy and the Chancellor's been leading all that.
21:04Lewis Goodall:Do you think that Starmer, I mean again you've seen Prime Ministers come and go, what do you make of Starmer as a Prime Minister? He's an unusual figure in lots of ways.
21:11Ken Clarke:He's a very nice guy, He's an intelligent guy. Rachel's a very intelligent woman. He's got all the abilities, intellectual abilities. He has absolutely no political skills, whatever. He had a very successful career. He's a very distinguished lawyer. You think it's that bad? He has no political skills whatsoever? Well, I just don't think he could sell an overcoat to an Eskimo. I don't think he can have done much advocacy when he was a lawyer, even though he was a DPP, he must have done some. I mean, they don't even take credit for the things that they've done. And fortunately, as I say, he's a very nice man.
21:52Ken Clarke:He's perfectly all right. He's a nice, intelligent, decent guy. But he doesn't have a big personality. Charisma is not his big thing, is it? Well, I was going to say, is that, is one of their problems,
22:06Lewis Goodall:both their problems perhaps, both Starmer and Reeves, there are clearly lots of structural problems which afflict them, many of which are not their fault, stuff that they inherited.
22:13Ken Clarke:Oh, inherited, dreadful inheritance.
22:15Lewis Goodall:But nonetheless, is it something about them that we're in this era of big personalities in politics, we're in this era of noise, content, all of this sort of stuff, and there's something about them that struggles to break through in a way that probably, if you'd been a young politician now, you were very well, you were quite a personality-led politician in a lot of ways, you would have been quite successful in this era, don't you think?
22:35Ken Clarke:You do need somehow certain skills and certain personality traits to be really successful in politics. I mean, there were big personalities in my day. You know, Harold Macmillan, Tony Benn. Thatcher was a big personality. Enoch Powell, Thatcher. Thatcher was a larger than my personality. It is something in politics that you need. The present mood's different. What's happened now is the public are angry. I have never known, it hasn't happened since the First World War, both the major parties are deeply unpopular. Politicians are deeply unpopular. People are rejecting orthodox centre-left, centre-right politics.
23:26Ken Clarke:we've had such bad government since 2019 really that people feel worse off and people on ordinary incomes and lower incomes are worse off probably and gdp per person is negative the little growth we have is because huge number of immigrants coming in and the population expanding so rapidly but GDP per person is declining. And so what people are voting for, it's larger than life, amusing, angry, big personalities, simple solutions, expressing their rage at the political class, promising sort of extraordinary things. Best presentational politicians are one on the far right, Nigel Farage, one on the far left, Zach Polanski, and they have an enormous following in the polls.
24:23Ken Clarke:And people vote for them not because of their policies or because they think they can really run a government. They vote for them to express their anger, their protest at the Conservative and Labour parties. Now, this is the most dangerous situation I've ever seen, a real threat to our democracy. Well, I want to talk about that, but just before we do,
24:46Lewis Goodall:just while we're on the economy and the budget, is one of Rachel Reeve's problems, the OBR, i.e. that budgets have become, in a way, which was not true in your day, because the OBR did not exist, an attempt for chancellors to almost be chasing their tail the entire time, sort of looking at five-year time horizon. It's not the OBR's fault, it's what they've been asked to do, but that actually the OBR has become more of a hindrance to chancellors.
25:09Ken Clarke:Well, I think it's not working very well institutionalising it, though I'm glad, because of the populism of present politics and the fact that people keep, you know, we keep having governments chasing opinion polls, we probably do need it. I mean, you know, Liz Truss demonstrated that if there's no public constraint, some sort of discipline needs to be imposed on the political class so that you don't occasionally have some idiot who turns up, this is not Rachel Reeves, just doing totally populist things. But if you don't have the OBR, what the OBR is doing needs to be done properly inside the Treasury.
25:48Ken Clarke:You need economic forecasts. You need a good objective look at the state of the public finances. You need fiscal discipline. And OBR has become a slightly peculiar organisation which has now given this institutional role which didn't exist, as you say, in my day. We'll be back with more from Lord Clarke just after this.
26:15Ken Clarke:News you can trust and the conversations that matter.
26:18Lewis Goodall:With award-winning journalists at the heart of the stories from the UK and around the world. Breaking news here in Edinburgh. I'm Simon Marks. My American Week is next. Reporting from the heart of Cardiff.
26:29Ken Clarke:Discover how today's story affects your life.
26:32Lewis Goodall:Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app.
26:36Ken Clarke:LBC. Leading Britain's conversation.
26:44Ken Clarke:The News Agents.
26:45Lewis Goodall:Look, you said something interesting just now. Oh, good. Lots of interesting things. In between cigar smoking. You said something interesting, which is that you... You thought that we've never had such a dangerous moment as we're in now, politically. You think this is a deeply dangerous moment. Why do you think it's dangerous? What's dangerous about it? What could happen?
27:06Ken Clarke:Well, we're not going to have a sensible government if people just pass protest votes for polarised people with rather hard right, hard left views.
27:16Lewis Goodall:But if the centre isn't providing what the people need and require and want, then is it any surprise?
27:21Ken Clarke:I think people are voting because of what they're against, not what they're for. That's why I don't think it's far too soon to say Farage is going to win an election and so on. They vote for Farage to stuff it to the Conservatives and the Labour Party. What sort of prime minister do you think he'd be? He's going to try and be a serious one. He's quite obviously now trying to be statesman-like and he's trying to think about policies which he hasn't bothered about before.
27:46Lewis Goodall:Does it scare you, the prospect of his being Prime Minister?
27:48Ken Clarke:It does a bit, because I think he hasn't come up with anything very sensible yet at all. What do you think it could mean for British democracy if he were Prime Minister? Well, it's far too soon to speculate about the next election. Anybody starts talking about what an election's going to do in three years' time is often useless. We don't even know what it'll be about. If it was an election now, it would produce a continental-type hung parliament with four or five parties, finding it very, very difficult to find a majority based on a coalition between any two of them. We would have more deadlock and frequent elections, and we might even have more frequent changes of prime minister.
28:32Ken Clarke:I don't think this country is ever going to start going for some strongman dictator.
28:39Lewis Goodall:Do you think he'd last as Prime Minister if he were elected?
28:42Ken Clarke:I don't think he'd be elected Prime Minister. I hope. Firstly, in three years' time, politics won't look as it is now. There are very dangerous things happening in the world, a lot of which will have a knock-on effect on us. We don't even know what the main subjects will be. Now, Farage gets his support at the moment because he expresses the anger which people feel. People vote for him because of what he's against, and they find him an attractive, quite amusing person to vote for just to stuff it to the orthodox politicians. When an election occurs in three years' time, we don't know whether the situation of the general public will be improving or be worse or anything like that but people will hesitate i think because they will begin to think well is he really a prime minister could this man run any organization let alone one as important as the government of the united kingdom nonetheless he's the most influential figure on the british right since thatcher isn't he oh he's had more effect on politics than any my living contemporaries um not least because uh absurd decision of david cameron to put the whole thing to an opinion poll uh the eu he got brexit yes he called it a referendum uh he again we had protest votes that's what that was it was an anti-establishment anti-immigration uh or maybe people just wanted to leave, Lord Clark.
30:22Ken Clarke:Maybe they just wanted to leave. They wanted to show what they thought of foreigners coming to work in this country and what they thought were these bureaucrats in Brussels, so they had no idea what the bureaucrats did. They didn't, for example, vote to leave the single market and the currency union. I'm probably being patronising, but I suspect the majority of the population didn't know what the single market It was. You still blame David Cameron for all of that? I do a bit. I've said David. David was a good prime minister. That was the one catastrophic error he had. And we had a great row about it when I read in the newspapers, despite the fact that I was in his cabinet and that I hadn't previously known he was proposing to do this.
31:09Ken Clarke:What did you say to him? I said he went on, pray we will appear in the mind, about everything he was putting in peril, about our whole role in the world. our political influence and the health of our economy. George Osborne was also against holding the referendum. How did he respond to you when you said that? He was... The reason he called the referendum was because he was, like John Major before him, he was having such trouble with his Brexiteers on the back benches in his cabinet. And it was to get the Brexiteers to shut up. He took the view he'd got an election to fight and if he promised them a referendum after the election, they'd all shut up and they'd get in behind him.
31:51Ken Clarke:The idea we might lose when I raised it, he laughed at. He thought it was inconceivable that we didn't get to lose. It was absolutely absurd. He's always denied that. In defence of David, that, of course, was the view of others. When we did lose on Brexit election night, Farage had gone to bed and had to be woken up to be told he'd won.
32:15Lewis Goodall:He said, I mean, Cameron has said since that he always thought he might lose. That's a mischaracterisation. That wasn't what he said to me. He dismissed the idea of losing. And if that's the case, I mean, that's a gross complacency, isn't it? It turned out to be.
32:29Ken Clarke:I mean, I don't think I thought we were going to lose either. But you accepted it was a risk. Opinion polls are no way of running anything, let alone a government. I wouldn't run a Welkstall, to use a corny old phrase I always use by holding opinion polls about it, because opinion polls change. You might get a different... And it was a very close result. Indeed. It was a photo-finish result.
32:51Lewis Goodall:Do you think it will ever be reversed? Do you think we will rejoin these days?
32:54Ken Clarke:Yes, I think it will, but not in my lifetime, obviously, but it might be in yours. I wouldn't reopen it now because it was Brexit and views Euroscepticism that brought all the anger and nastiness into politics, which started after the fall of Margaret, and to try to reverse the referendum now would, I think, in the present mood of anger, public protest would make that even worse. I think you could join the single market of the customs union now because the majority of the public realise that the country's poorer than it otherwise would have been. It's doing great damage to our economic prospects.
33:37Ken Clarke:Are you still a conservative? I'm a somewhat discontented conservative. I'm a mainstream conservative. For now, I'm a Conservative. I got thrown out of the Parliamentary Party. Boris took the whip away from me, but I never supported Boris anyway, so that wasn't too surprising. Well, I got on very well with him personally. He's a very amusing, very nice chap, very intelligent chap, but I never supported him as Prime Minister, so he took the whip away from me. And then he offered me a peerage, and I take the Conservative whip in the House of Lords now, though I only take the Conservative whip when I turn up there.
34:12Ken Clarke:and don't always, because they know if I'm listening to the debate, they're in trouble, and I might not vote for them. I am still, if I had a vote in the general election... Which you don't measure up here. In my old constituency of Rushliff, with the Rushliff Conservative Association, where I have so many friends still, I would vote Conservative here.
34:33Lewis Goodall:What about if you were in, say, Suella Braverman's constituency, or someone like that?
34:37Ken Clarke:It depends on whether the party had done anything extraordinary. well, yes, let's not get into personalities but I probably would vote Conservative anywhere else
34:48Lewis Goodall:but the truth is, doesn't it look like that
34:49Ken Clarke:I could conceive of myself as a good old-fashioned, I'm an old codger so I could at the moment conceivably be an Orpington man to use the old phrase and vote Liberal Democrat but only as a protest, I am a Conservative, I'm a mainstream Conservative but in a way and Kemi I support
35:07Lewis Goodall:do you think she's doing a good job?
35:08Ken Clarke:Well, yes, she is in an impossible situation, yes. I would stick with Kemi. Kemi's OK. She's more right-wing than me, but she's not a nasty right-winger. She's a perfectly nice, pleasant woman. And people have to understand, instead of the party indulging in its usual hobby of getting rid of the leader, which is why we had so many prime ministers in the last few years, they should stick with their leader and accept that we were so unpopular. We made such a mess of those last few years. that it's about to be a year or two before anybody starts listening to it.
35:43Lewis Goodall:So all those people suggesting that Robert Jenrick would be doing a better job.
35:47Ken Clarke:Oh, Kemi is right. It's time we settle down through some policies and going for what will be that takes some time. The process of winning back our reputation as the most competent of the parties and the one that's safe with the money and can run the economy and, you know, Middle England can trust and rely on.
36:10Lewis Goodall:But there's no energy, is there, Leclerc? You say that you're a mainstream conservative. The truth is you're actually quite, I suppose these days, a bit of a fringe conservative because the centre of conservative politics has moved so much. Most modern conservatives, including young MPs, are much more aligned to Nigel Farage than they are to you.
36:27Ken Clarke:Well, that could be the case. Well, it's probably about time I had that. I mean, our two-party system is based on two very broad pre-pact coalitions. In a PR system, in a continental system, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party would never have existed. Left to right in both parties is very wide. And what traditional parties involved was presenting these two pre-pact coalitions to the public, seeing who preferred it. Now, you're quite right. I am a Conservative. Throughout my career, I've been in the majority faction in the Conservative Party. And it may be, I don't know, I don't know enough of the new MPs.
37:12Ken Clarke:It could be I'm in the minority, but quite a lot of my perfectly reasonable, more right-wing friends have had to put up that for the entire career. And the Conservative Party hasn't dropped me off the edge yet on its left-hand edge. What do you think Margaret Thatcher would make of the Conservative Party today? Well, I think she'd be fairly horrified about the state we've got ourselves into, and she would have very strong views, as she usually did. But, you know, I was on Thatcher's front bench, shadow minister of minister, in her cabinet for a long time, from the beginning of her reign to the end.
37:51Ken Clarke:And she would be certainly agreeing with the, I don't know, The first thing to do is decide what policies are we going to do, what has to be done to get this country back on its feet again, what is going to make things better. And she took no notice of opinion polls and Berner could never get her to read a newspaper. And she just knew what, in her opinion, needed to be done to get the country right.
38:15Lewis Goodall:She is lionised today by the Conservative Party, many elements of the Conservative Party and many beyond it. What do, as someone who knew her, who worked for her, What does that lionisation forget? What does that cliché forget? Well, I'm a great fan.
38:31Ken Clarke:I had great rows with her. I have described her in my time as a bloody difficult woman. I guess she was trying. But you could have ferocious rows with her. Nothing she enjoyed more than a good political argument. You only got into trouble if you didn't know your brief. because she would have read every blasted word she'd been given about the subject she was about to argue with you on. But if you could hold your own and you knew you were as top of the subject as she was and all the rest of it, you could win sometimes. You could change her mind. My health reforms were my health reforms. They weren't what she wanted me to do, which was go to an American system.
39:14Ken Clarke:And that had to be thrashed out at a lot of meetings. But what she did was give us all the courage of her convictions. Government had a sense of purpose. I keep going on about the national interest, but it's not just opposed. The two best governments of my lifetime were the Attlee government and the Thatcher government. You could not have two more contrasting sets of people, drastic sets of policy. but they're both governments left the country in a much better state than they finished
39:49Lewis Goodall:than they had when they started she a good boss you enjoyed working for him i enjoyed working
39:55Ken Clarke:for her she was stimulating uh i mean looking back even more so you know there are times when you go back to the office and kick the waste paper back and you walked in and say oh she's bloody impossible she could be very rude actually she was the boss so she was allowed to be rude you weren't allowed to be rude how was she rude to you what did she say well nothing serious but you know so this is oh ken you're always like this you know she starts of personalizing the bit but nigel lawson used to have terrible rouse with her but nigel was a key ally she went off
40:29Lewis Goodall:the rails at the end she went people claim she would be a brexit here today do you think that's
40:33Ken Clarke:true uh she she was a eurosceptic her view was that she was saw the european union as an economic thing she believed i do free trade open free trade she was the author of the single market i mean she wasn't the author of it but of the european leaders it was her it wasn't coal it wasn't de l 'or. The continentals were quite resistant. There were protectionists, you know, they're farmers, all this. The single market was her biggest single achievement in Europe. The moment it started becoming a political union, she switched off. What she wanted was a European economic union, a free trade area, which she thought would strengthen all of us in the global economy and keep us all a rich What do you think she'd make
41:31Lewis Goodall:as a great fan of the Anglo-American alliance What do you think she'd make of President Trump?
41:39Ken Clarke:She'd be horrified whether she handling people she could handle people she could be disarming she'd suddenly relax and say now come on come on Ken for heaven's sake and see how she'd have handled Trump I've no idea because Keir just comparing her with Keir Keir's one success quite amazingly is he's rather good at foreign policy a subject he's not publicly taken the faintest interest in before he became He gets a lot of criticism for spending too much time out of the country He's actually, just to say a few polite words about the present government Keir is very good amongst other things at handling Trump he's actually very good at foreign policy, he's found a new
42:26Lewis Goodall:interest late in his life he gets a lot of criticism for spending too much time out of the country they call him never hear kia do you think that's fair that's a lot it's most unfair
42:35Ken Clarke:uh the the not only is the country in a frightful mess and in danger of decline the global political scene is more dangerous than at any time since the second world war we are no longer a great power we've been declining as a power brexit had a lot to do with that but it's not the only thing that did that. But insofar as we need to keep influence, a lot of our interests are at stake in this dangerous world. So to have a prime minister who's good at foreign policy and gives Britain a bigger voice than it might otherwise have, I give him a big tick for that. Just finally, Lord Clarke,
43:15Lewis Goodall:just to go to the point of your life that you're in now, you know, you go to the Lords and so on. Observer of events now. Observer of events, indeed, after a very long political career. We're in the house that you shared, you were saying before we started, for 30 years with your late wife. You live alone now. You're facing your... You're in your ninth decade. Just wondering if there's anything that you've learned in recent years about life, about living alone, about being older, that you'd wished you'd known when you were a younger man.
43:45Ken Clarke:Oh, not my scene, really. I just wish to see out my days living independently, in familiar surroundings, in my house. Whether I'm managed, I don't know, I'm very disabled. All right when I'm sitting down. I get very irritated by my disability. The aches and pains of old age, my reaction to them is annoyance. They do affect the quality of my life. But I'm reasonably content. It's a strange way, which I don't think many of people listening or watching us will be able to follow, to wind into a sort of two-based way of life with a couple of days in the House of Lords. Not many people can do that, but it's a reasonable way of seeing out my time.
44:31I look back on my life with contentment.
44:35Ken Clarke:I have a great family, and my career, I was so lucky. I did so many things. Do you ever still regret not becoming Prime Minister? Of course. every MP everybody gets elected parliament privately is very ambitious and wishes to get
44:53Lewis Goodall:prime minister did you ever used to think about what you'd say addressing the country for the
44:57Ken Clarke:first time all my friends I had a lot of friends who campaigned very hard for me I drove them up the wall I never campaigned hard enough in the campaign I used to take the view as surely everybody knows the candidates they've made their minds up already um which they used to say was me being lazy but that was I just couldn't get out of I couldn't see much point in all this and the reason which most of my friends and supporters agree with me, the real reason I never became leader, I tell myself, was I was too pro-European. And my friends did use to, several of them, press me in more than one campaign, make a Eurosceptic speech, start sounding doubtful.
45:36Ken Clarke:And as any of them would tell you, I always refused to do so. I was very pro-European. Michael Heseldine had the same problem. Our party was pro-European in those days. It wasn't quite as pro-European as me and Michael.
45:53Lewis Goodall:And you don't regret that? You don't regret just bending a little bit?
45:55Ken Clarke:Well, I would have felt such a sense of guilt getting up making some... That really would have been... I think most politicians are extremely honourable. The public are quite mistaken in believing they're all a band of rogues, they're only idiot for what they get out of it, on all sides. but if I'd ever given that speech I'd have thought Clark you're behaving like a scurrilous politician and you're saying things you don't believe actually and just for your own ambition so perhaps I should have done you never know because I'd have liked to be prime minister
46:26Lewis Goodall:If you were a young man would you do it all again
46:29Ken Clarke:go into politics again? Oh I'd do it all again yeah and the chances of my being so lucky in being able to fulfil my ambitions and you know I spent 25 continuous years as a shadow minister or a minister and under four prime ministers beginning with Heath wound up having another four years in the coalition cabinet of David Cameron if you told me when I graduated from university and started as a lawyer and started looking for a constituency to fight against some experience, that I was going to have a career like that, I would never have imagined it. I'd have settled for two or three years as a parliamentary under Secretary of State, which is what you normally get.
47:18Ken Clarke:So I sound like I'm getting boastful. I'm not getting boastful, I'm getting grateful. I hope I did some good in some of my jobs. But I look back on my career with intense pleasure.
47:29Lewis Goodall:Lord Clarke, thank you so much for inviting us into your home today. Pleasure.
47:43Ken Clarke:The News Agents.
47:44Lewis Goodall:Well, the team and I have just about got our breath back after all of that, literally through the thick cigar smoke of the Ken Clark living room. But though our lungs may not have enjoyed it, we all, as you could probably tell, really did. I'd say that they don't make them like that anymore. But in a weird way, the thing I kept thinking as I watched Ken Clarke reclined in his armchair, a vinegar cigar in his hand, reflecting on the past, gleefully talking about our political presence with all the charm and joie de vivre at his disposal. It's how ahead of his time he might have been, not behind it.
48:19Lewis Goodall:He would have been completely at home with the big political personalities of our time, the spirit of our time, sat so comfortably in the content age, exuding, as he does, so much of that most precious modern political commodity, authenticity. In a weird way, the blokey, stick-it-to-him authentic Clark has a fair bit in common in his style with Nigel Farage and not just the smoking, but he embodies a completely different politics, one which seems like the man himself to be in its twilight. One thing is for sure, like Farage, like Johnson, Clark just loves politics and loved being in politics. He just always appears to enjoy himself, which cannot always be said for the current occupants of Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, which is perhaps a big part of their problem.
49:14Lewis Goodall:Right, we are done in Nottingham. A big thanks as ever to our production team. On the news, agents Shane Fennelly, Anna Georgievich, Michaela Walters, Arvin Baddowell, Natalie Inns, Jess Williamson and Mikey Baggs. Our executive producer is Louis Degenhardt. Our editor is Tom Hughes. It's presented by Emily Maitlis, Sean Sopel and me, Lewis Goodall. We will be back on Monday for that big political week ahead. Have a lovely weekend. This has been a Global Player original production.
From the publisher
Ken Clarke is perhaps the archetypal political Big Beast. Elected to parliament 55 years ago, he held cabinet roles under Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron - tipped many times for No 10, and yet never quite hardline enough on Europe to convince his Tory peers that he should be their leader.
Ahead of what looks certain to be an existential Budget for Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, Lewis went to Lord Clarke's Nottingham home - to discuss the hard choices ahead, the future of this Government, Brexit, populism, and much else besides
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