MT
I hope and believe we have a very good chance of winning. I never go further than that, as you know. I hope we get back with a good majority. I think that a good majority is needed really to hold overseas confidence which matters, because there are quite a number of investment decisions that could help us in Britain and, of course, we need confidence in sterling and we need the confidence of our allies in defence.
Second fragmentMT
We put more, yes, into policy. And had I been packaged in cellophane and tied up with ribbon, the media would have been the first to criticise me, saying that I was packaged like some detergent. Honesty in presentation, yes, that is quite different from slickness. And above all, I do not like a party which conceals quite a lot of what it wants to do. So I think on that basis, we have fought the best campaign.
May I say that the attacks upon me have not only been strident, but sometimes very cruel and sometimes totally false. I haven't squealed about them.
Michael Brunson, ITN
No, I accept that you don't squeal when the attacks are made on you. But my point was that a lot of people, I think, were upset, perhaps would be the word, when that in talking about the context of the Health Service, you were so very very fierce in the tone in which you made those remarks about your right to private medicine.
MT
I am sorry if they thought I was fierce. Uh, I did mean to defend—as I do defend—the right to choice. That indeed is what a free country is about.
Third fragmentMT
We have been turning earners into owners. The Labour Party wants to set the shopfloor against the management. It is they who are divisive. It is we who are gradually extending to many many more people higher and higher standards of living. It is not we who are doing it: it's a partnership between government and people. We do the things which is necessary to release their talents and abilities. And that's what we've done.
Michael Brunson, ITN
You know, Prime Minister, that election campaigns are often as much about tone as about content. Would you accept that your tone, particularly when talking about the Health Service, for example, has been particularly strident?
MT
Please, when you accuse me of being strident, do you ever listen to some of the things that are said in the House of Commons? Do you ever listen to the merciless attacks which I'm expected to stand there and quietly take? And do. And then quietly get on with doing the constructive things. Because our campaign is a positive campaign about our policies, which have been fully revealed, more frankly—and we're frank where the money comes from—it comes from the people and not from the government. And you would expect me to defend, I hope not stridently, any more than now, the things in which I believe in and our record. sic
Michael Brunson, ITN
If you were to lose the election, would you want immediately to submit your position as leader of the party, to the party?
MT
If I were to lose the election, well, my goodness me, I would have to. There'd be no question about it. Of course. But I'll submit it every October-November. I just wasn't elected leader of a party, just like that. Uh, the system was changed as I came in and every October-November it is a matter for the 1922 Committee to consider whether anyone wishes to be put up to oppose me. And I think one is stronger that way. But of course.
Michael Brunson, ITN
Would you do it before October then?
MT
Oh …if one lost, of course one would submit. Film ends at this point with MT still speaking