Peter Sissons, Channel Four
Prime Minister, first of all congratulations on the historic third win. What is your judgement about what you have done to British politics?
Prime Minister
I think that we have established a consistency of policy which is obviously being seen to be having good results both at home and in our reputation abroad, and I think that the lesson this election was that people endorsed that policy. There was so much said about presentation but in the end, I think, it was the policies that told.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
But not all the people endorsed the policy.
Prime Minister
No, that can never be so when you have many many different political parties and the vote splits differently. [end p1]
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
Our exit poll suggested that what worried Conservative voters were issues like defence, law and order, taxation. What worried Labour voters was health, unemployment, education. Is that not some indication that your natural supporters and Labour's natural supporters live in two different worlds?
Prime Minister
No, I do not think it is. I sometimes think that you start to talk about divisions in two different worlds mainly because we have more than one political party. If you have more than one political party you are bound to get different views, but, my goodness me, the time to get worried about democracy is not when you have got more than one political party, but when you have only got one. Inevitably you get differences of views and people dash to this thing about divisions. When it comes to the particular factors which you mentioned we have done, as you know, very much better with health, you do very much better with your social services when you go for a policy which creates the wealth first and then you can distribute it. If you go for a policy which starts assuming that someone has created it and therefore you have a lot to distribute, but you do nothing about continuing that creation, then you are in trouble.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
I suppose what I am getting at is you do not appear to have convinced still a large segment of British society, the poor, that they are safe with you. [end p2]
Prime Minister
The poor, there will always be I am afraid, obviously a group at the bottom, whether the whole of your population is at that level of standard living or that level or that level.
Now under the economic policies that we have run there has been a good deal more money available to go to both the Health Service, which is for everyone who chooses to use it and also for those who are unfortunate and who simply must have help because they have no resources of their own and are not able to get any. Now, they too do better in a society which encourages enterprise and effort than one in which discourages that by taxing it too heavily and therefore does not get that amount of effort at all.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
You yourself in the early hours of the morning appeared to put the inner cities high on the political agenda. What do you plan to do for them?
Prime Minister
We have watched what has been happening in inner cities for some time. Some of them have been taken over by extreme left councils who have acted in a way which is not in accordance with the customs and conventions of local Government. What has happened is that they dislike enterprise, they dislike the private sector, they discourage it from going within their borders, they put up very high taxes and rates which discourages enterprise. That means that they deny the very business which creates the jobs. [end p3]
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
But in those cities some of the poorest cities in Britain—Liverpool, Glasgow—they have not returned Conservative members of parliament. That is where Labour has been stacking up the votes.
Prime Minister
That is right, and did you ever read what Kilroy-Silk said about Liverpool? He said the worst disadvantage to job creation in Merseyside was the militant Labour council, every time he tried to get companies to go there, they took one look at the militant Labour council and said not for us. Now, so we have got an Urban Development Corporation in Liverpool and within the curtilage of that it does very well, but nothing like as good as the London Open Development Corporation because people are fearful of the proximity of the militant council immediately next door. Now, that means that you are getting councils which do not welcome enterprise, although obviously they complain about jobs, but they deny themselves access to the very companies that could bring jobs.
Secondly, therefore you are not getting your business people there and many of the professionals live outside.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
But are you saying that the people of Liverpool and Glasgow by rejecting your candidates and giving even bigger majorities to Labour candidates have made things worse for themselves? [end p4]
Prime Minister
Glasgow is a totally different proposition from Liverpool. Liverpool is a militant city, but you have neither the businessmen living there who created the wealth. Many many of the professional people who work there actually live outside and so you do not get the right mix within that city, and yes we do have a problem and we said that we thought in May that the people of Liverpool would again return a militant council, but unless we do something they are never going to be able to break out of that. Now, you know what we are being asked to do by many people is to form more urban Development Corporations, we have formed four more and we have talked about having small ones.
The second thing is to stop them putting up the rates on businesses very high and therefore stopping business from coming there. We are changing that under community charge because there will be the same business rate all over the country so that will not be a disincentive.
And then thirdly, we are trying to have different possibilities for education so that people who live in those cities and who are not satisfied with the education their children receive can opt out. Let me say again Glasgow is a totally different proposition from Liverpool.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
What would be the purpose of the reconstruction of your Government that you expect to announce this weekend. What sort of administration are you going to lead into the 1990's? [end p5]
Prime Minister
Well, I hope a very effective one. The purpose of it is, the purpose of most changes is to enable younger people to come in and people who sometimes have been in parliament for quite a time that have not had a chance to serve in Government to enable them to have chance. It is so easy to know the people you want to bring in. There is quite a lot jostling because they are good. Unfortunately, it means that you have to ask people to go who may be perfectly all right and have done a very good job and I am afraid you always say they are sacked, which is very hurtful, it is not that. Just as they had to have their chance so eventually they have to make way for someone else to come in.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
Have you been in touch with some already?
Prime Minister
I am not going to go into detail at all, we think very carefully before we do these things because we know that some people are going to be hurt, more than hurt. I think it is the only job in the United Kingdom where you walk in the door with both a job and all the things that go with it and then you go out and there is absolutely no notice at all. Immediately it goes and there is absolutely no compensation, and it is another thing that makes you think twice before doing it. [end p6]
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
You have also stated your belief in a strong opposition based on some basic consensus. Does it look as if we are going to get that in the new parliament?
Prime Minister
I think it is going to be a very difficult parliament because although the Labour party did not make much headway, things happened which we said would happen, which we forecast would happen, that they had failed to choose to stand again. Many of their more moderate members have done valiant service to the Labour party and they pushed them out and they pushed extreme left-wingers in in their place and those left-wingers were elected. So they pushed real moderate, good trade union people of the old-fashioned kind out and they have put in extreme left-wingers and I think that will mean that if we have a very difficult House of Commons then we shall just have to cope.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
Do you think we are going to get any sort of realignment at the centre, when Dr Owen now is the only one remaining of the gang of four left, Mr Jenkins is out?
Prime Minister
Well you know, they(?) always said the creation of the SDP, I think, delayed the fundamental realignment of politics for quite a [end p7] time. I do not think anyone could have forecast that the Alliance would go down in their support, but they did, and I think that it will take some time for people to be able to assess what happened and why. But, to me, all my life in politics, there has been going to be a realignment of the Labour party. During the Gaitskell years and after that when they had, ‘In place of strife’ and then kept the strife instead, it has always been assumed that it would be the left that the moderate Labour party would split off the left and say look you are not for us, what you stand for is no part of what we believe in therefore you split off. It has gone the other way, that organisations would choose to be proscribed because they were too far left, the members of the Labour party can now belong to, and the left has become a much bigger part of the Labour party and therefore it is going to be much more difficult for that fundamental realignment to come about.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
What sort of Britain are we going to have in four or five years time?
Prime Minister
A Britain, I hope, of enlarged opportunity. That is the point of our education reforms and of our housing reforms to bring opportunity to people in some of the worst of the inner city areas who are not getting it now, of ever widening spread of property ownership and share ownership and savings. It is that which gives people their independence to stand up to some of these left wing councils. But, in fact what happens is most of them then move out of that area leaving us with the task of how to bring opportunity to within those areas and how to bring jobs. [end p8]
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
And, could you clear up what the position is about your own future? Do you intend to fight the next election?
Prime Minister
Look, we have just won this one. We have won it very well, it will be four or five years to the next election. No-one can predict precisely what will happen during that time. Let us get on with the programme that we were elected to introduce. There is a great deal of work to do.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
Could you contemplate going into that election with 3 million unemployed again?
Prime Minister
We are nowhere near that election. We have just won this one and I am not going to take a crystal ball and try to gaze into it. One would mostly get the wrong answers at this stage if one did.
Peter Sissons, Channel Four
Prime Minister, thank you very much.