Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Alastair Campbell
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY
SOPHY RIDGE: Let’s talk a bit more about that People’s Vote march in London yesterday because organisers say more than 700,000 people turned out and they are hoping to put pressure on the government to put any Brexit deal to a national vote. One of the organisers was Alastair Campbell, Tony’s Blair’s former Director of Communications, and he joins us now in the studio. Thank you for being with us. 700,000 people, an extraordinary turnout, do you think it will make any difference?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Well I hope so and I think one of the reasons why there was such a big turnout, far bigger than, to be frank, we’d anticipated I think is because people feel that the Brexit process, contrary to what the Minister has just said, is not going well, that nobody actually voted for the Brexit that is now on offer. People are beginning to see that there is no deal available that is as good as what we had and I think another thing is that people have sensed this vacuum in leadership and therefore people are coming together. I know the Brextremists, as I call them, like to say this is the establishment – that was not the establishment. There were people there from literally every part of the country who are not happy with the way this is going and not going to unite around this vision of Brexit.
SR: I don't think that anyone would disagree that there are people who are really passionately unhappy with Brexit but at the same time, millions of people voted for Brexit, many of them felt ignored by politicians before but listening to you saying we’re are just being ignored again, I mean who did you think voted in the last People’s Vote if it wasn’t people?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: There were people of the 17.4 million who were on that march yesterday. This is not just people who voted Remain, there were people who voted Leave there.
SR: But there are also probably people who voted Remain who just wish we’d get on with it …
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: The whole country is kind of saying can’t we just talk about something else, can’t we get this done with but when people keep saying – and I heard Nigel Farage last night saying the country just wants to get on with it. What is it? The it …
SR: Well a lot of people want to get on with Brexit.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Yes but the it has to become, as you just heard from the Brexit Minister, it has to become a treaty, it has to become words in legislation which Parliament agrees to and there is no it. I don’t believe there is an it that she is going to be able to get through Parliament, what happens then? It may actually be that that is the moment, and with the chaos that might follow that if she can’t get a majority in Parliament for a deal, that that’s when it goes to a People’s Vote and also you just read the front pages. I can remember Alan Clarke, former Tory Minister, fellow diarist, I can remember him phoning me up once and I think it was between the first and second of Tony Blair’s election wins and he said ‘We have absolutely had it.’ And I said, why do you say that? He said, ‘We now hate each other more than we hate you.’ That’s happening to the Tory party now and they are so chaotic, they are so divided, they are so incompetent, the idea of trusting them to negotiate the most serious set of decisions that this country has faced in our lifetime I think is absurd.
SR: You brought up the diaries there, so let’s have a look at what you wrote in your diary at the time when around a million people marched on Iraq, you wrote this: “I bumped into no end of people coming back from the march, placards under arms, faces full of self-righteousness.” So are you now the self-righteous ones?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Well I’m certainly somebody who believes passionately what it is that I’m fighting for as people did then and I understand why people bring up the Iraq march because it was the biggest, it was bigger than yesterday and …
SR: It was ignored by the government.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: And Tony Blair was the Prime Minister and ultimately we elect Prime Ministers and Cabinets to take very, very difficult decisions. We’re in this mess because David Cameron, I think, abdicated the responsibility of leadership and put out a referendum. I think this referendum is very, very different both to Iraq and to the first referendum because Gary Lineker was, he was doing Match of the Day so he spoke by video, but he made the point that it is very, very rare in life that you actually do have the benefit of some hindsight. We’ve had the vote, two and a half years on half of parliament – nobody voted for this mess, nobody voted for this dog’s …
SR: But how do you know? Can you name anyone that you are really close who voted to Leave the EU? And I mean close, not just someone you know a little bit.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Yes, I’ve got friends, I’ve got very close friends who voted Leave.
SR: So what do they think of you now, wanting to overturn their decision thinking they didn’t quite understand it last time?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: No, I think they understand that democracy is a process, it’s a debate, you carry on arguing. A friend of mine, I’ve got lots of friends in Burnley and Burnley voted Leave by a very considerable majority but actually two of the guys who were on one of the videos yesterday, they were Burnley fans who came up to me at a recent match calling for a People’s Vote. I think there are some Remainers who, as you say, saying get on with it and I think there are an awful lot of Leavers who are actually saying this is not the Brexit we voted for. I don’t see how, if you’re a Tory MP like the Minister, Mrs Braverman, who we just heard just now, if you are a Tory MP who really believes in Brexit you can’t vote for Chequers, you can’t vote for this plan that Theresa May is doing because it’s not Brexit. I couldn’t support it because I think it’s going to damage the future of the country.
SR: One of the problems you’ve got is that if you are going to have any realistic chance of a second referendum really, you need Jeremy Corbyn on side. Where was he yesterday?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: He was apparently at some event to do with Pinochet, I don't know, but look, you are absolutely right but look what happened at the Labour party conference.
SR: But Jeremy Corbyn has made no indication that he is going to support a second referendum.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Thus far. You see there is something else, somebody said there is a Tory MP amongst the very horrible things being said about her by her colleagues in the press, somebody quoted Michel Barnier and this I’m sure will rile the Brextremists but Michel Barnier apparently says that the way that he’s come across Theresa May is she says no until she says yes. We had the same in the snap election. Look, politicians do respond to pressure, it’s one of the purposes of yesterday’s march, it wasn’t just to have a march …
SR: But doesn’t it frustrate you thought, that Jeremy Corbyn is not …
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Yes, yes, of course it does and it frustrated me during the campaign.
SR: Do you think it’s because he is a eurosceptic?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: I think partly it’s that. I think historically he has not been a big fan of the European Union but listen, the other thing I think that Labour members and Labour MPs need to understand – look at who is pushing hardest for this Brexit now, it’s the right wing of the Conservative party, it’s Rees Mogg, it’s Johnson …
SR: It’s not just …
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: It is in the main.
SR: It’s a caricature to say it’s Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Look at the people who are the first in the queue to come on programmes like this and talk about it, it’s Rees Mogg, Duncan Smith, Redwood, it’s the right wing and they will damage Labour communities more than anything.
SR: Let’s talk about the details of what you want. How many options, what would be on the ballot paper if you did get a second Brexit vote?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Well I don’t go for this idea, Justine Greening floated this idea of a three question referendum, I don't think that’s sensible. I think the straightforward answer at this stage I couldn’t say because it depends what emerges from this process. For example if …
SR: What do you want?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: As long as … the option to Remain must be on the ballot paper. What the government is saying is it has to be a choice, Parliament, this so called meaningful vote will only have a choice between her deal and no deal, that’s anti-democratic.
SR: Are you saying no deal wouldn’t be an option then?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: I think if her deal gets defeated then no deal may well be an option.
SR: So it’s no deal or remain if she is defeated in parliament?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: I think that probably is the choice that the country faces.
SR: But then a lot of people will say actually Theresa May’s deal should be on there, it’s the third way.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: This is what she’s trying to do, she’s trying to say you’ve got people like me over here who are kind of extreme on one side of the argument even though I think we are moderate and sensible, you’ve got people over there – the Rees Moggs and Farages who want no deal, they want this clean break and she’s trying to project herself as the thing in the middle, but her plan does not work. This is where these two sides agree.
SR: But if she gets a deal through with Brussels, you’re saying that if that is defeated in Parliament it shouldn’t be on the ballot paper?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Well I think she can put it on the ballot paper but don’t forget, it then still has to be endorsed, ratified by Parliament and it has to get ratified by the 27 other parties.
SR: Well if it is voted for in a referendum then presumably …
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: I accept that gives it authority but this is the point, we are in a state of chaos and all these other issues …
SR: But it is a little bit chaotic isn’t it, that you are campaigning for a People’s Vote and yet you can’t agree what that People’s Vote is?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: That’s not in our gift, that is not in a gift.
SR: But if you are campaigning, sure it’s …
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: I think here are probably three options and I am saying to you that one of the options has to be that Remain is on the ballot paper. Let me tell you …
SR: So you are saying there should be three options now?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: No, I’m not, I’m saying there are three possible outcomes that I see but I can’t tell you because the chaos is such I don't think any of us can predict what’s going to happen. I’ve just been talking to some of your guests downstairs, none of us can predict what’s happening. I am simply saying that what I think yesterday showed is that the country is not united around any vision of Brexit, there is a desire to take a look at this again and the idea that it is anti-democratic to let the public say whether this is what they voted for, I think it is profoundly anti-democratic not to do that particularly given the mess, given the cost, given the chaos, given the fact frankly that we’re becoming a bit of a joke around the world and given the fact that the government is doing nothing else, meeting none of the challenges, none of the problems that led to people voting Leave in the first place.
SR: If your People’s Vote campaign fails and we do leave the EU in March, what do you do then? Do you campaign to rejoin?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: I don’t know, I don’t know, I really don’t know. I think that if she gets a good deal and MPs vote for that deal, then you just have to say she has a mandate for that but there is no good deal available. You no longer hear them saying this is going to be great for Britain, they just say we have to do it. There is no why, there’s why at the end of that and I think it’s tragic to watch what’s going on. I understand why Theresa May feels she has to do this, because she became Prime Minister on the back of this referendum …
SR: And then because millions of people voted for her.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: And millions of people voted for her but that opinion never changes, that the will of the people is some sort of static brick that never, ever changes – it is changing. As I say, people like to project that march yesterday as all the kind of usual suspects, the Remoaners. I was bumping into people up and down that march who voted Leave, I was bumping into people who didn’t vote and wished they had and this is another point I think is worth making. Normally in two and a half years you can get a lot done in a government, what have they actually achieved in two and a half years? And two and a half years, during that time one and a half million young people have come of age, this is about their future and I think they should have a say as well.
SR: Okay, just at that point I think we ought to clarify we’ve had an update from Jeremy Corbyn’s office, he was actually meeting the former President of Chile yesterday.
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Okay.
SR: Thank you very much, Alastair Campbell.
