Murnaghan 10.03.13 Interview with Michael Portillo and Tim Montgomerie

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Theresa May, but then again she may not. It’s an old joke I know in Westminster at least but that hints at Theresa May’s ambition for the leadership. She’s no joke now, the Home Secretary, the most senior woman of course in the government, made a speech yesterday setting out her vision for Conservative victory at the next general election, so could she be the one to lead her party to that victory? Well I’m joined now by the editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, and he needs no introduction, the former Cabinet Minister, Michael Portillo. Very good to see you both gentlemen, is there blood in the water surrounding the Prime Minister and Theresa May senses an opportunity here, Michael?

MICHAEL PORTILLO: I think we’ve reached the stage in the government where lots of people are thinking about who might be the next Conservative leader and in what circumstances. I mean there are two possible circumstances, one is a challenge to the leadership during the course of this parliament which I would still think is pretty unlikely, the second is a Conservative defeat at the next general election and the replacing of the leader thereafter which I must say I think is a great deal more likely. Even if it is only the second case, then a number of Cabinet Ministers would do well to put their portfolios as it were in order now and Theresa May it seemed to me yesterday filled her in political philosophy. I would have been very hard strapped to tell you what her political philosophy was but I am a great deal clearer now and by the way, it seems to be a clever combination on the one hand of some rather hard hitting right of centre policies as in her Home Office brief but also a sense still that the Conservative party needs to be on the centre ground in a number of issues to win general elections.

DM: Do you read it that way, that she’s putting out her stall at the very least, she’s positioning herself should something happen? Or does she want to make it happen?

TIM MONTGOMERIE: I think that two things have happened. One is she is fighting her corner very hard at the moment on a spending round, that is the big thing occupying government ministers at the moment. They are about to have to identify an awful lot more cuts and Theresa May has been building her alliances with the spending departments to resist some of the things that the Treasury wants. Then of course there is also this speculation about David Cameron’s difficulties and who might succeed him and people have put these two things together, May’s increasing prominence in her speech yesterday, which was a long-standing engagement, I invited her to address this issue in November, to set out her Conservatism – I think people have seen all these things happen together, Theresa’s bigger role in fighting some of the things the Treasury wants, seeing the problems that Cameron is in and have interpreted this as …

DM: But she’s put herself at the head of the pack, is she as people are now saying, the British Merkel?

TM: Well that comparison is quite a good one actually because here you have two women who are quite unfussy, quite straight talking and also well known for competence and that’s probably of all the things that is driving the protest against political parties at the moment, it is a sense that Westminster doesn’t get things done and here you have a woman minister, Theresa May, who has brought immigration down by a third, net immigration down by a third, and is also reforming the police. No one was able to do that in the Thatcher Major years, it was the great untouched public service and she has had the guts and the steel to get on with it. That is why whatever her future as a potential Tory leader, she is a considerable figure.

DM: Michael, you know all about that being the next Conservative leader in waiting, it doesn’t always happen that way.

MP: No, it doesn’t and it has not yet happened by any means to Theresa May but I agree with Tim entirely that really her longevity in this post is one of the things that is thrusting her into the limelight, even if she said nothing more. It is an extremely tough job and most Home Secretary’s fall by the wayside after a year or two. There are so many appalling accidents that can happen to you in that department and quite a lot of nasty things have happened to Theresa May – for instance rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and the London Riots and yet actually she has coped with nearly all of it pretty well. So she is now nearly three years as Home Secretary, I think she is probably only the second woman Home Secretary, I must admit I’ve known Theresa for a long time and I must say liked her but I have been guilty of underestimating her. I would not have guessed she would be a good Home Secretary and a long-lived Home Secretary so all of those things argue very, very well. When you’re in a job like that though, you may acquire a certain narrowness and in particular, by the way, you are driven to say right wing things all the time and Michael Howard was the classic case, I don't think he was particularly right wing but he was driven to say those …

DM: You were the case as well.

MP: Yes, but I wasn’t the Home Secretary but in that job you are driven to say and yet I think quite a lot of her is not right wing but until her speech yesterday I wouldn’t have had a clue for example what she felt about the economy. Well she said she is …

DM: But to broaden this out a bit, Tim, is Mr Cameron really in trouble here? Are the Conservatives really looking at losing the next election? They keep saying publicly it is only mid-term.

TM: The Conservative party is in deep trouble, there is no doubt about it. There is one fact above all others which explains why it is in trouble and that is the right in British politics is divided in a serious way for the first time I think in post-war history. Now UKIP I don't think will win a seat at the next election, they won’t score 15 or whatever percent they are getting in some opinion polls but they only need to get seven or eight percent to do the reverse of what happened in the early 80s when Thatcher won so many elections because the left was divided. If the right becomes divided it becomes very hard for the Tories to win and Ed Miliband could become Prime Minister on just 35% of the vote. So Cameron is in trouble for the basic reason that Tory MPs have stopped believing that they can win the next election. The only person I think who could really transform the party’s fortunes is Boris Johnson and he would be a huge gamble and he’s not in parliament so all the talk of replacing Cameron without an alternative person is just making the Tories task harder and harder.

DM: And drill down here a bit for us Michael, what’s fundamentally at the bottom of all this? I remember when David Cameron got the leadership, what was it, eight years ago back in 2005, it was said Europe’s gone away as an issue for the Conservatives, has he scotched the snake, not killed it in Shakespearean parlance, it’s all coming back to bite them again because of UKIP.

MP: Europe is always there and by the way, the Tories would be in trouble even if they weren’t in trouble because they only won the last election with 37% of the vote and no party in power ever increases its share of the vote when it’s in power and least of all does it do it when it’s divided and going through five years of recession. Actually I thought for a while that the Conservatives had a new unity over the European question, it was more unified than when I was in John Major’s cabinet but actually it is not the case because if you look now at what David Cameron is proposing for his referendum were he to hold one, were he to win the next election, he has already pretty much said that he would vote to stay in the European Union. Well I can tell you that vast numbers of his members of parliament would be very, very happy to vote to leave the European Union and so actually the old divide between the officers and the ranks in the Conservative party, between the less eurosceptic leadership and the more eurosceptic followership is still absolutely there. Indeed I think it is writ even larger than before.

DM: Worse than the Major years? Do you go along with that Tim?

TM: I completely agree. I think what has happened is the centre of gravity of the Conservative party has moved in a much more eurosceptic direction but whereas the division used to be between people who were broadly in favour of Europe and those who wanted a more sceptical line, the people wanting the more sceptical line are now the kind of moderates if you like and those wanting to leave the European Union altogether are the new people who want a much tougher line and of course UKIPs emergence has made that division much more politically potent. I think actually the Prime Minister’s referendum promise has bought him some time on that. I think after the next election it could become a huge division but at the moment all we need to campaign on is the referendum pledge that the Prime Minister has made so I think that will maintain unity for a season but not for more than perhaps two years.

MP: I agree with that, if only because I think quite a lot of back benchers haven’t really figured out what it would mean and since probably the Tories won’t win and since probably there won’t be a referendum, then probably none of this matters.

DM: Okay, well gentlemen thank you both very much indeed, thanks to Tim and Michael.