Murnaghan Interview with William Hague, former Conservative leader 3.05.15
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now to the election again and two million new jobs, inflation at a record low, interest rates at rock bottom and more people in employment than ever before and I could go on, so why is this election still on a knife edge for the Conservatives, a party that hasn’t of course won an outright majority since 1992? Well I’m joined now from Richmond in North Yorkshire by the former Conservative party leader, William Hague, a very good morning to you Mr Hague and I said I could go on, I could add to that a very popular leader, certainly when compared to Mr Miliband, the SNP preparing to do damage to Labour in Scotland, are you left scratching your head as to why your party isn’t doing better?
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well I think you are giving a very good list there, Dermot, of why people should vote Conservative because indeed there are two million more jobs, inflation is down, the deficit is down, we do have an excellent Prime Minister and so on, that’s absolutely right and I hope people will remember that on Thursday because the choice is between continuing with that, with a Conservative majority or some chaotic mixture of Labour, Scottish Nationalists and whatever else on the other side, deeply damaging for our economy. As to why opinion polls don’t therefore show a huge Conservative lead let us say, well that’s partly for the pollsters to answer. I hope there will be a clear Conservative majority on Thursday.
DM: But isn’t it for you to answer, isn’t it for the Conservative party to answer? As I said I hope to head you off at the pass by giving that list of achievements in office particularly when it comes to employment but the electorate aren’t reflecting that in their appreciation of what you say you’ve done.
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we will see of course. There was one thing that Harriet Harman just said on your programme, but only one thing probably, that I agree with her about which is that a lot of people haven’t made up their minds yet and they are making up their minds now, maybe as they are listening to this programme and over the next couple of days and so Conservatives who are 23 seats short of a majority from the last general election, can win a majority, we will be campaigning over the next few days in those seats that would give us that majority so we are working for that majority. It is also true though, to give a further answer to your specific question, when you are in government people hold every grievance against the government of the day and we’ve had some very difficult decisions to take to rescue the situation that we inherited from our predecessors, difficult economic decisions. They are now bearing fruit, those decisions, but of course that makes it difficult for the governing party.
DM: And if you do fall short of getting those extra 23 seats you calculate, would an accommodation, another coalition with the Liberal Democrats be the preferred option for the Conservatives?
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well you won’t be surprised to hear me say our only preferred option is to win that Conservative majority and I speak as someone who led the Conservative negotiating team that negotiated the last coalition, we acted in the national interest after the last election to form a coalition to turn around this country’s economy and that is what we have done but the programme that we have put forward for this election is of course a Conservative programme, there are many things we have not been able to do in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
DM: Of course that’s a given Mr Hague but we’re a few days away from voting, as you say people are making up their minds and there’s an awful lot of talk, as you know, about a hung parliament and they want to make up their minds, they have got a view about the coalition. It wasn’t a Conservative government, it was a coalition, would you like to do that again?
WILLIAM HAGUE: No, this country would be far better governed by a stable majority formed by one party with other parties holding it accountable in opposition so people have a clear choice at the subsequent election. That would be much better, we can easily much better deliver on our commitments to reduce taxes for working people, to hold a referendum on staying or leaving in the European Union, to control immigration if we have a majority Conservative government so that’s what we’re working for. Now it is understandable of course that you ask as the media look ahead a few days to what might happen after the election but that discussion just illustrates what a chaotic and uncertain situation we would be in without any majority for any one party. So I say to the voters, particularly those voters intending to vote for UKIP or the Liberal Democrats, think about this today because you are either going to have David Cameron with a secure majority or a chaotic situation on the other side.
DM: Okay, I wanted to ask you about that, Theresa May said that, the Home Secretary, didn’t she last week about a constitutional crisis and the chaos that may ensue you say if the Labour party are propped up by the SNP and I thought I’d like to talk to Mr Hague about that as a historian. Would you say there were some parallels there with things like 1910, the early 1900s when you had a party being propped up by nationalists who really want to go?
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well maybe there are parallels, yes, with the huge number of Irish nationalists who were elected to parliament in the 19th century and early 20th century and that did distort British politics for a long time. It’s certainly not good for the United Kingdom as a whole because what would happen in this situation, if there was a weak Labour government held to ransom every day by the Scottish Nationalists, is that those nationalists would try to divide Scotland against England with everything they did every day. They would make impossible demands in order to turn England against Scotland and vice versa so you would have a situation which would be very bad for people’s taxes, for borrowing, for the future of the economy but very bad for the future of the UK and that’s why this is an historic election and it is a vital choice that people are making on Thursday.
DM: And what’s your view on Conservative voters in Scotland, more than 400,000 of them I see at the last general election in 2010, do you agree with Lord Forsyth, Norman Tebbitt and others who say well look, in reality we haven’t got much hope in so many of the seats there, you may as well use your vote to vote for a pro-Union candidate and keep the SNP out.
WILLIAM HAGUE: No, I would say to them vote Conservative. Having spent 40 years campaigning for Conservative candidates, I’m not going to stop at this point, four days before this election and after all, the Scottish Conservatives are really the only Unionist party in Scotland that has come out with some credit from the referendum and in this campaign, an excellent leader, Ruth Davidson, who you’ve been talking about earlier in your paper review in this programme. The Scottish Conservatives aren’t far behind the Scottish Labour party now in Scotland in opinion polls so I would very much encourage people to vote Conservative all across the United Kingdom where they have Conservative candidates, that’s the way to get a Conservative majority government.
DM: And just to underline the post-election fallout, if the Conservatives win the most seats but not an outright majority, it would be the Conservative view that you have first go at trying to form a government?
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well again we are getting into this very hypothetical territory. We are out for a majority, we think anything else is very dangerous for the UK and there are so many permutations, Dermot, on the alternatives, so many possibilities once you get into hung parliaments that really it’s impossible to speculate about that until we see the result. All the more reason to elect a secure majority that continues the economic recovery of the last few years.
DM: But let me just interject, Mr Hague, because someone is speculating about it from the Conservative party in the Sunday Times today, it’s that very point which is on their front page. The Conservative view would be that if you get the most votes, certainly in England, and the most seats you should have first go at trying to form a government.
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well I’m not speculating on any of those combinations, I think the voters now need to make their decision, we are campaigning for a majority, that is within our grasp I have no doubt about that having toured dozens of the marginal seats over the last few weeks, so I don’t want to get into any of that. This is a chance to secure the economic recovery of this country and that’s what we’ve got to vote for on Thursday. The alternative in whatever combination of Lib Dems, UKIP, Scots Nats, Labour is a chaotic situation, very dangerous for this country.
DM: And what about personally, Mr Hague, after what is it – 26 years in the House of Commons, how will you continue to contribute to public life?
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well I will always support the Conservative party, as you can gather. I’ve worked as hard in this election as all the elections in which I have been a candidate. I’m looking forward to my writing, resuming my writing career but I will continue with a couple of global causes I took up as Foreign Secretary, continuing to work on preventing sexual violence in conflict with Angelina Jolie, I will continue to work on combatting the illegal wildlife trade and chairing a tax force for the Duke of Cambridge on that at the moment and will continue to do so, so there are some global issues that I feel passionate about that I will remain involved in but always support my party as well.
DM: Okay Mr Hague, thank you very much indeed, William Hague there.