Sophy Ridge on Sunday 25.06.17 Interview with Ken Clarke MP, Conservative

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: Well it certainly seems as though we are living through some pretty remarkable times but someone who’s seen far more than his fair share of British political history is the Conservative MP for Rushcliffe, Ken Clarke, returning to the Commons for a 49th, yes a 49th year of service and he joins us now from his home in Nottingham. Hello to you, thanks for coming on.

KEN CLARKE: Good morning.

SR: Mr Clarke, you have spent nearly half a century in the House of Commons, how do you think the mess that your party finds itself in now compares to the last 50 years?

KEN CLARKE: Oh I’ve seen nothing like this. You can make some comparisons with the late 1970s, you can make I suppose a few comparisons with the Major government where we didn’t really have a majority by the time we finished but the background to all the problems we have with the Brexit, the economy, changing demands on the public services, there’s nothing like this at all, it’s quite unique although most of the Western democracies are having exactly the same thing and elections like President Trump, President Macron, show that the traditional political system is under huge strain in other countries as well.

SR: Theresa May called this election to try and strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations, she lost her majority, how do you think that’s going to affect her standing when she goes into those difficult talks with Brussels?

KEN CLARKE: Well when you can’t think of anything to do on policy people retreat into arguing about personalities so it is the sillier people in the Conservative party who now decide that the best thing to do is to start arguing about the leadership. I think we will just make a very difficult, a very serious situation rather absurd. What we need is to demonstrate that we can form a competent government with the policies that can be delivered in this House of Commons and demonstrate to the public at large that politicians are not all liars and they’re not all arguing amongst themselves, that it is possible for people across party I hope to come together when there is something definitely in the national interest that needs to be done and delivered and Brexit is a very good example of that and a good one to try I think.

SR: Whatever happens with the DUP deal you’re going to be a very influential man in parliament over the next few years because of that small majority, all it would take is for you to go for lunch with Anna Soubry and suddenly Theresa May could be losing a couple of votes in the House of Commons. Do you think that single market membership is now back on the table?

KEN CLARKE: Any three members of Parliament, or perhaps half a dozen certainly, are the party’s majority so that puts pressure on people to actually reach some compromises and actually reunite the party. We are very divided on Europe, so are the Labour party, there’s a huge range of opinions in the Cabinet, a huge range of opinions in the Shadow Cabinet but as far as the economic approach to Europe is concerned, I think there is a big majority that agrees there’s no point in putting in fresh barriers to trade, we don’t want any new tariffs, we don’t want any new customs procedures, we don’t want any new regulatory barriers and that should be the starting point. Most MPs when the referendum was held didn’t know the difference between the single market and the customs union, most of the public don’t quite understand what we’re all arguing about now. The key thing is we don’t want new barriers to trade and investment. Brexit is already making us poorer as a country, what we don’t want to do is make ourselves much poorer, we have a very difficult economic situation to tackle and there are other things that need to be tackled as well, not just new relationships with Brexit and Europe and trade with the rest of the world.

SR: Just trying to pin you down there, does that mean you will be voting against any measures to try and take the UK out of the single market or out of the customs union?

KEN CLARKE: I shall be very opposed to anything that starts, for no reason at all, erecting barriers to trade between us and any other country in the world. One thing that Theresa always espouses is the cause of free trade, the British in Europe have always been the leading advocates of liberal economic policies, of open trade and I was a member of the Thatcher government that created the single market but instead of getting hooked up on slogans and titles, the basic point that the business community keep trying to get across to us is what on earth is the point of putting damaging new barriers of any kind at all between ourselves and our nearest market and our biggest market? We can’t go around saying we want to have a free trade deal with the Philippines but we want to put all kinds of protectionist barriers between ourselves and the rest of Europe.

SR: Now you said that you don’t think the Conservative government should be focusing on personalities but it has been, to coin a phrase, a bloody difficult few weeks for the woman you once called a bloody difficult woman. Do you think Theresa May will lead the Conservatives into the next election?

KEN CLARKE: I don't think anybody knows really what’s going to happen in the next few weeks let alone whenever the election comes, we don’t know when that election will be. I’ve already said, I quite understand the question and sections of the media as well as some of the dafter of our back benchers will be utterly obsessed with who might take over and when for the next few weeks but if you look at the situation of the country – a slowing economy, rising inflation, a devaluation which is not doing a great deal of good and more vulnerable people actually seeing their purchasing power reduced, mounting consumer debt. We are still not really out of the government’s debt and deficit problems from the 2008 crisis so if we all start talking about which of the various contenders might take over when, will only seem important in the political bubble and if we start resorting to all that sort of thing the ordinary sensible member of the public will be driven to despair.

SR: You say that we shouldn’t be talking about it, I think perhaps some members of your own party might disagree.

KEN CLARKE: You hope so but I hope they don’t.

SR: Well they are certainly talking about some names in the papers this morning, Boris Johnson and David Davies were initially seen as the frontrunners, now it seems we’ve moved on to ‘Spreadsheet Phil’, the Chancellor, as the safe pair of hands, what would you make of a candidacy by him?

KEN CLARKE: I’ve been reading some of the dafter columns as well, they are largely based on gossiping at the bar with some of the sillier backbench MPs and junior ministers who are all speculating about this kind of thing. I think the vast majority of the Conservative parliamentary party and of Conservatives across the country do not want us to plunge into a leadership crisis. If you want an historical analogy, I think the best comparison is the 1920s, I’m not going to bore your listeners with that, they probably know little about the politics of the 1920s most of them but Stanley Baldwin took over and immediately called an unnecessary election and lost it and there’s a slight pause, Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister for two terms after that because the Conservative party pulled itself together and began to demonstrate that it was – and it still is in my opinion – the only credible party able to form a competent government and we face an enormous number of problems and there is no obvious successor to Theresa which means that in my opinion Theresa should be backed, in a different way, with a different policy. Some of the things we said before the election and in the manifesto are honestly not going to get through the House of Commons now so let’s start addressing the real issues facing jobs, investment, future trade, keeping Britain in the forefront of influential nations because there’s some dangerous things going on at the moment in the Middle East, our relations with Russia and other things. That should put in proportion all the gossip columns in the Sunday newspapers about some unnamed backbencher backing X and another one backing Y.

SR: Okay, you’ve made your views very clear on that. Just finally, the talks with the DUP are ongoing. Back in 2010 you joked that any DUP deal was no way to run a modern sophisticated society, how damaging do you think a DUP deal could be for the Conservative party brand?

KEN CLARKE: It won’t be too damaging because one thing I firmly, well two things I firmly agree with the DUP on is firstly the union of the United Kingdom but secondly an open border in Ireland. The idea that we start putting customs posts and having different rules on both sides of the Irish border has much bigger implications than just for the Irish economy, though it would be disastrous for the economy of Ulster if we do that but actually there’s a peace settlement and the future integrity of the UK, all that is at stake so I haven’t talked about this with any individual member of the DUP and I know several of them quite well, but I suspect they will start from my point, that they don’t want new barriers, tariff barriers, customs barriers, regulatory barriers put in place on the Irish border.

SR: Okay, Ken Clarke, thank you very much for your time this morning.

KEN CLARKE: A pleasure.