Tories ‘on the defensive’ but seats can still go ‘on way or another’ | William Hague

that is absolutely because the conservatives won the the majority a large majority of the seats last time so obviously they're on the defensive and obviously if labor are 20 points behind in the polls they'll be hoping to win seats that are far behind the front line of conservative seats so then the conservatives go and defend those seats so in that sense yes it's um defensive William um is this a Hil Mary Manifesto is this a Manifesto that's got to do something that hither to has proved impossible well all conservatives will hope of course that it improves the prospects of the party which of it's still far behind in the opinion polls in the election but it has to be realistic as well you know and I think the um from the sound of it from from what we're hearing so far today the Merit of this Manifesto will be that it's in line with what Rishi sunak and Jeremy hun have been doing for the last two years and in this world where is so hard for people to believe what po policians say the one thing on the whole you can believe is that they will carry on doing what they have just been doing and so they have been cutting National Insurance contributions while at the same time raising Health spending and so on and that seems to be at the heart of the manifesto that they're going to publish today so it isn't you know when you say hail Mary it's not like everybody said oh now that has been revealed now everybody can go back to voting conservative because there's no such moment in a in an election but I it sounds like it it is a credible program in line with what Rishi sunak has been doing for the last two years K it does it matter that it's very easy to disbelieve all the parties in this area we've had we've had the Tories and and labor on today they're all promising various things they're all saying their costing is absolutely rigorous But ultimately we know once people start talking about things like cracking down on tax avoidance or making the public sector more efficient that's Cod words for we don't really have the money and we hope we'll be able to find a way of doing it in the future and everyone seems to do this and I just wonder whether people start shrugging their shoulders and go you talk about fully costing and I don't believe you I completely agree with that and I think something that we know very well from the evidence is that the public don't really differentiate between political parties when it comes to how they feel about days like this levels of trust in politics and the political system itself is at real low and particularly low amongst women people low incomes and and young people so it's a plague in all their houses in that sense that that leaves me to say that William's right actually that the best the conservative party can hope for today is that people see a bit of consistency around their their plans and that cut in National Insurance sits very well in that context and on that point William the best than what the Tories can hope for there's a story in the times today about how just how defensive this campaign is they've basically given up in various areas they're giving up a bit to the lib Dems they're giving up a lot to labor in places like the red wo they just can't lose their core will people be sitting with Rishi suuk and saying actually the aim here is to try and get to 150 seats so we don't get completely ruined as a party it's a defensive don't lose too badly strategy do you think that would be being stated in public not in public in private rather I'm sure it's not being stated in public uh no I don't think so I think again as a party that's um been in office a long time and is this far behind in opinion polls obviously expectations get quite low about the election result both in the media and in that party itself but the Battleground in this election is still a very wide Battleground in terms of the numbers of seats that could go one way or another it's actually a rather unusually wide Battleground there's still a very wide range of possible outcomes to the but that's because so many Tory safe seats have stopped being safe William I mean that's not a virtue that's because stuff that was going to be 15,000 majorities are now looking wobbly it that is absolutely because the conservatives won the the majority a large majority of the seats last time so obviously they're on the defensive and obviously if labor are 20 points behind in the polls they'll be hoping to win seats that are far behind the front line of conservative seats so then the conservatives go and defend those seats so in that sense yes it's um defensive but I don't think you find any even conservative candidates who' who've only got small majorities have given up on the election because they also know that we're in an age where the results vary more from one constituency to another than they ever used to 20 or 30 years ago you can get a really big difference in the swing even in neighboring seats according to whether that MP is popular the local campaigning local issues these things have become more important so yeah of course it's defensive in a party that won most of the seats last time and is under a lot of pressure now but it's still a wide Battleground is what I would say I don't know how honestly going want to be with this question William but what's it like when you when you wake up in the morning and you're leading a party and you just know you're not going to win the election um how do you cope with that because it must me anyone who does a job when they get up and think this job is not going anywhere this job is futile people experience that in all sorts of walks of life but it's very public way of experiencing it in politics this must have happened to you where you I'm not going to win I'm not winning and yet you got to get up every morning you've still got to plaster the false smile on your face how how did you cope with doing that well the first part of coping with that is not to actually think that thought that that you are just describing even if it may be a quite a rational thought it's very important to say well actually particularly at this stage of election nobody's actually voted yet nobody's even voted by post yet so if you are a party leader and yes you're you're way behind and so on and of course you could be forgiven that and certainly I would I had moments 2001 when I felt very discouraged you do have to remember people are you're trying to give people the right in a democracy to have a vote here so it's your duty to get out of bed and you know do do your absolute best and not behave as if they've all voted already that's that's so the first thing is uh to have a sense of Duty about that um and then the second thing is just to well almost to enjoy it you know that um okay okay it's a um it's a battle that where the odds are against you but there can be a certain sense of Liberation about that of charging into it and um you know that is I mean here you got president macron there he is calling a um a general election in France as well a parliamentary election you know he's all the odds are against him but he's decided to just fling everything at it and so there is that politicians can get that sense of liberation an election so it's not quite as bad as as your question might suggest will Mr Ross in the times today that the ferrage Insurgency will allow labor to stay in power for many years he Compares this to 1983 um William what I think this is an argument that many people are making farage doesn't really care about it his answer to this is I want to destroy the conservative party and if you vote for me and labor get in well labor going to get in anyway and I want to stick it right up the Tories and therefore I don't care um but you think there is an argument to be made here for people who are right leaning that they might end up with a more left leaning government well yeah I'm saying if you if you spend all your time trying to realign the right you end up with the country being realigned to the left really and so it's the mirror image of 1983 where the sdp and the labor party were fighting it out uh in that election with almost even votes and the conservatives with 42% of the vote w a record majority but importantly didn't just win that election and it's not just about this election um that actually set the conservatives up for you know another decade in power for everything Margaret Thatcher wanted to do to be to become really entrenched it really changed the country towards the right and so I'm pointing out to people who might vote reform that that's what's at stake in this election but I'm also saying that just like the sdp could never really take over the left because there were such strong roots of the labor party um the this reform movement won't actually fully take over the right whatever happens in Britain because there's a large part of the right like me who are internationalist and environmentalist and more moderate in our conservatism and we're just not going to go along with that the right would split forever so you know it isn't going to work that's why Nigel farage is more like shirle Williams and he is like Donald Trump in the end he might not like that idea but um that's that's who I'm comparing him to in my column today do you think actually that kind of won the 92 election is really what you're saying and that that that level of a majority that level of a split actually they were going to win it in 83 anyway maybe they would have WN it in 87 anyway but it probably gave them another four years in 92 as well well certainly gave the concer was that huge margin for error you know and and then there were quite there were a lot of errors as I would admit in as we got into the late 80s um it really gave that big margin so it's not the case when he says things like well labor are going to win anyway in this election well there's a big difference between winning narrowly and winning but with so many seats that nobody else can imagine winning the next one or two general elections except labor and that is the that's not good for politics probably wouldn't be good for the labor party either um but it certainly would not finish up with Nigel farage and his team running the country uh definitely not so it's a very self-defeating approach if only there was another way of doing politics William that might mean that that the votes are cast and counted in a different way entirely yes is the is the elephant in the room this election that the electoral system is totally broken reform could do much better than the lib Dems and win only one or two seats versus the libdems 30 or 40 is that fair wouldn't reform doing quite well give farage a test and actually making law that he's never really really fac the two-party system is a central tent of our democracy but for how much longer um kzia we have had so many um really fascinating but very convoluted and very complicated uh texts from listeners about how they basically go through about three different parties and then arrive at the party that they're going to vote for because of tactical voting um which I didn't realize was such a huge thing obviously it depends doesn't it whether it's going to make a difference if you're in a marginal seat or or not um and the point they're making I suppose is that um they feel that their votes are some people feel that their votes are are are pointless because of the system um have you ever voted tactically do you know people who vote T TCT I can't even say it tactically I think I've only ever had to do it once which is where I briefly lived in an area that that wasn't going to return a a labor counselor um in the northeast of five for example I can't I can't remember probably not no in truth but then that's the whole point right like I I have tended to live in areas that are going to return Labor candidates or S SMP candidates whatever regardless and it's the conservatives in those situations or the liberal Democrats or or the greens that get exasperated because their votes don't count I was amused earlier when you're were talking about um Douglas Ross you know if people think Douglas Ross was a decent kind of leader of the conservative party it's because he only ever had to Rally against the S&P because there isn't a single conservative labor marginal state in Scotland so the whole country is having this competition right now between those two parties and for the vast majority of Scotland that that's that's not the lay of the land an electoral system that actually counted every single vote would allow people's voices to be heard and it would also take a degree of control away from political parties that's how you break the two-party system and you break that dominance of the leadership and the characters within that determining where on a spectrum a party sits where we would have more political parties we'd have more Choice yes what kind but what kind of choice that's that's the point that a lot of our texter have been making I mean I suppose maybe you can't say well we we want choice but not that choice if you look at within Europe at some of the um parties that are are winning seats if you look at um reform for example getting 30 or 40 seats would would you would you be happy with that well obviously wouldn't be delighted if we started electing lots of farri politicians in the country but that said that's how you defeat them is with you know the the harsh light o of day and part of the reason reform and farri parties do well is because they're allowed to cast themselves as you know anti-establishment Pioneers that were were really it's because they don't face the same accountability and the same question that everyone else does you would get that with PR uh William he what do you think well I totally respect Arguments for different electoral systems and you can argue forever about them um there are I tend to support I I still support our current Westminster voting system with the great example of so many European countries before us of how this can go badly wrong the other way uh Germany is a good example at the moment with seven parties in the parliament all the time quite a lot of them are extremists that means the ones who are not extremists always have to be in government together then the extremists get more popular and so there's quite a lot to be said for a system which on the whole corals people into two big political families and yes it makes them fight out a lot of their differences within those families in the conservative and labor parties but nevertheless they end up on the whole in the vast majority of Elections those two parties try to win elections from the center bringing most of the political system with them and so I I think that is still the best uh system but it's there's no perfect system it does at least give people a choice of government at least you know when you wake up the the day after polling most of the time who is going to be the government and you don't have months of arguing about it well that's true but you also wake up the next day and think well what was the point of me voting that's what a lot of people are saying to us they just my vote doesn't count I want to write none of the above this idea of having these two huge political beasts labor and the conservative doesn't doesn't work for a lot of people anymore and I also wonder for example William ha if let's just say I think the worst projection I saw was 12 two seats for the Tories let's say that it's it's less than that do you think that conservative the conservative mindset or conservative MPS supporters might actually change their mind and think actually you know what let's have a look at this uh at at frh um at proportional representation or a different system of of electing people I don't think the two main parties will change their either of them whatever the results of the election will change their approach on this by the way that again there isn't system where the individual voter wakes up and think oh it was me that they took notice of you know that among the 50 million uh people because you might be a German voter who votes for their Liberal Party and then you say well whatever I do they just go into a coalition with the German conservatives or the German social Democrats so what is the point and you know you so you get exactly the um well a different problem of not feeling your vote has really count in the German system there isn't a system where all 50 million people are happy referendums everything on a referendum I was fully taken into account they listen to me never I'm sure that's I'm sure that's that that is the case but just finally on Kia's point that um that that actually you uh you have a system where for example reform win uh proportional to their to their votes the same as lib the lib Dems for example they win the same number of seats and then they are scrutinized properly rather than staying in the shadows and saying no one listens to us we're The Underdogs that's been exactly the argument in France with national front now called National rally members of the National Assembly and the result of them being put in that position is they are now on the brink of power so um that argument doesn't work either

Channel: Times Radio

Views: 12,062

Keywords: tory manifesto, conservative manifesto, rishi sunak, prime minister, tory policy, conservative pledge, william hague, nigel farage, labour, reform uk, reform party, conservative party, conservatives, tories, general election, general election 2024, prime minister rishi sunak, tory election campaign, conservative election campaign

Id: NSmoSWySZv0

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2024