Q+A’s Paul Holmes Interviews Lord Mcnally – Leader Of Liberal Democrats (House Of Lords) From London About The British Elections (Change To Interview Advisory – Dr Vince Cable Became Unavailable).

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

LORD McNALLY interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL Well it has certainly captured the imagination hasn’t it, the British election, the Conservatives are favoured to win, that is to say to win the most votes but that is no guarantee they will govern. The polls show the three parties, the Conservatives, the Lib-Dems and in third Labour, all running pretty close, a hung parliament is likely, with negotiations needed after election day, and a coalition government is widely predicted. It really has been quite a campaign.

So all to play for the next five days, what's made this campaign remarkable, historic, is the surge in support for the Liberal Democrats, or the Lib-Dems, a party formed in 1988 through the merger of the Social Democrats and the Liberals, now the story of this campaign very much so, the voice of new politics they are. We had intended to bring you an interview with their shadow Chancellor Vince Cable, but the May Day protests caused such havoc in London overnight really that he had to cancel his media commitments at the last minute, so in his place a few hours ago, about half past two in this morning I spoke to Tom, Lord McNally. Now he's the Lib-Dems' Leader in the House of Lords, he's one of the party's founding fathers, and he began is political career as the Labour MP for Stockport, before leaving to join the newly formed Social Democrats, back in 1981, and he's led the Lib–Dems in the House of Lords since 2004, and I began by remarking to Lord McNally that it's been a great campaign for the yellow and their leader, Nick Clegg, and that the party must be feeling great.

LORD McNALLY – Lib-Dem Leader, House of Lords
It is absolutely magical, it's 20 years since we launched the party of the Liberal Democrats, during that period we've been so low that we've not shown on opinion polls, we've been outside the statistical range, and now to be neck and neck with the Conservatives in this final lap, it feels pretty good.

PAUL Yes well Nick Clegg looks like a Prime Minister, talks like a Prime Minister.

LORD McNALLY Yes and I think he's come as a surprise, because media have got used to reporting politics as a kind of Punch and Judy Show with the two old parties. They tended to ignore the third party, and it was very very difficult for us to get a hearing. But the game changer, and it has been a game changer, have been the Prime Ministerial debates, because we were granted parity of esteem as it were in those debates, and people were able to make up their own mind.

PAUL Yes Nick Clegg keeps talking about the new politics versus the old politics, the corruption of Labour and the Conservatives, and that seems to be resonating.

LORD McNALLY I think so, well a number of things have happened of course, you’ve probably covered in New Zealand the disaster of our parliamentary expenses scandal, which really has damaged the standing of parliament and given the feeling that it is time for a change, not just a change of the old parties, but a change in the culture of Westminster, and I think that’s given him the opportunity to talk about new politics. And of course it's also coincided with the world economic crisis where our economic spokesman, Vince Cable, has come through as the man who told it right at the beginning and has been talking the most sense about the economy.

PAUL Lord McNally, the party seemed to get a new lease of life really in this campaign after that first debate. Tell us about Nick Clegg.

LORD McNALLY Nick is an interesting character, I mean he's not hidden the fact that he has come from a fairly comfortable upper middle class background, gone to one of our better public schools, not Eton but to Westminster, but he has also somehow managed to have a normality about him and a breadth of career which has been a good preparation for this moment. He worked in Europe in the European Commission on trade issues, and did trade negotiations with China and other south eastern Asian countries, he had a stint as a member of the European parliament, and then came into our parliament at the last election.

PAUL And so he's a free trader, we like that

LORD McNALLY Yes I think you'll find he is, within the European Union context, he was special advisor to Leon Brittan when he was Trade Commissioner, and I think Brittan on the whole within the EU, has always taken the attitude of encouraging for free trade, we're not a fortress Europe party, we are a world party.

PAUL We see this weekend that the Guardian newspaper has endorsed the Liberal Democrats, how significant is that to you?

LORD McNALLY Paul, I cried this morning when I read the Guardian editorial. It is a wonderful piece of journalism, and it said everything that my political life is about, it really was a throwback to the grand old days of the Manchester Guardian, it came out strong and clear in the great tradition of British radicalism for a party of conscience and reform.

PAUL What do the Liberal Democrats actually stand for, I mean in what areas can you point the stick at both the Conservatives and Labour?

LORD McNALLY First of all on the economy, we were the first to warn against the danger of building an economy on extended debt in a housing bubble, and we have been one of the earliest parties to espouse environmentalism and green technologies as a way forward in terms of the future of the British economy. We have certainly entered this campaign with the most radical of the taxation proposals in terms of lifting the burden of taxation on people up to 10,000 British pounds a year, and taxing higher earners more severely, and I think that’s important, because I think everybody knows that we're going to go into a period of difficult decisions for government, and I don’t think you hold the social cohesion of a country together unless not only do you ask for tough decisions and sacrifices, but that people see that the broadest backs are being asked to bear the heaviest burdens.

PAUL The party talks about electoral reform, proportional representation, is that going to be a bottom line in any coalition talks?

LORD McNALLY I think it would be very difficult to see us going into any formal coalition without electoral reform. What I should also say is, and we've also made this clear, we understand the seriousness of the economic situation, and therefore we are not going to leave the country without government and rudderless whilst we have a long protracted wrangle about coalition or whatever. I mean our first duty as politicians after this general election will be to face up to the reality of the economic situation, but before you start trying to work out which way we're going to go I should point out that two of our largest cities, Leeds and Birmingham are governed by Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalitions, and at local government there's quite a lot of experience of working with other parties, so electoral reform is not going to go away. I think we're going to have to work in the next parliament devising a system that’s fit for purpose, and we might come and even have a look at New Zealand.

PAUL In New Zealand Lord McNally, our government debt is some 20% of GDP, a matter that has us very worried here, Britain's debt however is 68% of GDP. Now your Deputy Leader says Britain could go the way of Greece if you're not careful, but the UK is showing some recovery isn't it?

LORD McNALLY Yes, and I don’t want to talk down our crisis, every speech I've made in this campaign I've read out a little brief I received from the University of Birmingham which set out the harsh facts that we are borrowing and on target to borrow about twice what two or three years ago we thought were proven levels of borrowing, and we are borrowing at historically high levels, but the capacity of a country to recover given the right economic management, one shouldn’t underestimate either. We are in a convalescent period and that’s why we have tended to disagree with the Conservatives who want to set about the job of bringing public expenditure under control immediately. We've tended to give support to the government's analysis, and indeed the analysis of President Obama in the United States, that it's better to keep the stimulus going at least for another year, so that we don’t have a double dip recession.

PAUL Why won't Nick Clegg deal with Gordon Brown as Leader of Labour if you were to enter some kind of coalition deal with Labour? Why won't he deal with Gordon?

LORD McNALLY I think what he said, and I think it's also very clear, if by four or five o'clock on Friday morning it is clear that the Labour Party has sustained its worst defeat since 1918, and that’s what it's on course to do now, its worst defeat since 1918, Gordon Brown has been fundamentally rejected. Whatever else you may calculate about the wishes of the British people, if he has been root and branch rejected as the sitting Prime Minister, I think that we would be insulting the wishes of the British people if we were somehow to allow a back door resurrection. But my suspicion is, Gordon Brown is an honourable man and he's very good actually at the numbers game, if he sees that kind of result I think he will in honour submit his resignation, I don’t think it will be a matter of waiting to be told to go, he will know what message the British people have sent to him personally.

PAUL Tom, if the Tories were to win most of the seats, the pressure would probably be on the Liberal Democrats to begin talks with the Tories first. But is that a problem for you, because given that most of your supporters are disaffected Labour, would they resent that?

LORD McNALLY Many analyses say well your voters are either disaffected Labour or disaffected Conservatives, I like to think they're not converted, fully signed up Liberal Democrats, but I think it's fair to say, as I said at the very beginning, we are a party of conscience and reform in the great Gladstonian tradition, we are a reformist party, we are a radical party, we are a centre left party, but that hasn’t stopped us working with Conservatives, as I said in places like Leeds and Birmingham at local government level. My suspicion however is that if the Conservatives emerged as the largest party, what they would be more likely to do is to simply try and govern as a minority government, and we'd have to take account of what authority they would have to do that.

PAUL So you are days away Lord McNally from an historic British election, what do you think you're gonna see in Britain late Thursday night, early Friday morning?

LORD McNALLY I think you're going to see one of those most exciting cliffhangers of an election night. I think you're going to see some surprising results from left and right field in what were previously thought of as safe Labour or safe Conservative seats change hands, and I hope that it's one of those times that come once or twice in a century, that a country really takes a decision that it wants a complete change of their direction, a sense of renewal. I hope we put to the British people policies and opportunities which they will grasp with both hands. But we do go into these last few days with the wind in our sails and a good deal of confidence that we are going to bring about the real kind of change that this country needs.

PAUL So that is Tom Lord McNally and the Lib-Dems' Leader in the House of Lords, so it's all eyes on the UK later this week, it's going to be a huge week in Britain.

ENDS

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