06/12/2013 Newsnight

This programme contains some strong language.

They were two iconic world leaders who spent the closing years of the

20th century in charge of the respective countries. Tonight Bill

Clinton speaks for the first time since Nelson Mandela's death, paying

a moving and eloquent tribute to the fellow politician who became a

friend. When he smiled at you, if you looked in his eyes you knew he

was not just smiling, he was looking in your soul. Searching around for

what was really going on. We were arrested, there appeared no legal

reason and eventually leased. And Michael Burke, the BBC's man in 80s

apartheid South Africa charts Nelson Mandela as life and legacy. We will

hear from Nadine Gordimer, the lifetime friend of Nelson Mandela,

who was there as he was handed his prison sentence. And, is this

devisive figure the future of South Africa. We are a Government in

waiting and I'm the leader of that Government in waiting. We shall

fulfil where President Madiba left. Today Britain stands united in

respect. In the 1980s Nelson Mandela divided this country. The UK's

former man in Pretoria, and Labour MP, Diane Abbot reflect on the time.

Is the UK's economy really motoring, the Newsnight Robin Reliant is fired

up. Good evening, flags and cities across the globe are flying at half

mast, and leaders and countries all over the world have spoken of a

giant among men, an outstanding politician, an African son and hero.

From the Pope who paid tribute to Nulecit steadfast commitment in

promoting the human dignity of all citizens, to the Cuban state

newspaper who wrote that his legacy will continue to inspire future

generations of revolutionaries. Everyone has something to say about

Nelson Mandela. Not least former US President, Bill Clinton, who earlier

today granted Newsnight his first interview since Nelson Mandela's

death. One of the things I noticed yesterday, everybody talked about

what a magnificent example he was and both giving up his anger to

govern inclusively and also leaving power, but he was actually a very

good President, he was a faithful representative of all of his people

and of his nation in the national interest. And I thought it was

amazing given how long he had been in prison how quickly he got up to

speed. He made a good decision to keep the people in the Government

around him, keep them serving while he brought in some of his own

people. He really did a good job as President. I loved dealing with him.

It was all business. We would do our business and be friends again, even

if we were just on the phone. We would spend ten or 15 minutes

talking about personal things, but always after business first. Do you

think you learned a lot from him? Oh a lot. He was uncommonly kind to me.

The closer we got personally, although as I said we continued to

have arguments, on a couple of occasions we had very sharp

arguments. About what? We argued about the chairmanship of South

Africa from the land mine issue, I wanted to do more than all the other

countries in the world to get rid of land mines and some people drew the

treaty to rid of the antitank mines so only the European ones would be

available for purchase, it made me mad. And Mandela's apppointee was

the chairmanship. We said we wouldn't change it once we got the

final draft and I'm not going to change it. I also used to rib him

about Cuba. One of the things I really admired about him is he was

fan natically loyal after he became President to the countries that

supported him and the ANC while in prison. I remember one night we were

overries that supported him and the ANC while in prison. I remember one

night we were over there seven years ago for his birthday, and I took my

whole American delegation there, we participated and raised money for

the foundation. We had a little auction, one of the things auctioned

was a valuable bottle of rum that Fidel Castro had given him. Some

people were there and they said President Clinton you should buy

this in honour of Mandela, so I purchased it at auction and then I

had to give it away before I came back to the United States because I

didn't want to violate the embargo. When you think of his many

achievements, people talk about his great capacity for For giveness, do

you think that turned -- for he forgiveness, was that his strength

with the truth and reconciliation? I said how do you do this had you to

hate those people, with look what they did to you. He said I was young

and strong in prison and for 11 years I lived on my hatred. And one

day I was breaking rocks and thinking all they had done to me and

taken from me, they had abused me emotionally and physically, and

taken way the right for me to see my children glow up and eventually

destroyed my marriage, I realised they could take everything except my

mind and my heart. Those things I decided not to give away. He looked

at me because in the middle of all the fun I had with Congress, he

smiled and said "neither should you". He was always just saying

stuff like that. Just bending over backwards trying to be a true

friend. Did he talk to you about that sadness though, that must have

accompanied him through his life about the sacrifice that he and his

family had made, and he lost his personal life. He lost a close

relationship with many of his family members, that must have troubled him

deeply? It did bother him, but he had an iron will and he realised

that his will first needed to be applied to the mind and heart he had

saved, and he really disciplined himself to get over both anger and

regret in a hurry. You could see it, if you knew him well and you spent a

lot of time with him, you could see these things come up. I'm one of the

few people, I guess, that ever saw him really mad. He was even really

mad at me a time or two. He would get over T you could see his mind

kick in, his iron will, he knew he had to live in the present and think

of the future. It was liberating, just like the forgiveness was

liberating, he realised without for giveness he would -- forgiveness he

would never be free or make other people free, or give them permission

to forgive and trust. You know trust is something it is in pretty short

supply in the world today. Mandela had it a million-fold, because he

was trusting in people they thought I can't believe's trusting us, but

he did. Unlike Martin Luther king, he He -- king, he embraced armed

struggle, was that a conflict? He had within the country, in my mind

serves me well, the United States was part of an armed struggle when

part of King George's empire. His view was at the time there was no

way Way out, and he was young -- no way out, and he was young, and the

people of South Africa had been enslaved and in servitude in a

violent and repressive way for a long time. But something burned in

him when he basically began to grow spiritually. After he had been in

prison more than a year, and he realised that the ultimate victory

would be for the people of South Africa to be in a democracy that had

a chance to work, that had a chaps to function. And that in order to do

that, he had to demonstrate a whole given kind of leadership and adopt a

different strategy. I think he had come to that while he was in prison.

Prison. I imagine there will be a state funeral and you will be going

to that, if you are called upon to speak, what will you say you will

miss about him the most? I will miss the light that he caused to come on

in the lives of everybody he touched. When you were around

Mandela you wanted to be a bigger person. You knew you could be better

than you were, you knew that you had to concentrate on the big things,

and let little things go, and you had to overcome your own

resentments. I watched him do it, and almost as if I were inside his

brain for all those years we became friends. Both when he was President

and later when we worked on AIDS together for years and years. I will

miss that. When he smiled at you, if you looked in his eyes you knew he

was not just smiling, he was looking in your soul. Searching around for

what was really going on. And figuring it out and he knew just

what to say and how to say it. That was an uncommon gift that he gave to

everyone he cared about. I will miss that. And people all over the world

could see it. They could see it in the way he carried himself and the

way he spoke. It wasn't that he stopped being a citizen, that he

stopped having convictions on the issues, that he stopped having

disagreements even with his friends, it was that there was a bigger

reality, that our common humanity is the thing that matters most, and the

thing that ought to animate all our endeavours, personally and publicly.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Bill Clinton speaking to me earlier from

his home in upstate New York. What was it like living and working in

apartheid South Africa as an outsider? Michael Burke was the

BBC's South Africa correspondent from 1983-1987. Newsnight asked him

to revisit some of his own reports from the down paint a picture of

Nelson Mandela and his -- from the country to paint a picture of Nelson

Mandela and his life. Nelson Mandela lived and died in the

suburb of Houghton. Most of his neighbours who turned out to mourn

him are white, but it is economics not apartheid now. They were

grieving a convicted terrorist who turned their world upside down but

also it stayed the same. It could have been so different. When I went

to the 1980s South Africa was trapped between revolution, the

whites were trying to preserve things, and the blacks were

beginning to lose patience. The young were particularly angry, the

lid was about to come off. It was a terribly violent country. Brutal

undercurrents flowed through the cultures of both races, it wasn't

just apartheid that brought them to the surface. In Soweto, 25 domestic

murders a weekend were routine. Most whites seemed to have guns and few

inhibitions about using them. The security forces had few restraints.

As the children rioted, they were ambushed. At least three coloured

youths were killed outright before they could take cover. The police

said they were using bird shot, designed to wound not kill, but at

short range the ammunition was bill dead low and nearby buildings were

peppered with gun shots. More than 20 were wounded, three of them

seriously, many others were taken secretly to be treated in private

for fear of arrest. Our cameras recorded it in all its brutal

intensity and sent the pictures around the world. They hated us. You

people get out now very quickly OK. Because you people are the locking

cause of this now, get out. The battlegrounds of apartheid were the

townships, where blacks were lucky to be allowed to live, though still

as foreigners in their own land. 12 miles up the road and a world away

was where I lived. Our white suburbs were dedicated to the pursuit of

graciousness, when our blacks were hungry we didn't tell them to eat

cake, we ate it ourselves. This banquet in aid of the starving was

held with the country in a state of merge -- emergency and the townships

in a mess. There were more important things to talk about. What are

exercise It is a more complicated issue than most people realise, the

central truth is this is apartheid, and this isn't changing. The white

conscripts army crushed the township uprising, while we reporters were

gagged by a state of emergency. There had been no real organisation,

the ANC leaders in exile and in jail were on the sidelines. By now the

world had turned its back on white South Africa, credit of both kinds

were running out. The unthinkable had become the inevitable.

Good evening, Nelson Mandela walked away from 27 years in prison today

after 10,000 days in jail the world's most famous prisoner walks

out through the prison gates. He tells a mass rally in Cape Town

sanctions must remain, the armed struggle must go on. The armed

struggle and the reason we are in it still exists today. He emerged into

a world sanctfied by suffering, a politician that never had to bother

with the messy compromises of politics. All those hopes and fears

invested in a man almost everybody was seeing for the first time. He

was faithed for his dignity and his grace d feted for his dignity and

graze. He was a wooden speaker with little taste for administration,

nobody else could carry the burden of expectation. Will they expect

things quickly and is that a burden to you? It is an expectation, and

justified. In township, where the sheet flowed in the streets, and the

wagon offered one of the few jobs around, they expected miracles. The

ANC promised there will be housing, schooling, education, there will be

that and that and that. Will you give them one year, two years, three

years, four years? After the 27th I would give them two months. Life

mostly did get better, but the economy has stalled, half the young

people are unemployed, the ANC has grown fat on 20 years of

unchallenged rule, and worries about the young radical left. But it still

seems a miracle. Mandela is dead, but the dream is still alive. As

Michael Burke has just said, for a younger generation of South Africans

the hope and idealism occasioned by Nelson Mandela's presidency have

given way in recent years to new political challenges, not least the

future of the ANC, accused by some who have failed do enough to close

the yawning gap in the country between rich and poor. What will

Mandela's death mean for the democracy he created. A little

earlier I spoke to political commentator, Jack Malvern in Justice

Malala and talked about the mood of change today. It is amazing in the

sense here you had a nation who was waiting for this to happen, andent

the news came it was a bit of a shock. We all were hit, we sort of

stopped and reflected and it was a shock. Today it is turned from pain,

reminiscence, nostalgia to celebration, wow, Nelson Mandela

lived among us and this is, this has been, we have been touched amazingly

by a fantastic amazing human being. So, yes, it has moved, and if you

look at the images this evening of people flocking to Nelson Mandela's

house and his old home in Soweto, it is sort of let's go and be part of

history. Let's go touch a bit of it. So it is celebration, the shock has

sort of worn off and it is wow, he was here. But do you think that

Nelson Mandela, as a kind of a giant of the ANC, with him gone,

symbolically, will the ANC change, because the ANC itself is under a

lot of pressure, it has been in power for 18 years, do you think we

will see a big upheaval in the political landscape? I think South

Africa is at a bit of a tipping point in the political sphere.

Firstly the ANC that we have today is not the ANC of Nelson Mandela, a

lot of people say look at the head of the ANC, President Zuma, who

announced President Mandela's death last night. This is a man who is

mired in controversy right now, remember he's built himself a DLO

$20 million house in his home village, and many people are saying

how can you build a $20 million house? Right from the top many

officials are mired in corruption allegation, a lot of people are

asking questions about what this ANC is like. Then there is new players

coming on to the political field, a lot of people are saying, well, the

ANC in this election will not enjoy the two thirds majority it enjoyed

in 1999 and 2004, it will not enjoy the support it enjoyed in 2009, that

support will go below 60%. Remember it is at 65. 9% right now. And many,

many people are saying there will be challengers to the ANC, many of them

are coming through a former ANC firebrand who has started his own

party. He's speaking the language of Robert Mugabe, nationalise and land

compensation. These are some of the challenges that face the ANC. The

key question about Nelson Mandela's passing is whether people will

remember Nelson Mandela and vote on the basis of loving Nelson Mandela

and continue to vote for the ANC. That is a big factor in the

elections which may happen in the next was Did people understood what

President Mandela was, a revolutiony? We understood what he

was, President Mandela was a fighter, a militant radical young

person, and we have had an opportunity some of us to serve in

the same organisation, he served, some of us had an opportunity to

occupy the same position President Mandela occupied when he was a young

activist in the African National Congress. So therefore, in

everything else we do, we seek to be like him and we understand what he

represented as a father of the nation. Nelson Mandela would never

have surely agreed with your policy of seizing white farms? President

Mandela believed in the freedom charter, the freedom charter of

which he was a volunteer says the land shall be shared amongst those

who work it. And he believed in the people of South Africa sharing the

land. He actually has fought for the reinstatement of the land into the

hands of the rightful owners. Yours are the politics of Robert Mugabe,

not Nelson Mandela? No, no, no, no. Our politics are inspired by both.

Remember President Mugabe and President Mandela are the products

of the same youth formation. Both of them served in the ANC youth league.

Therefore their struggle has been the restoration of dignity to the

African people. We think that they remain an inspiration to many young

people who are actively participating in the struggle for

the restoration of the dignity of the oppressed African masses in

southern Africa. You are facing charges of fraud and money

laundering, corruption charges, these are surely not the attributes

of a leader, somebody that wants to be President of South Africa? Look

those charges are manufactured by those who cannot merge our political

ideas. They are suffering from poverty of ideas and as a result

because they are unable to defeat us ideolgically, and theologically,

they are now opting for monkey tricks and manipulating state

institutions to settle political differences. I have no worries, I

actually believe that within a short space of time, before we know it,

these charges will be cleared by the national prosecuting authority. Are

you contesting seats in the elections in April next year, and if

you are, do you expect to win and will that be a step on the road to

President President Malema? We are contesting elections and we are a

Government in waiting and I'm a President in waiting, we will

continue where President Mandela left. We will continue with the

struggle for total emancipation of our people. We are confident we are

a viable alternative here in South Africa, because those who are in

power today have undermined the legacy of President Mandela, they

are now a self-serving people, they are stealing from the poor to

benefit themselves and their immediate ones. We want to undermine

that by restoring thing willcy of President Mandela, where we bring

about an accountable Government which will deliver to the poorest of

the poor. Which will deliver to the poorest of the poor. The release of

Nelson Mandela came after a decade of international pressure. In this

country a generation of campaigners organised boycotts and protested

outside the South African embassy. Six years later tens of thousands

greeted Mandela, by then South African President on a famous walk

about in Brixton. What does he mean to today's generation of British

teenagers born in the years after his release. We went back to Brixton

to find out. It was like the biggest popstar the world had ever seen

coming to London and Brixton. People were unbelievably excited. There

were thousands of people lining the streets and barricades all down

here. The sound systems were playing, and people really, really

excited. We had people in tears. The crowd danced Calypso, as Nelson

Mandela turned up in Brixton. For many it was a symbol that something

was changing, not just in South Africa but this country as well. Mel

Milbourne was forced to flee South Africa as a 20-year-old, and this

Lela Kogbara was a campaigner, both were instrumental in bringing him

here. It was a thank you for all we did to put the pressure on the South

African Government, it was instrumental to bringing apartheid

down. My father being white, my mother being black, being in South

African under the apartheid laws they could not be a legaln'tity, the

result of which the house was raided, my mother was forced to

leave the country and I then followed subsequently to London. A

three-minute walk down the road, a new generation born around the time

Mandela toured this part of London and making an on-line magazine. We

brought them together to see how attitudes had changedtime Mandela

toured this part of London and making an on-line magazine. We

brought them together to see how attitudes had changed. I got on a

bus and I went to the front of the, but and the bus driver said you have

to go to the back. I said why the back because I'm comfortable here,

he said because you are black you have to sit in the black. I can't

understand how anyone would deal with that. If someone told me I

couldn't be in a shop or place or bus because I was a certain colour,

I would not tolerate it, I'm programmed to think, sorry if I need

or want to be here I can be here, you are not going to stop me from

being in a place because of the colour of my skin, it is ridiculous

to me. I don't understand it. Me personally I'm from a family where

my grandmother is white, but I have got black family, I have white

family. To me I grew up never thinking of it as something

important, until I got to a certain age it became a lot more apparent.

And I think that's the important thing about things like apartheid,

people like Nelson Mandela, he broke down those barriers. You are made to

feel in a kind of ostracised because of the colour of your skin, it

happens in so many different contexts. Again it is not apartheid

on that level, but it is still, there is some residue of that we do

still see. That's our generation's fight. So Lela, you were quite

involved in the antiapartheid movement in the 1980s, what did

Nelson Mandela mean to you back then? I felt angry, I was really,

really angry as a young black person in this country, and I just couldn't

imagine why you would have a system like apartheid. That was the main

thing, it wasn't this big peaceful love-in, at the time, and even when

Mandela was released and he was preaching peace at one point I

thought hang on a minute, do we really, why don't we punish these

people for what they have done. I think one of his best legacies is

the fact that he chose a path of peace. Is Nelson Mandela then still

relevant to you and your generation today? 100% and he always will be.

When he passed I was kind of heard the news on Twitter, he spent his

whole life fighting for us, it is our generation's turn now and it is

our obligation, it is what we are meant to be doing to make sure that

his word is never stopped getting retweeted and favourited and spread

all around the world. In the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was at the

helm, attitudes to Nelson Mandela's incarceration and apartheid was not

as they are now. There wassam bitch lens about the armed struggle and

divisions about sanctions on the left and right. Diane Abbot was

elected Britain's first black MP at the height of the furore, and Lord

Renwick from the late 1980s was there. Now French the Daily Mail to

the Mirror is lawing Nelson Mandela. It is extraordinary, some Tory

leaders were saying Nelson Mandela should be hanged and Margaret

Thatcher said a the ANC was a typical terrorist organisation and

anyone who said they would run South Africa was living in cuckoo hand.

She was lukewarm about sanctions? She put in oil and other sanctions,

she thought it was complete nonsense to cut off air links and put

sanctions on agricultural exports which put tens of thousands of black

South Africans out of work with no alternative employment and no social

safety net. But I was in the middle of this. Even though what you would

say, obviously Nelson Mandela, but black activists were saying put the

sanctions on? Many of them were, absolutely. I was right in the

middle of this, I was her envoy to Pretoria, my instructions were

clear, To do everything I could to help get Nelson Mandela out of jail.

Now as long as Botha was there we had no charges when De Klerk took

over, he was a friend of mine and an admirer of her's. At midnight on the

night before he made his speech unbanning the ANC he telephoned me

and he said you can tell your Prime Minister she will not be

disappointed. That was very much Mrs Thatcher's influence, do you accept

that? That is very touching but getting Nelson Mandela out of jail

is one thing, defeating apartheid was another. Denis Thatcher, who I

think very often reflected Mrs Thatcher's real views, used to call

South Africa "God's own country", WLFS the the If Mrs Thatcher was a

supporter of the struggle she kept it quiet at the time? I don't agree

with Diane and neither did Nelson Mandela. When he was released, I

used to see him every single week, we had to train his bodies guards

and look at the security around his house and helped in negotiations

with the Government. He didn't want to fight with Mrs Thatcher, what he

wanted to know with me, and he said I was the adviser on this, was how

to get her on his side. When I came to the meeting with her I was there,

and I told her you mustn't interrupt him. And she didn't interrupt him

for a whole hour. Is that very unusual for her? Indeed it was, as

he told her all about the struggle with human rights, and exactly as I

told him she would, at the end of that she said we support you on all

of that, but stop all the nonsense about nationalising the banks and

the mines. So what you are essentially saying it was the

politics of the free market that dictated the approach? No, she

thought having met him that he was, he had exactly the same effect on

her as everybody else, she was immensely impressed, but she thought

that he didn't know much about economics. The meeting on went on so

long. So you would say that was patronising? To be honest she didn't

think many people knew much about economics, that was one of our

characteristics, the anti--apartheid struggle was a struggle of the

generation, there was a dividing line and those who wanted to bring

down party. You think it is a rewriting of history? I think so,

they can do, but those of us who were active at the time understood

where Mrs Thatcher and a lot of MPs stood. It is so strange to hear them

they loved Nelson Mandela and hated apartheid, it didn't look like it at

the time? Diane won't believe this but we wanted the same objective. At

the end of the meeting he walked out into Downing Street and thanked her

for everything she had done to help secure his release. He knew exactly

what they were doing, because I was able to tell him so in prison. Thank

you very much. Now that the dust has settled and George Osborne's big day

out, the Autumn Statement can be surveyed with both the benefit of a

little distance and the interpretation of the Institute of

Fiscal Studies with follows the Autumn Statement as night follows

day, growth is up and benefits bill down, but how does it feel for you

the people are you better off. The Tories say yes, and Labour no, and

the IFS is with Labour on this one. Is the economy motoring again? If

this little Robin Reliant were the economy, it is nippier than we

thought. It had dodgy years but picking up speed. Today the

Chancellor's claim that we are feeling the benefit of that was

challenged. This is how the official forecast for economic growth has

changed in eight months. This year from 0. 6%-1. 4%, and next year from

1. 8%-2. 4%. Just six months ago it looked as though we were stalling,

black smoke out the back of the exhaust, we looked like a write-off,

now we are cruising along at speed. We are the fastest-growing major

economy. And the faster growth is driving the deficit down as tax and

VAT is rolling in, less is being spent on benefits. But are we

feeling the recovery? Labour's claim is working people are on average

?1,600 worse off than when David Cameron took power. Yesterday George

Osborne seemed to refute that. And yes, real household disposable

income is rising. But today the independent Institute for Fiscal

Studies said the Chancellor's numbers didn't show quite what they

seemed to. The real disposable income is forecast to have increased

by 0. 5% in 2015, but the population is increasing so the income per

person is forecast to fall very slightly, which might seem at odds

with what George Osborne has been saying. According to the measure of

household disposable income per person, incomes in 2016 will be very

little higher than in 2006, that is ten years without growth. So now

we're in the City, close to the Bank of England, and the trouble with the

City is, as soon as the car starts to get going, it starts to fret that

it's going to overheat. And then the Bank of England might slam on the

brakes. The bank said interest rates won't rise while unemployment is

above 7%. So how soon might it fall below that. At the budget in March

the forecast that was it would take three years. Yesterday the office

for bugetry responsibility said unemployment would fall much faster

and then stay above 7% for a year. Calming fears of interest rate

rises. The supposedly Office of Budget Responsibility has this

unemployment rate which has been plummeting, well steadily, suddenly

flatlining just above the threshold that the Bank of England promised

they wouldn't raise interest rates until it fell below. So it may be

that they have kind of nudged the forecast to avoid alarming the

markets who are very nervous at the moment. Have we just jump started

the old economic model, the one that clashed, the years of house rises

and debt. Falling sales were blamed as pressure on the consumer. But

consumer spending is lovely jubbly, it grew at its fastest pace in three

years in the last quarter and so did the economy, consumer spending is

driving it. If real incomes are not growing and consumer spending is,

how do you square that? There is one answer, debt. We would like to

replace our debt-fuelled economy with a new model, but households

have a record of ?1. 4 trillion. Business investment is barely

rising, exports are down and five more years of austerity. No suped up

engine yet, but a very nice paint job.

I'm joined now by Phil Collins from the Times, and Janan Ganesh from the

Financial Times. The Conservatives first, the economy growing,

benefits' bills down, essentially stick with the Conservatives and get

the job done? Yeah, and if there is another 2. 5% of growth next year

and inflation comes down a bit, that argument looks pretty strong in the

months leading up to the election. I don't think that growth is their

winning issue, I think their winning issue is the deficit. As long as the

central subject of British politics is the deficit, Labour have a

credibility problem, and George Osborne's job this week was to

restore that issue to the centre of politics. The fact that the public

doesn't really care that the deficit 2010, you know, ?60 billion ?120 and

then down ?9, that's OK then? I think you're right that is the

central question, and if George Osborne can define it as much. What

happened to Labour in the Autumn Statement, their position reminds me

of the speakers question, we are on the edge of the abyss now let's walk

straight forward. Labour's pitch has been this Government is ruining the

economy, making it worse with austerity, of course you are a

terrible hostage to fortune to good numbers. George Osborne for the

first time had a few good numbers to bring to the House of Commons, and

Ed Balls was in a terrible position. He was marooned with nothing to say.

He had a good position but the IFS blew it out of the water and said

Labour on the basis of whatever it was ?1,400 worse off was the correct

figure. But it doesn't have any traction? No, but what matters is

the trend. If the economy generally and people's personal circumstances

are even marginally improving in the last six months of the parliament,

I'm not sure they will remember what happened four years earlier. I think

the last six-to-nine months are disproportionately important in

parliament. He just wants to tell us what it will be like in 2015? We

would like him and Phil wrote a good column saying he should think ahead

to infrastructure and investment in the future. Really his political

incentive is to get it right over the next 18 months. For a sustained

recovery, you want a massive increase in business investment, it

is up 1%, you don't want a recovery based on personal debt and housing

boom do you? That is right, the one line of attack which is credible is

the fragility of the recovery, it could be built on sand. The

debt-fuelled nature of it is extremely worrying. However, you

have to look at the time scale here, it is not that long until the next

election, and every incentive for the politician is to look at the hor

rise zone two years hence. The big question for Labour is whether the

two things, the economy in aggregate on the one hand and living

standards. Labour is trying to separate them, a credibility problem

on economic growth, but we are more trusted on the idea that we might be

able to put money in your pocket and they are separating those two

things. There is a lot of psychology around that, but a lot of that is

dependant on whether or not you trust the central character in the

Labour story. The central character in this story is not bland it is Ed

Balls? -- Ed Miliband but Balls? I think he knows Ed Balls well enough

not to count on that. Knows that Ed Balls will kick up a fuss and has a

parliamentary following of pug listic MPs. It can be a bloody thing

to go through. It is not as if he brings nothing at all to the Labour

table, he is pragmatic. But enough, will people vote for Ed Balls as

Chancellor? That is the proposition they will be offered, I don't think

there is any likelihood at all. It is impossible to separate the dancer

from the dance in politics. It is the message that is the problem. It

is not just that Ed Balls had a bad day or performance, the central

economic message is difficult to sell. Labour has been saying we will

spend our way out of a spending crisis. The cost of living issue is

losing traction? It matters to people and Labour are more trusted

than the Conservatives. The big question is two things, whether the

economy and aggregate comes back into line with living standards and

second whether Labour can really possibly define an election on that

question when their credibility on the economy is so poor. I think they

can get awhich with saying that the cost of living is as important as

the macro economy, they can't get away with saying nothing on the

macro economy. Finally a very personal memory of Nelson Mandela,

the South African author, Nadine Gordimer knew him as a young man,

she herself was a member of the ANC and through her novels gave voice to

the moral and racial struggle against apartheid in her country.

Literature for which she won a Nobel Prize. Five years younger than

Mandela, a constant friend throughout his life. We filmed her

at her home in Johannesburg as she recognise collected the man she

knew. My first memories were at a distance, seeing him, his

photographs in the papers. And a friend of the distinguished of the

advocate, and when the treason trial came on of Mandela he said do you

want to come along to listen, and I did. So I went and I just couldn't

keep away. So George very resourceful he has his brief case

with all his legal papers in it, he said you take this and you are my

assistant and secretary, when the time came for to have a lunch break

you know in these courts, George went down to talk to his, the people

that he's representing that is Nelson and some others, and I went

with him owe diently carrying the papers he had. Then I met --

obediently carrying the papers he was carrying, then I met Mandela in

the trial cells. After that I continued to attend the trials,

especially the final one which was the treason trial. And when he was

sentenced to life imprisonment, I was there and heard it. With some

unbelieve, I couldn't believe this was really happening. So that was

the beginning of it. Then of course he went to the island. While he was

on the island it so happened that I wrote a novel called There Goes The

Daughter. And the prisoners on Robben Island were not allowed to

have books sent to them. Apparently there was a bit of smuggling books

and forth going, one of them was smuggled in was my book. Nelson read

it and apparently he thought well of it, and he wrote me a letter. Which

was smuggled OutRage of the prison as my book was smuggled in. And

something of course that I treasure. He was a whole person, most of us

have great gaps in our nature and awareness of each other but he

indeed was a whole person. He had no prejudice, he had no anger. As every

black person has every right to against the fact that of the years

of colonialism that built up to apartheid. He was not a gloomy man

at all, no matter how difficult things were. He had great and a

strange mixture of courage and confidence. As if the confidence fed

the courage. He just knew that the world in South Africa could not

carry on like this. I think that the decision to give up the presidency,

was it a bit premature, considering that we have never replaced him, we

have never been able to so far replace him with anybody near his

extraordinary personality, his intellect and courage. In the end

there was something in him that really overcame everything. And

surely some of that must remain. This may be just a personal idea,

but I think many people would have it that he will never be dead for

us. But I think that he cannot be forgotten. He will never be out of

date. Because what he stood for is timeless. That is almost all for

tonight, but there was more sad news today with the death of a

much-admired figure and one of the giants of jazz Stan Tracey, he was

honoured last year at the Ivor novella awards. We will live you

with his rendition of I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart.