10/12/2015 Daily Politics

well. I am heading up to the north-east later today. I think I'll

take the train. It's time to hand you over to Daily Politics.

but there was a lot of pressure from people in west London. It was to win

seats? We have an issue about planes flying over your capital city, which

is unusual. We have got Heathrow where it is and it is the hub and we

have to get on with it. Now, Jeremy Corbyn is said not

to have changed his views about anything in more

than 30 years as an MP. Our guest of the day,

David Willetts, on the other hand, has admitted to changing

his mind a few times And he's not the only politician

to have shown a lack of consistency over the years, as our

Ellie's discovered. I think that was the wrong

introduction. What have you done with Ellie? She has disappeared into

the ether. She has not gone to the pub already? It must have been the

Christmas drinks. I might try and find the right introduction.

I might try and find the right introduction.

As an alumnus of Mrs Thatcher's Downing Street policy unit,

and a bigwig at the right-wing think tank the Centre for Policy Studies,

David Willetts was seen as a Thatcherite right-winger.

But a quarter of a century later the now Lord Willits was one

of the loudest vocal opponents of the Government's tax credit cuts.

He is not alone in being a travelling Tory.

Iain Duncan Smith reckons a visit to a Glasgow housing estate

at the start of the last decade changed the way he viewed

The future Speaker John Bercow was once a member of the ultra-right

While losing his seat at the 1997 election saw Michael Portillo move

from being a right-wing rabble-rousing Tory Defence

Secretary to a rather more genteel, centre ground politician

prefers journeys of a different kind.

Some politicians go on a rather more obvious journey.

On his way to becoming Britain's wartime leader,

quit the Conservatives for the Liberal party

and then went back again, commenting, "Anyone can rat,

but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat."

More recent examples include Shaun Woodward and Quentin Davies.

Both crossed the floor from the Conservatives to Labour

and were rewarded with front bench jobs.

If I had stayed in the Labour Party, I might have been a more prominent

John Horam can claim the rare distinction of having

begun his political career as a Labour MP, switching to the SDP

and then eventually crossing the floor to become a Conservative.

When you are younger, the things which are wrong seem more

worrying than the things which may be right, so you are more worried

about that, so you are more left-wing than you might otherwise

But they say if you're not a socialist when you are young

there is something wrong with your heart.

If you're not a Conservative when you older there is something

It happens to Labour politicians as well.

When an unknown 29-year-old barrister Tony Blair fought the 1982

Beaconsfield by-election he was both a member of the Campaign

for Nuclear Disarmament and a vocal Eurosceptic.

It was hardly an obvious start for the future Prime Minister

who doggedly occupied the centre ground.

Two of his home secretaries, Alan Johnson and John Reid,

dallied with the Communist Party in their youth.

And the German born Gisela Stuart, another former Blair minister,

shifted her views on Europe dramatically

after representing the British Parliament at a convention

The journey is something when you suddenly realise a long

cherished belief is one you no longer hold.

You then step back, you think about it and then you feel

She said most MPs simply don't have time to pack up their bags and head

One day we have a vote on air strikes in Syria.

The next day our inbox is full about saving the bees.

it is inviting us to some reception in January and why

Daily life of politics is so varied and busy

that it is very easy to hide behind the busyness and say this

We welcome viewers from Scotland. It is a good time to join us because we

are joined by a Scottish politician, John Reid, who is now chair of the

Institute for Security and Resilient Studies. You were a Communist

University? What kind of Communist? I Europe Communist. I was told you

were the enforcer at university. You used to knock on doors at night.

This is interesting where you ask the questions and answer them as

well. Is it true? I was as a young man and I wanted to change the

world. I did not like some of the injustices. It was a brief period,

two years, but after that I read joined the Labour Party and I have

been in it for 45 years and hopefully have helped to change the

world a little. Your PhD thesis was a Marxist analysis of West African

economy and the 19th-century, Mozambique. No, it was West Africa

and it was not a Marxist analysis, it was a critique of Marxist history

to try and find out if it made sense. What did you conclude? It

concluded that marks' model of history, that the technology

changes, it was true and it made sense and that the Leninist view of

history was awful. Have you passed a copy of that to Jeremy Corbyn? I

have not, I am not sure he has done the elementary work on Karl Marx's

thoughts. If he did, he would take a different view of the world. We are

in an era where the most productive forces are cyber and social and

economic changes mean that working people under capitalism are a

thousand times better off than they were 100 years ago and we have to

change the way we apply our values, which is what new Labour is about,

in order to win back the electorate. This is a very highfalutin

discussion. It is a very highfalutin programme. You can see and the

condition from being a student, but could you ever imagine ending up

being a Blairite? Before Blair there were modernisers in the Labour

Party. As a philosopher we were talking about the only constant

being changed and we were talking about the growth of better off

working people, their aspirations changed, they wanted more power over

the lives and they did not want a patronising central states like they

had been used to previously. Part of that modernisation was necessary in

order to keep Labour are relevant. Before there was Tony Blair, there

were a number of people like Kinnock, Mo Mowlam, myself, and we

conducted 15 years of ideological battle inside the Labour Party

before Tony arrived. Tony became the most articulate spokesman of that

trend, but this is not something that was thought up by Tony Blair

and Peter Mandelson over a bottle of Chianti and a bowl of pasta. This

was a thoughtful response to the changes in British social and

economic conditions and how Labour had learned to apply its traditional

values in the modern setting, to use John Prescott's phrase. I used to

hear that in my sleep when he was Deputy Prime Minister. You move them

from a situation where you wanted to overthrow capitalism to a situation

where you wanted to reform capitalism, but in a way that would

still keep it fundamentally a market economy? Yes, because one of the

predictions that Karl Marx made which was wrong was that the market

economy with make more misery for people. Getting poor and poor. But

from 1880 onwards it became wrong. My appreciation of Karl Marx's model

of history, and how it works, not about his political convictions,

many of which were proved wrong. You went on a political journey over a

number of years. Currently the leader actually thinks now what he

got 15 years ago. Is that weakness to date or a strength? There are

potential values. The concern about the impoverishment of people and the

concern for justice and so on. The retention of those values is a

strength. However, if you think you can apply that, despite all the

changes in history, the way that they were applied 5100 years ago, it

is a weakness. In a democracy you have to compromise with the

electorate, an electorate which is people and they are changing in

their social and economic conditions. The economy is changing

in terms of how you produce the wealth in order to redistribute it.

Retain your values by all means, and I hope I have retained most of the

values I had when I was younger, but the way in which you apply them in

different circumstances has to differ as the world changes. John

Keane says, is the facts change, I change my opinions. What do you do?

That is a good question. Your journey became known inside the

Conservative Party, you are known as a free marketeer, a libertarian. I

would say you have been on the journey in the opposite direction,

or at least the journey where you have both met in the middle. I am

not sure if I agree with it. Looking back, I clearly had more here then.

I believe in the free market. It is what got me first into conservatism.

It is as important today as I believed then. When I look at the

problems in the energy or the banking industry, I think we need to

have more opportunities for the newcomer is. Where John struck a

chord is that I used to assume capitalism would deliver evermore

social mobility, that the fruit would always be there for everyone.

One of the things that has happened to our society is that social

mobility and opportunity has not been delivered on the scale we

hoped. You have to look at how we can do better. The fundamentals of a

free market with people choosing for themselves is what I believe now and

what I believed then. You used the phrase free market, but wouldn't

market be more accurate. Very few are free. I was very much involved

in all those big privatisations and one of the things you do is you

often had some kind of regulator you put on top. You were often

privatising monopolies. That is not the free market. There are markets

that clearly require regulation. I do not want Hong Kong 1950 or London

1850, I want a modern, flexible economy. I think we can make it more

flexible to make it easier for new people to come into the markets to

stop the big boys selling it for themselves. The position you have

ended up in is what the Germans call the social market. Yes, roughly. At

the end of the 19th century and with the labour movement it was classed

as social democracy and it was an attempt to reconcile the inevitable

contradictions within the capitalism that lead to cyclical booms and

busts. Which is what we have just been through. Yes, we have and I was

always sceptical when the Chancellor was claiming to have abolished it.

Effectively he would have abolished capitalism. There has never been a

free market anyway. That was my point to David Willetts. Adam Smith

pointed out there were certain things the market would not do. It

would not invest heavily in areas which required heavy investment with

a low return over a long period. The state has to step in and the state

has to help give everybody opportunity because your opportunity

and chance in life is useless unless you can exercise it. If your

material and social conditions prevent you through your own

ambitions and work achieving what others achieve, because they come

from different circumstances, it is our job to give everybody that

opportunity. He also said when businessmen clustered together, you

can be sure that are conspiring against the public. Is your journey

over? I hope not, as the world changes we

ought to be able to look at the evidence is and facts and change our

prejudices. I am still sending a lot of time on cyber role aided issues.

Will you be joining Jeremy Corbyn at the stop the War Christmas dinner? I

have not yet had my insight, maybe it has been lost in the post? I

wouldn't hold your breath. That is a disappointing end to this. It is

Chris must, you can come to ours! I will take that in light! -- invite

-- it is Christmas. They get free bus passes,

have benefited from a "triple lock" ensuring that their pensions rise

by at least 2.5% every year and, most coveted of all,

if you're over 75 you get to watch this programme for free

with your free TV Licence. But do the older generation

get too good a deal? Before the 2008 economic crisis,

35% of all government spending New figures from the Resolution

Foundation today show that the share of wealth owned by 16-44 year olds

was 20% before the financial crisis In contrast the share of wealth

owned by 65-74 year olds has risen And why might politicians

want to ingratiate themselves Well, whilst turnout at the general

election amongst 18-24 year olds was 43% and Labour had a 16% lead,

compare that to the over 65s who are much more likely to vote,

with 78% turning out in May. And amongst this group Conservatives

have a 24% lead over Labour. We're joined now by the former

former Labour cabinet minister, Caroline Flint, who has written

an article calling for Labour to do more to court older voters,

and David Willetts who chairs the Resolution Foundation which has

highlighted that some of these intergenerational

inequalities are still here. Caroline Flint, that article I was

talking about, you said it is different now, the term of being old

is changing, what are the changing needs of the older generation? I

think it is how you define being old, we already had under the last

government raising the pension age, my generation we will not be

retiring until we are 67 and for my kids it could be until they are in

their 70s. This is a growing part of our population. In 2020 at the

general election majority of voters will be over 55. They are growing

and those in the younger bracket are reducing sober me it is about saying

first of all we have to think about, rethink about what it is to be old.

I think there is often quite an opt old-fashioned view of what being old

is about, I will be in the 55 and over category by 2020 and I think my

generation have a different view of things. It is not all about the bus

pass and the TV licence, as important as they are, it is that we

are active much longer in our older age. Putting your political hard hat

on, in the May election only 23% voted for Labour, you need to do

something? Absolutely, we tanked and monks to over 65 's, but we were not

doing much better in the over 55 is either. We had to think about how we

approach older people in terms of what we offer. I think one of the

things the Conservative dead was they talked about things like

inheritance tax, the triple lock, I don't necessarily agree... You want

to take away some of the universal benefits for wealthy pensioners... A

lot of those older people felt their future was being spoken about and

whilst social care is an important issue which is why all the people

want to keep more of their money because they want to pay out for

these things, they need to have a sense that the Labour Party is

speaking to them about their hopes and dreams, not just... And you

don't think they are at the moment? Do you agree that those other

reasons why so many older vote Conservative? What we should not get

in the mindset of is that all people think about it themselves. I

personally think old people are susceptible to arguments that we

have to do this for the younger generation. I think one of the

reasons the inheritance tax strikes a chord is because they think they

are saving up the money for their children or grandchildren, they

don't just see it as issues for themselves. I think they would

respond to appeals to the interest of the younger generations. You have

spoken about intergenerational inequality and for many people it

will come down to how much is spent on different groups of people,

either directly or indirectly, how does your party's spending

priorities reconcile with your idea priorities reconcile with your idea

that more should be done for young people? Spending on the elderly is

going up but spending on education and economic affairs is going down?

We have done the analysis and it does indeed show that there is a

trend towards a more and more public spending being on the services, the

pensions and also the health care which is particularly overused by

older people and young people are not getting a fair crack. It might

not be through direct public spending, I think for example it's

more aborted to get more housing built, house prices are far too

high. If Heathrow is a problem getting new estates built is another

problem where we are way behind other countries. Should there be

less money spent on pensions because they are very expensive,

particularly with the triple lock, should that be retained, the triple

lock? Something that needs to be looked at. There were specific

pledges in the manifesto but the way it works is almost regards the state

of the economy, pensioner incomes keep on rising but for young people

in work they are more sensitive to the state of the economy. You would

accept your party is not popular with the young looking at the voting

numbers? I think an appeal to younger voters and aspiration is

incredibly important part of conservatism. Caroline, is the

grass-roots campaign of momentum helping engage voters? It's very

popular, will it make a difference? Labour has always done better

amongst younger voters than older voters except in 97. I could not

give you the details because I don't know how many people are involved.

But they do have an appeal. I looked at some figures and amongst the

supporters of Jeremy Corbyn I think about 12% were under the age of 30

so I considerable number of people who were older who supported Jeremy

Harris well. What I have also said in the article is that quite often

in politics we segment voters, older voters here, younger voters there. I

think it's about looking at how we can talk about the family,

neighbourhoods and the community and intergenerational support we need to

provide for in future. I have adult children, part of it is how can we

come with our greater wealth, we have pensioners in poverty, don't

forget, but increasingly better off pensioners, how can they help their

kids in terms of getting the home on a training whatever? Let's not

forget these are people with concerns as well, they are squeezed

between looking after older parents and looking after kids as well. That

is the dilemma. Were you at the Labour Party yesterday? I wasn't.

You would invite? I was doing other things. LAUGHTER

Thank you. Now our guest of the day has

somewhat of a reputation for being an intellectual -

so much so that he was given On his election David's successor

as MP for Havant said he had twice the amount of hair but half

the brains as his predecessor. "Those who cannot remember history

are condemned to repeat it." Yes, it's C - the philosopher

George Santayana. In the Inferno section

of Dante's Divine Comedy, the poet is guided through the successive

circles of Hell by I don't know, I think it was Burge.

-- merge all -- Virgil. That's right it's Virgil,

author of the Aeneid. Which planet's days

are longer than its years? Or D - Earth when the Daily Politics

is on air but Parliament I really don't know. I was the

former Minister for science but I don't know. Have a guess. As it is

very small it could be Venus. He has got them all right! We are joined by

Matthew Parris to discuss if having a big brain and being intellectual

helps? It has not helped David, he ought to be a Secretary of State, he

ought to be in the Cabinet, but I think he has always been slightly

suspected by conservatives because clever people, it is not a term of

approbation amongst Tories is it David? I think people think it means

no common sense, not living in reality are being practical but of

course all the things I am interested in I am interested in

because I want to do practical things to make life better. Who

called the Tory party the stupid party? I thought it was John Stuart

Mill. So why would an intellectual join the stupid party? I don't think

whether you are bright or not bright is the important thing, it is about

wisdom and putting your knowledge to good effect. Is that what stopped

you rising to the dizzying heights, Matthew Parris? No, I am just too

incompetent. I think there is a good case to be made for stupidity. Do

you think some politicians are club but pretend not to be, people might

have said that about Ronald Reagan who I think was clever that he made

out? That is the other thing about these claims, I actually think

politicians by and large are very bright and very competent people. I

think it would be hard to do the job if you were not. I think were quite

well served. But what is important is what you do with any intellectual

well served. But what is important have. It's about accessibility,

David Willetts 's is access the ball. It is also about England,

England distrusts intellectuals, we are not like France, not just in

politics. Do you mean just England? Particularly England. British

Enlightenment was a Scottish monopoly. Yes. I love the idea that

being a philosopher could be your job. Doctor Johnson was very rude,

he said he is a Tory by chance, and he meant that argument had led him

to that conclusion, he just didn't have deeply felt... He was

suspicious, it was the classic example of suspicion. We had been

told this was a highfalutin programme and we just went over the

high part. The 1pm news is starting

over on BBC One now. I'll be back tonight

with Michael Portillo, Jess Phillips, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh,

and John Piennar, along with Maitre-d Fred and waitress Cici

from Channel Four's First Date.