Third Ming Campbell podcast (transcript)
In this interview, former BBC and ITN political correspondent David Walter speaks to Ming Campbell MP in a taxi on the way from the Plymouth hustings to Bristol Airport.
David Walter: Ming we’re talking on the campaign trail just after your first hustings on the way back to Bristol Airport. How do you think the hustings went?
Ming Campbell: I think it was very good. There were a very large number of people there, standing room only. The questions were pretty perceptive. The audience wasn’t allowed to participate. Robin Teverson ran it with a fairly dictatorial approach, hope he doesn’t hear me saying this, and he’d had the questions sent in before and he’d done a kind of edit of the questions. So in that sense the audience were perhaps denied their pound of flesh but they were certainly interested and a lot of nodding heads, lot of shaking heads too, because they were both agreeing and disagreeing with what the candidates were saying.
DW: And a good atmosphere between the candidates, very, very positive debate.
MC: Unquestionably. Good tempered. Thoughtful. And that’s the only kind of debate we can have on these issues. I mean there is an important political agenda and people are very concerned about many of the things we were being asked questions about today, and I think too there’s a sense that after the turbulence of the last three or four weeks that it does make sense to focus on the politics.
DW: Clearly a, a lot of members came away from (indistinct), I, I talked to them, feeling very cheered by the fact that there, there was a serious debate going on and a very positive one.
MC: Well we got a standing ovation at the end of the hustings. Roy Jenkins always used to say you should always make sure and get your standing ovation before the beginning of your speech and not at the end of it, and I suppose we did a kind of, we had a kind of form of that today. But I think we appreciated the quality of the debate and I mean a lot, we forget quite often that a lot of our activists spend an awful lot of time raising money, going to wine and cheese parties, putting leaflets through doors, when the reason that brought them in to the party was politics, and if they get the opportunity of the red meat of politics then they want to take it.
DW: How about the rest of the week? How’s that gone?
MC: Been pretty damned hard, I’m beginning to think that there are two Wednesdays in every week ‘cause Prime Minister’s Questions does seem to come round very quickly. This business of being both the acting leader and a candidate is actually proving to be quite hard work ‘cause one’s constantly on the look out for drifting from the acting leader into the candidature which of course would be unacceptable. In addition to that a sudden volume of correspondence I didn’t expect to have. No, no, it’s been a pretty tough week.
DW: Also on Wednesday you had that Any Questions programme and you had a pretty friendly audience but there was one chap who said he thought were more right wing than the others and perhaps took against your patrician image.
MC: Well I discovered that he was a supporter of another candidate later when we talked. But he said I was more right wing so I said, adopting my best court room manner, chapter and verse, chapter and verse and …
DW: Which if course there isn’t.
MC: And, well there, there isn’t and he couldn’t and, and he couldn’t respond. I think he was a little aggrieved because Jonathan Dimbleby said, well if you have chapter and verse write to Ming Campbell …
DW: … but nothing in the post yet?
MC: I’m, I’m not holding my breath. What I think was important really is to say to people it’s what, it’s what you do that counts, it’s how you vote that counts, that’s the measure of my political positioning.
DW: And, and what, what about this sort of idea that you are a patrician figure?
MC: Well I don’t understand where any of this comes from, I mean my father wore an Anthony Eden Homburg hat, he had his suits hand made, he brushed his shoes every time he went out, and I suppose these are the habits which are ingrained in you from childhood. That’s just what I do because that’s what I was brought up to do. And I suppose being an advocate which is the Scottish equivalent of a barrister one does acquire a bit of a court room manner, but I certainly don’t regard myself as being patrician.
DW: What’s in store for the next week?
MC: Well a lot more travelling. I’m being allowed to go home, thank God, for twenty four, no a bit more than twenty for hours, then I’ve got to go to Dunfermline and help in the by election there, and then when that’s over back to London. And next weekend’s pretty ferocious involving Lancashire and Yorkshire before I finally go home late on Saturday night.
DW: So this is going to be your third trip to Dunfermline early next week. How’s it going do you think?
MC: Well Dunfermline’s very close to my own constituency and that’s why I think it’s necessary for me to go there as often as I can. We’ve had a lot of help but we could do with more. Anyone who’s listening and wants to go to Dunfermline would be very welcome. I think we’ve a very good candidate in Willy Rennie who after all was a constituency organiser down here in the South West. We have a very good chance in Dunfermline; we must make sure we take it.
