Politicians from all parties have little idea how to solve the problem of economic inequality, a failure that partly contributed to the vote for Brexit, the Conservative MP and former chancellor Kenneth Clarke has said.
Speaking to the Guardian after last week’s vote in favour of starting the process of Britain leaving the EU, Clarke said he felt a principal reason Britain voted to leave was “mounting anger about economic inequality … the gap between different parts of the country, with London and the south-east having a booming economy and nothing happening in some of the old industrial cities of the north and the north midlands”.
Clarke, who served in every Tory government between 1979 and 2014 and was chancellor of the exchequer under John Major, said he accepted that some blame lay with those governments, but added: “I think everybody who believes in liberal economic policies – which is the great bulk of politicians of the last few years – have never quite solved the problem of how to distribute the benefits better so that the whole country can be seen to benefit. We’ve been trying for years.”
Recalling his time as an inner cities minister under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, he said: “It all goes back to that time, and actually I think we’re still not sure how to do it. So we go through a period of rapid economic growth, [but] if you asked the question, ‘How is this going to benefit Hartlepool?’ I can’t pretend I know, and I don’t think I have met anybody who knows. Right and left. I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn has the foggiest notion how to spend the benefits of London’s prosperity either.”
Clarke, 76, has been a committed pro-European throughout his political career, and won praise from remain supporters last week for a passionate speech to the Commons in which he suggested some of the benefits promised after Brexit were Alice in Wonderland fantasies, and vowed to vote against the second reading of the government bill to trigger article 50, which would start the process to leave.
The vote was passed comfortably, though 47 Labour MPs defied their party whip to reject the bill. Clarke was the only Conservative to vote against the government.
Describing Donald Trump as “highly unpredictable”, Clarke said Theresa May’s meeting with the US president shortly after his inauguration had been a mixed blessing. “As a PR advantage, going to see President Trump and President Erdoğan [of Turkey, whom she also met] as her first two highly publicised calls showed the limitations of the new global politics.”
As for the government’s hopes of securing a favourable bilateral trade deal with the US, Clarke said: “It’s possible that for some reason [Trump] wants to have a trade deal with us while he’s busy repudiating deals with everybody else, but I don’t think so.”
He said that while he was hopeful Britain would do well outside the EU, he felt it was inevitable the country would be less well off as a result of the decision to leave.
“You cannot put new trading barriers between yourself and the giant free trade area upon which we have been dependent for the last 20 years, without making yourself poorer,” he said, adding: “It could be a historic disaster. I hope not.”
While he was sceptical about economic forecasts, he said: “It will certainly cost us something. And if it turns out be be some enormous cost and it brings an end to international investment in quite a lot of sectors of the economy, then of course it could be a disaster.”
Exiting the EU will also leave Britain’s influence in the world “substantially diminished”, Clarke argued. “I don’t think President Putin will bother to pick up the phone to Theresa May if he’s busy. We don’t matter so much any more.”
Clarke described the proposals put forward so far by the prime minister as “short on detail”, saying: “I am quite sure one reason they haven’t been able to put forward any clear explanation so far is because ministers don’t agree with each other about what they are aiming for. There isn’t anything to explain.”
