JC
Prime Minister, you have more than a year of your term to run and your opponents are accusing you of having cut and run, what do you say to that?
PM
Well I think they will always accuse me of something. I seem to remember that one of your BBC interviewers asked me on New Years Eve whether I was going to have a summer or autumn election. The uncertainty started then. I said quite clearly I would not make up my mind until after four years. I have now made up my mind. Either they say cutting and running or they say dithering or as time went on they would say I was clinging to office. I don't really take very much notice of any of those things.
JC
But it was always open to you, as Sir Alec Douglas-Home did, to announce that you were not going to have an election this spring.
PM
But Alec Douglas-Home was very nearer the end of his time than I have been. I can't remember a time when the uncertainty and obsession with the date of the election has been as great as it has been this time. I have been asked little else by television and radio interviews for quite some time. The uncertainty was becoming intolerable. It was contrary to the national interest and I thought that we'd better end it, have an election now, which of course I hope we will win.
JC
Now you are going to be accused obviously of knowing the bad economic news in the way that you want to have the election before. What do you say to that?
PM
No I don't know bad economic news. We have after all run a very steady policy and a consistent policy. I would say that we have good grounds for believing there is an economic recovery on the way. What I have been very concerned about [end p1] is the uncertainty. And I believe that investors' decisions are being held up now because they don't know who will be the government in just over a year's time. I think they should know and therefore have the election very quickly.
JC
But under your administration unemployment has gone above 3 million for the first time since before the war, are you going to defend that record?
PM
Perfectly clearly. Unemployment has gone up in all the Western industrialised countries. It's important that we have good long-term prospects. There's only one way of getting good long-term prospects—that's good products, improved industrial efficiency and sound policies by Government which believes in keeping prices down. Those are the qualities which will get us better prospects of jobs, those are the policies which this Government has run and will continue to run.
JC
Well are you going to be able to hold out the prospect of unemployment turning down on any particular date in this election?
PM
Not on any particular date—it will depend on industrial efficiency, but you have to have good products as well, and Government's job is to try to keep prices down. But my goodness me this Government has been very successful compared with the performance of others. And also to try to keep interest rates low.
JC
Prime Minister, thank you.