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George Osborne – 2016 Speech in Chicago

Below is the text of the speech made by George Osborne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Chicago on 23 September 2016.

Thank you for inviting me here to Chicago to speak to you this evening.

I accepted the invitation not just because this Council is renowned around the world for its contribution to the debate about how we manage global challenges; I accepted because this lecture is in honour of Louis Susman, a quite exceptional US Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

I worked closely with Lou as the new British Government, led by David Cameron, sought to find its feet in the world six years ago. The bond we formed with the then still relatively new Obama administration was a strong one. On the fallout from the financial crisis, on the challenge of the Arab Spring, on the promotion of free trade, we worked together as close partners and allies.

And with Lou and his wonderful wife Marjorie, the serious business of politics was always mixed with the smart diplomacy of good hospitality. I remember the spectacular dinner they invited me and my wife Frances to at Winfield House, the palatial ambassador’s residence in Regents Park.

President Obama was there in his tux. Her Majesty the Queen was wearing her diamonds. I walked into a room full of the A-list, from Tom Hanks to David Beckham. Frankly, I was a little over-awed. Then Lou came up to me and said: the Queen and the President are having Martinis, you want to join them? After that, the evening slipped by beautifully.

That glamorous night with the Susmans was one of the many high points of the six years that I spent as Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. There’s little doubt what one of the low points was.

The evening of 23rd June this year. When David Cameron and I watched the television in the first floor study of 10 Downing Street, as the results came in from the European Referendum and it became clear that the British people had voted to leave the EU.

That result has sent shock waves around the world. People here in the United States have been asking me whether it means the retreat of Britain as an outward facing global power; they have questioned what it means for the integrity of the western alliance; they worry about the consequences for European stability; and they wonder whether the deeply felt economic insecurity and anger at the established political order so evident in that referendum vote will have echoes here in the United States this fall.

I don’t pretend to have definitive answers to those questions tonight; and I would be skeptical of anyone who claims they do. That history is not yet written. But I do intend to spend this time ahead of me, out of government office but still in the House of Commons, trying to understand better the powerful forces that are driving the disruption of our democratic politics and widespread feelings of insecurity.

And I want to help devise what the best response should be from those of us who believe that free trade, open societies and international co-operation are the best guarantors of prosperity and a stable world order.

For if we don’t provide answers, then others will – those who want to erect barriers and sow division and exploit new technology to echo-back to people their anger and insecurity.

Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum – and if the mainstream can’t find answers, then the extremes will. And their solutions will make the situation for those yearning for more economic security and control over their lives a whole lot worse.

Let me start by examining that European referendum result. You cannot say that the British public were not engaged in the choice they were being offered. More Britons went to the polls on 23rd June than in any general election in British history.

More voters voted to Remain in the European Union than have ever voted to elect a party of government; and of course, even more – 52% of the total – voted to Leave. Among that 52% were close to 3 million voters who had not voted in our general election a year ago.

In short, this was a huge exercise in direct democracy. And so, frankly, ignoring the result or thinking that we can simply have a re-run to get a different result is – I believe – fanciful. We can’t behave like the East German government who, when faced with an election result they didn’t like, said it was time to elect a new people.

Britain has taken a decision, and it’s difficult to imagine the circumstances in which that doesn’t lead to Britain leaving the European Union.

That, however, is just one decision – and it gives rise to many future decisions for which we don’t yet have answers.

Since July, work has been done to understand what people’s primary motivations were for voting to leave. Half of all Leave voters said the main reason was that they felt decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK. A third of Leave voters cited control over immigration. Just 6% of Leave voters – around one in twenty – said their main reason for voting was that ‘when it comes to trade and the economy, the UK would benefit more from being outside the EU’.

There are lessons to be learnt across the political spectrum. Those who, like me, frankly underestimated public concerns about sovereignty need to think hard about how we can give people a greater say about the decisions that affect them and their community.

My feeling is that the answers go deeper than simply repatriating decisions from Brussels to Westminster – that people sense there are forces beyond their control that are driving their lives, from remote government to technological change, and that makes them feel insecure.

Likewise, those who claim that voting to leave was a great rebellion against the economic status quo need to accept that precious few Leave voters thought the country would be more prosperous outside the EU.

This was not a popular mandate for less free trade or for a more closed economy.

We should bear that in mind as we approach the decisions that lie ahead.

We may be leaving the EU, but we are not clear about what we are joining. What is the new relationship we will have with our European allies? What will the trade arrangements look like? Not just for physical goods, but intangible services like financial services? What will our border controls with our neighbours be, including at our currently invisible land border with Ireland? What are the criminal justice, immigration and extradition agreements we will strike? There may be millions of continental Europeans living in Britain, but what about the millions of Britons living in continental Europe? How, if at all, will we participate in collective European policy towards the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe?

We don’t have answers to any of these questions – and nor should we rush to provide them. This is the most important set of decisions Britain has faced since the Second World War, and getting them right is more crucial than taking them early.

Get them wrong – consign Britain to a relationship with our neighbours that makes us permanently poorer and more insecure – and the people most likely to pay the price will be precisely those who already feel the most marginalised.

So David Cameron was correct, on the morning after the referendum result, not to trigger the exit procedures that Article 50 of the European Treaties provide.

I commend Theresa May for resisting the pressure, from some Brexiteers at home and from some European capitals abroad, to trigger Article 50 this autumn. She is right that we need time to decide what Britain’s approach to these negotiations will be before we enter into them.

In any case, it is highly unlikely that the rest of Europe will be in any position to conduct serious negotiations until the autumn of next year.

My experience of six years of European negotiations is that nothing serious happens until the French and, especially, the German governments take a view – and both countries will be preoccupied with their own domestic elections for much of next year.

That’s an opportunity for the British Government and the House of Commons to think hard about how we should approach the decisions we now face.

For me, the guiding principle should be this: we should aim for the closest possible economic and security relationship with our European partners while no longer being formal members of the EU.

That is most likely to deliver the prosperity and stability and control over events that people are clearly yearning for. For what are the alternatives?

I am all for strengthening Britain’s ties with the rest of the world.

Throughout my fifteen years in Parliament, I have championed the vital alliance we have with the United States – both when it was fashionable and when it has been unfashionable.

It is the cornerstone of western security and prosperity. But it is an alliance that all British Governments and US Administrations since the war believe is enhanced because of Britain’s engagement in Europe.

Likewise, in government, I did more than almost anyone to promote Britain’s ties with the fast growing emerging economies – risking controversy to form a new economic partnership with China and making more trips to India than any Chancellor before me.

But these are complements to our relationships with our European allies, not substitutes. Britain cannot choose the continent we exist in. We are – and have always been – a European power.

Our economy is completely intertwined with the European economy – and always has been. Close to half of all our exports go to our near neighbours, and no amount of extra trade with the likes of Australia or New Zealand – desirable as it is – can possibly replace those large, mature markets on our doorstep.

Our financial centre is a global one, but one of its huge strengths is that it services a continental economy. I made it a special mission of mine to make London a home to Indian masala bonds, Islamic finance and offshore renminbi trading – last year, more renminbi bonds were issued in London than the rest of the world outside of China put together.

But again, this is not a substitute for our role as Europe’s wholesale financial centre – it is a complement – and it is not just in our interests, but the interests of the whole of Europe that it remains so.

Indeed, it is in the whole of Europe’s interest that the voice of Britain as a force for economic reform, global competitiveness and free trade is not lost from the collective discussion about how we raise the productivity of the whole European economy – or else we will all be poorer for it.

And our security is also completely interdependent with the continent of Europe. Two thousand years of British history, from the Roman invasion to the Battle of Britain, have taught us that. Each and every time we have tried to disengage from Europe, and wipe our hands of its problems, it has been a disaster for Britain and a tragedy for our continent.

So, as I say, we should approach all the decisions we now face about trade, about finance, about security, looking to forge the closest possible relationship with the rest of Europe consistent with being outside the EU.

We shouldn’t assume that there is an off-the-shelf arrangement that works for the second largest economy in Europe – I can’t see us consenting to the current arrangements around free movement of people that clearly caused such concern in the referendum.

Equally, I find some of the take-or-leave it bravado we hear from those who assume Europe has no option but to give us everything we want more than a little naive.

We need to be realistic that this is a two-way relationship: that Britain cannot expect to maintain all the benefits that came from EU membership without incurring any of the costs or the obligations.

There will have to be compromise.

Above all, we need to resist the false logic that leads from exiting the EU to exiting all forms of European co-operation – and that values the dangerous purity of splendid isolation over the practical necessity of co-operation in the real world.

Brexit won a majority. Hard Brexit did not.

The mainstream majority in our country do not want to be governed from the extremes.

The same principles of co-operation and engagement that drives Britain’s relationship with Europe should guide our approach to the global challenges we all face.

We have to confront the false prophets who – as in previous generations – tell people that their concerns about security in the world can be addressed by retreating from it.

None of the huge issues confronting our generation – from terrorism to mass migration, from disease to climate change – can be tackled alone.

Indeed, if we fail to intervene and solve these problems together, then the insecurity people feel will only increase.

I was elected to the House of Commons in June 2001, a Conservative opposition MP in a Parliament where the Labour Party had just won re-election with a large majority.

As new MPs, we were told to expect a relentless focus on domestic priorities. Instead, those early years in Parliament were dominated by conflict abroad.

The savage attacks in New York and Washington on 9/11; the overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan; the invasion of Iraq.

For my political generation, the high price of intervention became painfully clear.

The loss of life. The sacrifice of our armed forces. The budgetary cost.

The shock and awe of well-planned invasions giving way to the long, messy chaos of insurgencies.

And the deep divisions this brought to our society at home. The marches. The bitterness in our politics.

Long gone is the confidence that Tony Blair expressed here in Chicago as Prime Minister back in 1999, when he discarded the old Westphalian settlement of non-intervention – and confidently set out new principles that would govern the right of the international community to intervene in the affairs of a sovereign state.

In its place is a resignation that it is never worth getting involved – that the price of intervention is never worth paying.

That, sadly, is the conclusion our western democracies have come to after a decade or more of difficult, divisive, drawn-out conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and more latterly, Libya.

Last week, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons censured David Cameron for Britain’s involvement in Libya.

They tell a simplistic story. A rushed intervention. A failure to understand the complexity of the country. The removal of the strong leader who held the country together – however brutally. The chaos that ensues. The armed militias. The terrorism. Five years on, we’re still trying to bring stability to Libya.

But we forget: Libya wasn’t stable five years ago – that’s why we intervened.

And ask yourself the question; what if we hadn’t intervened?

I sat on the British National Security Council that saw the satellite imagery of Colonel Gaddafi’s forces advancing up the coast road from Tripoli to Benghazi to crush the uprising there.

There was no doubt that if British, French and American forces did not intervene right away then a massacre would take place in the following days. Many, many thousands of people would have died.

Benghazi would have been added to the list, alongside Srebrenica and Rwanda, of places where the west had shamefully stood aside – and where our failure to intervene still haunts us today.

And what confidence do we have that Libya would not still have descended further into civil war and chaos? After all, we chose not to intervene in strength in Syria.

We made a conscious decision not to intervene in 2011, when Britain, America and our allies could have tried to alter the outcome of the emerging civil war there by forcefully backing the more moderate elements of the opposition.

There was a plan put forward to do that. But collectively the West chose not to take it up – and we settled on something much weaker.

And we chose not to intervene again in 2013, when Assad crossed the red line we had drawn and used chemical weapons. The vote of the House of Commons against military action was the single most depressing moment of my time to date in Parliament.

I don’t know whether these interventions in Syria would have worked. I am sure they would have been very messy and difficult. Clinical interventions and text book nation building exist only in newspaper columns.

But I do know what has happened in Syria while we chose not to intervene decisively. Hundreds of thousands killed. Millions displaced. Neighbouring countries destabilised. The taboo on the use of chemical weapons broken. The emergence of a terrorist state. Russia back as a major player in the Middle East. And a refugee crisis that has fuelled the rise of extremism across Europe.

Yes, my political generation knows the cost of intervention – but we are also beginning to understand the cost of not intervening. It doesn’t make our countries more secure.

It doesn’t help address the fears of those who feel we invite the problems of the world on our shoulders – it makes those problems worse.

Those of us who are internationalists – who believe that co-operation is better than isolation – need to rediscover our self-confidence and make our case.

What is at stake is the kind of nations we want to be. Let me speak about my own.

In the last few years, with David Cameron, we took some deliberate and expensive decisions that were controversial and which required constraints on spending elsewhere in the budget.

I announced that we will continue to spend two percent of our national income on defence – meeting alongside US and unlike almost everyone else, our NATO obligation to do so.

That rising defence budget is being spent on the latest generation of military equipment, from aircraft carriers to submarines to fast jets, that will enable Britain to be one of the few countries to be able to project hard power abroad.

We have also decided to be one of the very few countries in the world to meet our UN obligation to spend 0.7% of our national income on international development – and that rising aid budget has put Britain not just at the forefront of the fight to eliminate diseases like malaria, but also central to the efforts to bring stability and support to Syria’s neighbours.

Indeed, Britain is unique among the major western nations in meeting both the NATO commitment on defence and our UN commitment on aid. Why did the government I was part of choose to do that at a time when resources are scarce?

It is more than just an expression of what we want our country to be – and it is a practical solution to the disorder that we see in the world, and the insecurity and the anger that is breeding at home.

That aid budget is not just meeting a moral obligation to the world’s poorest. It is a tool in responding to the refugee crisis that is destabilising Europe.

That defence budget is not just about protecting Britain’s own shores. It enables our new Prime Minister to deploy additional forces this week into Somalia to tackle terrorism there before it visits us here.

Together aid and defence add to Britain’s influence and reach, alongside our diplomatic network, our intelligence agencies, our prominent role in international bodies, our language, our culture, our science and – after this Olympic summer – our sporting prowess.

Mind you, I see the Chicago Cubs are on roll.

The Economist Magazine has ranked Britain number one in the world for the impact of its soft power. Our hard power makes us the only ally that can fight alongside the US in strength.

Together that concentration of power makes our country safer and makes our world more secure than it would otherwise be.

For if we, Britain, are not a nation prepared to intervene to secure free trade and international order and the rule of law, why should we expect anyone else to be?

If we don’t make that argument to our population than we cannot expect others to.

And what applies to Britain, applies to our European allies and to the United States as well. We were present at the creation of the post-war order. We must take care not to allow its destruction.

If we leave a vacuum of leadership in the world, then others who do not share our values will fill it.

If we don’t make an effort to co-opt new rising powers like China to the world order we created, and make them feel part of it, then we face the prospect of disintegration and confrontation.

If we, the countries that have championed world trade rules and open markets, do not continue to advance the case for trade across the Pacific and Atlantic, then who will?

If we don’t have a plan for global order, then we will fall mercy to other people’s plans.

This is a deeply unsettling time in so many western democracies.

Barriers are being erected.

Free trade is in retreat.

A voice is being given to the extremes.

That is not, in the end, going to help people who feel insecure and feel like they are losing control – it will make that insecurity and powerlessness very much worse.

We shouldn’t be afraid to say so.

We should fight fiercely for our values – for the co-operation, free markets and international institutions that have sustained our peace and prosperity, and can continue to do so.

As they say here in Wrigley Field, it’s time to step up to the plate.

September 23, 2016
Kirsty Williams – 2016 Speech to Liberal Democrat Party Conference

Below is the text of the speech made by Kirsty Williams, the Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Education, made at the party conference on 19 September 2016.

Conference, it’s great to be here today and to be a foot soldier in the Lib Dem fight-back.

And in Wales we’re fighting back, in government, on behalf of pupils and parents right across the country.

As Education Secretary in Wales, I’m still relatively new to Government.

Many of you here will have had the honour of leading your local councils.

Many drove devolution forward in government in Scotland and Wales previously.

And of course, many of our friends held some of the highest offices in the land during the coalition government.

Nick’s decided to call his memoir ‘Between the Extremes’. I’ve been taking some tips, and of course some of the warning signs.

But if he really wanted to experience the extremes, he should try the current Welsh Assembly.

UKIP leading Plaid and the Tories in a merry dance in opposition, pulling stunts such as the initial failure to elect the First Minister.

As the song goes, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right….

Now, this is the first time I’ve spoken with you since the Assembly Elections.

While the result wasn’t one any of us would have wanted, I am immensely proud to have been part of a group that was, no doubt in my mind, pound for pound, the strongest and most effective in the Assembly.

I’ll be honest, being left on my own, as the sole Welsh Liberal Democrat, hurts.

But you know what makes it worse? The fact that when I look around the chamber, it is UKIP Assembly Members that replaced us.

Welsh Liberal Democrats out, UKIP in.

Never could you find two more opposing parties.

We see diversity and tolerance as a strength, not a weakness.

Farage sharing a platform with Trump says all you need to know about what they believe.

You know, in my first Education questions in the Assembly, all of the opposition parties had the chance to scrutinise my decisions.

Plaid’s spokesman stood up and asked his three questions. The Tory stood up and asked his.

UKIP?… Well he stood up… but no questions came.

Mark Reckless, you may remember him, well he let the opportunity pass by saying he had no questions this week.

Well, UKIP’s politics of intolerance, indolence and insularity will never be the answer.

Not this week, not this month, not ever.

Neil Hamilton, another blast from the past who decided to cross the border and try his luck in Wales, thought it okay to launch a sexist tirade in his maiden Assembly speech.

And when I say “crossed the border” – I mean that he crosses the border each and every day when he drives all the way from his Wiltshire home to Cardiff to take up his seat in the Assembly. Yes really!

(No wonder they supported our campaign to scrap the Severn Bridge tolls!)

Conference, I worry that the Brexit vote showed us that perhaps we progressives and liberals have rested on our laurels.

Our victories on feminism, gay rights, devolution, widening access to education, tolerance in society – they may be more fragile than we ever imagined.

We must keep making the case that these advancements are for the benefit of all.

A tolerant, more educated and liberal society is a better society for everyone.

That cause must be our motivation to get back out there, work hard, fight for our communities, and start to rebuild our party.

It can’t be done overnight, but in next year’s local elections, remember our values, then remembers theirs.

Conference, the local elections will we be our chance to start to rebuild, and we must take it.

Of course, following the election, I stepped down as leader after eight years – a role that filled me with immense pride.

But the time had come for someone else to lead to help rebuild and rejuvenate our party.

Mark Williams, who is a good friend, was always there when I needed support and advice. I will now repay that favour.

Mark, there is no-one I trust more to take this great party forward.

And of course the unexpected happened, I was offered the role of Cabinet Secretary for Education.

Conference, the decision whether to take the role wasn’t easy.

I’d spent the last decade holding the Labour Government in Wales to account. Lambasting their failings, nowhere more so than on education where Wales continues to struggle in international tables.

But there were two over-riding factors that swung the decision for me.

Firstly, I am in no doubt that in the eyes of the media, having just one AM was the equivalent of none.

We may have had a seat in the chamber, but we would be ignored – no media coverage, no FMQs, no nothing.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats silenced.

So, I took my agreement with the First Minister to a special conference. It was essential that members across Wales got the opportunity to debate and vote on delivering our manifesto.

And make no mistake, I am in government as a Welsh Liberal Democrat, guided by our values and commitments.

I’ve been fortunate to receive the support of friends, family and fellow members over the country in the last few months.

Everyone is clear that education has always been our number one priority.

It has to be: From it, stems everything we believe in.

It is our national mission that every child, no matter who they are or where they are from, has the opportunity to be the very best they can be.

I want parents dropping their kids off at the school gates to know that they are opening up the world of possibility to their child.

Every parent should have confidence that their son or daughter goes to a school that helps them grow as capable, healthy and well-rounded people.

And every parent should be able to trust the schools system to enhance their child’s opportunities, rather than hold them back.

Wales once led the way on education, parents once had that belief.

Conference, it’s my job to rebuild that belief. It’s our job to rebuild that belief. And that is what we will do.

Now, one policy that it seems the opposition is not happy with, is our plan to cut class sizes.

I’ll let the Tories and Plaid make the case to their constituents that large class sizes are a good thing. I wish them luck with that endeavor.

For teachers and parents, large class sizes are a major issue. The Welsh Liberal Democrats share that concern.

Our plan will be aimed at reducing the largest classes first, and in particular those that have a high proportion of children who qualify for free school meals.

Evidence time and time again shows that reduced class sizes can help close the attainment gap between the poorest pupils and their peers.

This policy will be linked to other reforms that will create space for teachers to teach and pupils to learn.

Our opponents are determined to paint this as a binary choice: either invest in class sizes or in teaching.

Let me be clear: they are not mutually exclusive.

Conference, the Welsh Liberal Democrats will invest in both.

Nothing proves more that we are the party of education than the fact that the Welsh Liberal Democrats prioritised education spending in budget negotiations in the previous Assembly term.

For five years, in negotiations with the Welsh Government, we consistently fought for more investment into our very own Welsh Pupil Premium, also known as the Pupil Deprivation Grant

In England, we dragged the Tories kicking and screaming to introduce this progressive policy.

In Wales, we did the same with Labour.

I will never grow tired of hearing of the homework clubs, the one-to-one tuition and the extra resources that children are getting because of us – because of the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

Helping to deliver this from outside government was one of our proudest achievements.

That is why today I am announcing that it is my intention to double the Early Years Pupil Premium.

Concentrating extra resources on our youngest pupils.

Because it is our mission that every child deserves a fair start in life.

That is the benefit of a Welsh Liberal Democrat sitting around the cabinet table.

Conference, inside of government or outside of government – equal opportunity will always be our priority and it is what we will deliver.

Now, why is it that some terrible ideas simply never seem to go away?

Yes, I’m talking about grammar schools.

In England, the Tories are still banging this tired old drum, they do so in Wales too.

For them, dogma and doctrine rule the day.

As Education Secretary, evidence will guide my decisions.

And Grammar schools tick all the wrong boxes:

– Writes people off at the age of 11, lowering their aspirations – tick

– Gives the majority of pupils a second class deal – tick

– Excludes children from poorer backgrounds – tick

And to think Theresa May made this announcement under the banner of working for everyone.

Clearly irony is not dead.

Grammar schools are a policy based on myth, not evidence.

Proportionately, these selective schools have the lowest levels of children from poorer backgrounds.

Fewer than 3% of grammar school pupils are on free school meals, compared to 20% across England.

I won’t deny that there are big challenges in the Welsh education system. But all of our polices will be targeted to raise standards and address the enduring injustice of the attainment gap.

As Education Secretary, I am pursuing ‘made in Wales’ polices, shaped by the best from around the world.

In contrast, the Tories are intent on ignoring international evidence.

The OECD find that the best performing school systems do not segregate pupils.

Let me be clear conference: social mobility, opportunity and excellence in our schools will drive our agenda.

Mark my words, under no circumstance we will be seeing an expansion of grammar schools on my watch.

Under the Welsh Liberal Democrats, every child will have the opportunity to succeed. Every child.

In this new role, I also have responsibility for Higher Education.

Now, I have no interest in raking up old arguments from the past. The key is that we learn from mistakes.

That is why, ahead of the Assembly elections, I was up front and entirely clear with the nation that the Welsh Government tuition fees policy was unsustainable.

I was also clear that it was living costs, not fees, that are the barrier to poorer people enrolling at university.

Later this month, Sir Ian Diamond will be presenting his independent, cross-party review of higher education funding in Wales.

I have set out clear principles that I hope and expect the Diamond review to meet:

One: I want a progressive system that maintains the principle of universalism and ensures a fair and consistent approach across all levels of study

Two: I want a system that ensures shared investment between government and those who directly benefit.

Three: Student support should be portable for Welsh students anywhere in the UK.

And finally, this system must enhance accessibility, breaking down barriers that reduce social mobility.

Conference, not a single HE system in the UK meets these tests.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats will change that.

Now, the Liberal Democrat Constitution states we believe in a society “in which no-one is enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity”.

In Wales, our party has been given the chance to put our principles into practice.

We believe in Freedom. Freedom of the individual, so everyone has the opportunity to be who they want to be and reach their full potential.

We believe in Fairness – for diversity, against intolerance – the voice for the voiceless.

And we believe in Community. Where we as individuals work together for the common good – a nation acting together to ensure that all benefit from an equal opportunity to reach the highest standards.

Education is not just a rehearsal.

It’s not simply the process of preparing our youngest people for the future workplace. It’s more than that.

It involves learners of all ages,

a united teaching profession committed to excellence,

world-leading universities and colleges forging the strongest bonds with international partners and communities at home.

No Minister can do this on their own.

No Government can do this on their own.

This is a national mission.

A National Mission that our party will help drive forward:

Reducing class sizes,

A progressive higher education system,

Raising standards in our schools,

An Academy of Leadership that develops teaching talent,

And yes, the Welsh Pupil Premium – tearing down barriers to opportunity.

I maybe the only Liberal Democrat sitting at that cabinet table – but I’m one with a growing membership behind her – motivated by the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats…. a party that is growing and making a difference to the lives of the people of Wales.

Be proud conference.

Thank you.

September 22, 2016
Susan Kramer – 2016 Speech to Liberal Democrat Party Conference

Below is the text of the speech made by Susan Kramer, the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson, at the party conference on 19 September 2016.

A few years ago, in 2014, a man by the name of George Osborne stood up at Tory Party Conference and announced that the Conservatives had a ‘long-term economic plan’.

It was a plan built on sorting out the financial mess, restoring business confidence, and showing that ‘Britain is open for business.’

… well that went well.

The reality was the moment Osborne was left to his own devises come May 2015, he doubled down on a strategy that was anything but long-term.

It was a plan based on short-term targets for short-term political gain.

Focused on tax giveaways on the very richest

On deeper, increasingly unnecessary cuts in welfare and support for the working poor.

On slashing support for renewables, undermining a new British green industry revolution.

And on setting economic targets that required severe cuts in spending on infrastructure- on the roads, rail, broadband, schools and hospitals.

The very tools people need to keep our economy competitive.

From May 2015 onwards George Osborne hollowed out the economic recovery.

He turned away from the Coalition’s work to put the economy on a path to recovery and instead embarked down a road he hoped would lead him to Downing Street.

…Unfortunately for him it led directly off a cliff.

He suffered a backlash, led by the Liberal Democrats, over his plans to cut Tax Credits.

He proposed plans to hit disabled people so hard even Iain Duncan Smith couldn’t stomach it.

And while job figures and headline economic figures continued to flatter him, underneath the surface we saw the construction sector enter recession, housing starts flattened, and the Bank of England downgraded forecasts for wages, growth and inflation.

…and then Brexit happened.

Let’s be clear, Brexit poses the biggest existential threat to the long-term prospects of our economy in a generation.

Despite what David Davies or Boris Johnson will tell you about a ‘Brexit bounce back’, the underlying picture is already much, much worse than it was on June 22nd.

The pound has plummeted and stayed down- making all of us poorer.

Manufacturing output has had three successive month on month falls as a result of the uncertainty- with the last, immediately post Brexit fall being the biggest fall yet this year.

And the costs faced by businesses importing raw materials to the UK is already increasing rapidly… ultimately ensuring consumers will have to pay more.

And all this has real impacts on people’s lives.

And that is before you even consider the future of the thousands of hard working EU citizens running businesses, creating jobs and paying taxes here in the UK.

Conference, Brexit is casting us into an economic storm and the Government’s short sighted management of our economy means we are sailing on a raft made of twigs.

Three have already fallen off the raft- Cameron, Osborne and Gove.

Boris has a natural buoyancy.

You know, when I hear Boris, I’m always reminded of the late, great Gene Wilder… and it’s not just the ridiculous hair.

It’s that his referendum campaign was essentially ‘Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of pure imagination’.

So, the three Oompa Lompa’s of politics- Boris, Davies and Fox, rolled out the old Prime Minister, and in his place now stands Theresa May.

And, say it quietly, her rhetoric on her first day was almost encouraging.

She said that her mission was to make ‘Britain a country that works for everyone’…

‘When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but of you.”

Inspiring words- but from the moment they left her lips her actions have done anything but.

From appointing a Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who believes the minimum wage is “actively immoral” to proposing a return to an education system where young people’s futures are determined at age 11, she is leading a True Blue, Tory Government for the few not the many.

And almost nowhere is it more obvious than in her appointment of Philip Hammond as her Chancellor.

I don’t know how much you know about Philip Hammond, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

He makes a point of keeping a low profile.

And since taking on the second biggest job in Government he has pretty much disappeared.

He has left us, during the most tumultuous economic times since at least 2008, without any sense of the Government’s economic strategy.

He abandoned George Osborne’s ludicrous and unnecessary plans for a budget surplus by 2020, but has done nothing to suggest an alternative.

While the Governor of the Bank of England (thank goodness for Mark Carney) raced to prop up a faltering economy, the Chancellor has done nothing but offer the most basic of assurances to key sectors of our economy.

While experts predict a downturn, and new black-holes in public spending, he has hidden away and left businesses, public sector workers and the public to wait.

So we are left to look into his history for some clues as to what our new Chancellor’s priorities will be- to look at what he has said in the past.

And what it shows is not a man who will think of the poor, the voiceless or the general public first.

It shows someone whose first, and only, economic priority is the wealthy elite.

For example, while in opposition, the then Tory Shadow Chief Secretary, claimed that public sector workers aren’t ‘dreading cuts’, because they in fact feel ‘a sense of liberation’.

I’m sure those public workers facing yet further pay freezes under this Government are feeling happy with their new found freedom.

On welfare spending he said that there should be further cuts to social security spending, in order to fund increased spending on defence.

On what to do in the face of a falling pound- well – in the past he has claimed the best thing to do when exchange rates fall is to ‘ease the regulatory burden on businesses’.

More Conservative plans to cut regulations that protect employees and consumers.

When it comes to standing up to those who refuse to pay their fair share in tax- can Philip Hammond deliver on this?

Well, despite being one of the richest MPs in Parliament, it was reported by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme in 2010, that he has done “a Philip Green” and transferred shares to his wife – which can have the happy co-incidence of reducing one’s tax bill.

Certainty not illegal, but is it really the actions of a man willing to put the interests of Britain first, let alone to launch a crusade against corporate tax avoidance?

He too is no fan of the minimum wage- claiming, when it was introduced that it amounted to ‘a tax on business.’

And just two weeks ago he told everyone not to worry about Freedom of Movement- because he would guarantee that bankers from the EU would be able to continue to live and work in the UK.

Just bankers- and maybe a few other wealthy individuals.

Not the thousands of Europeans living, working and paying tax in our country.

The entrepreneurs and small businesses owners, nurses and teachers, the people who pick our strawberries or anyone else.

Just for those most wealthy people.

A divisive society rather than an open, tolerant and united one.

An economy that works not for everyone, but for the select few.

So let’s be clear.

Whatever Theresa May might say, the man she has appointed to deliver an economy that works for everyone, is a man whose every thought and action speaks of a wealthy elite, a shrunken state and a do as you please economy.

And that can only lead to one thing- just at the time when we will need economic dynamism and creativity we will have deadlock and stagnation.

The Chancellor and the Prime Minister need to be a partnership- committed to the same vision and the same goals.

At least Blair and Brown were fellow travellers, May and Hammond can’t even agree on a destination.

And yet, when, on November 23rd at his first Autumn Statement, Philip Hammond looks across the Dispatch Box, who will he see staring back?

Labour’s failures as an opposition are many, but nowhere is it more damaging than their ability to present a real economic alternative to the Conservatives.

Instead of offering insight they attack business.

They sneer at those who run businesses, and seem content to refight the battles of the 1980s when it was the bosses versus the unions.

Just recently he proposed scrapping a £1 billion tax allowance for research that supports companies developing new medicines.

In the 21st Century, when our economy is more reliant than ever before on new ideas and innovation, these are the actions of someone with a dislike for business.

McDonell has even, suggested that one of Britain’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, Sir Richard Branson, should lose his knighthood – in petty retaliation against Branson’s criticism of Jeremy Corbyn’s ability to find a seat on a train.

But most importantly of all, when it comes to our vital membership of the Single Market, he and Jeremy Corbyn want us to return to a little island, closed to free trade and the economic benefits it can bring.

When we need the country to look out and forwards, he is dwelling on the internal Labour wars of the past.

And I for one find it so frustrating, because never has it been more important to have a Party that’s focused on the next 5, 10, 20 years of our future.

And that means it’s up to us.

But to do so we must challenge not just the Government, not just the Labour Party, but ourselves.

We must become the Party for those who want to succeed, but who want to see no one left behind.

To start with, we need to protect the economic wellbeing of the youngest generations- something successive Government have often failed to do.

In the last 20 years, the average household income of those under 29 have fallen by 2%, while that of those over 70 has increased by 66%.

This isn’t about pitting one generation against another- young people will be old one day too, and (surprise surprise) I care about the lives of my kids and grandchildren.

We should be proud of what we’ve done for older people- ensuring there is a decent, flat rate pension, fighting, as Norman Lamb has done, for a New Deal on the care system, so no one has to sell their home to pay for care – a deal now quietly dropped by the Conservatives, and ensuring the poorest pensioners get extra to help with heating costs when it’s cold.

But ensuring older people have a decent life should not mean foisting all the burden on the younger generations.

Young adults suffered the most joblessness and the greatest wage compression of any group during the recession.

The disposable incomes of young adults have lagged well behind the rest of society.

The big costs in life – education, housing and securing a pension – all cost significantly more than they did for my generation.

As Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies has said, the growing gap between young and old will fuel wider inequality in society because youngsters with rich parents would retain unfair advantage in the important years of early adulthood.

He recently said “it’s become more and more important that your parents happen to have a house”.

Conference, it’s our job to reverse that trend.

To ensure that everyone has the skills, resources and support they need to take advantage of opportunity.

That the circumstances of your birth do not make the difference as to whether you can buy your own home, get a decent job or attend a first class school

And Conference, to do so we need to ensure that balancing the needs of different generations sits right at the heart of the way our Government runs.

That is why last Friday I tabled a Bill in the House of Lords which would require any new spending rules set by the Government to consider the need to balance the taxation and spending burden across the needs of different generations.

We need an economy which works for us all- not one that works for a Tory election in 2020.

Conference, our second priority must be to address the chronic lack of investment in infrastructure.

At a time of historically low interest rates we should be seeking to invest in building the roads, schools and hospitals we need.

And perhaps most importantly, we need to build the houses our county needs.

Putting a roof over everyone’s head is not just a moral imperative but an economic one.

We cannot go on building only half of the 150,000 homes we need each year.

We need to double that number.

And that includes affordable rental and social housing.

A sector gutted by Conservative policies.

I support home owners, but renters, let us tell the Tories are people too.

That is why my Private Member’s Bill also includes rules requiring the Government to prioritise infrastructure spending- ensuring that future generations have the tools they need to compete.

And it is also why I believe we should start, by putting up to an extra £45 billion directly into house building over the next 5 years.
Enough to build the homes we need, and give everyone the stability they need to take advantage of opportunities.

And finally Conference there is a new and rising challenge that we need to face if we are to build an economy truly fit for the future.
The rise of AI and machine learning.

What was science fiction just a few years ago is increasingly a reality- and it will have huge implications for the way we live and work.

From self-driving cars to automated customer services, this revolution can have huge advantages for our economy and our lives.

But we also need to ensure that no one is left behind in such a revolution.

Conference, this challenge is coming, and we aren’t just talking unskilled Labour.

There will be challenges for many of those in society who have traditionally felt safe from automisation.

I’ll give you an example- in the last year one of the biggest financial institutions in this country has been training its automated systems to handle not just routine but complex customer facing services.

Every time one of its highly skilled, highly paid employees in the 50 strong team made a decision about how to help a client, the machine made a parallel decision.

And every time the machine got a decision wrong, the skilled employee would correct it, so that it learnt from its mistakes.

As of now that team of 50 is reduced to 10.

Thankfully, in such a big organisation there are ways to reallocate those staff.

But it shows the scale of the challenges to come.

If Government is not alive to the challenge, we risk a repeat of what happened in great industrial towns across our country in the 1970s happening all over again.

And that means a Government willing to really invest in helping people transition into the new economy by embracing life-long learning, and putting serious investment into ensuring that those whose jobs are at risk are given the opportunities they need develop new skills and careers.

It also means being aware of the potential for exploitation that may come as a result of this transition.

We have some incredibly good businesses in this country, but frankly we have some pretty awful employers too.

And can you imagine the Philip Green or Mike Ashley view of how automation should affect their business?

No more pesky employment rights for staff.

No more payroll taxes or costly pension schemes.

No more bad publicity for exploiting zero hour contracts or cutting pay.

Moving to the future economy means protecting employees from these kind of unscrupulous employers.

And that means rediscovering as a Party our passion for different forms of company ownership.

To re-embrace our reformist zeal for the mutual movement, the community benefit company and employee owned businesses.

It also means understanding that in the businesses of the future the old employer versus employee relationship will become increasingly irrelevant.

The gig economy, as they call it, self-employed entrepreneurs and contractors are now a growing part of the workforce.

But we cannot let this turn into exploitation.

For example- how do we ensure the Uber driver gets access to maternity leave?

How does the self-employed programmer ensure that, if sick, he or she can make ends meet?

Conference, if we are to build an economy fit for the future these are the questions we must answer.

That is why I am so pleased the Party has set up the 21st Century economy working group- led by the excellent Julia Church and Mike Tuffrey, who can look at how we build an economy where people have a stake in their work they do and reap the economic reward.

I believe that, to be the part of the future we must tackle these questions head on, and that is why addressing the transition of a machine economy must be the third plank of our economic rules for the future.

Conference, during Coalition we proved that we are an economically credible party.

Since leaving it the Conservatives have proved they are anything but.

Our country lacks both leadership and opposition at a time when it desperately needs both.

By embracing a vision of a better future, one focused on tackling inter-generational fairness, investing in infrastructure and ensuring no one is left behind by the changes working lives we can build an economy fit for the future.

September 22, 2016
Willie Rennie – 2016 Speech to Liberal Democrat Party Conference

Below is the text of the speech made by Willie Rennie, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, at the 2016 party conference on 19 September 2016.

On May 5th this year, in Scotland, Liberal Democrats started winning again.

Not only did I win in Fife with a by–election standard 9.5% swing but the exceptional Alex Cole-Hamilton crushed the SNP in Edinburgh, securing a 3,000 vote majority.

And look what happened in the Northern Isles. Tavish Scott and Liam McArthur confounded the critics and the pundits to win their seats with almost 70% of the vote.

70% of the vote when everyone told us we would be wiped out.

No-one is supposed to beat the SNP. But we did.

North East Fife and Edinburgh West: Lost last year. Gained this year.

The first gains in a decade.

It’s wasn’t in the script.

We tore up the script.

Liberal Democrats – back to winning again.

So how did we do it.

No, it wasn’t just a couple of amorous pigs in the background of my daily TV interview that won the election.

But, like those pigs, we won by casting aside any inhibitions.

We shed any lingering coalition caution.

We told people what we stood for.

Progressive, optimistic, outward-looking.

And we told people with huge smiles on our faces.

We said we wanted to make Scotland the best in the world again.

The best in the world.

Isn’t that what liberals should always aspire to?

Scottish education used to be the best in the world but with the SNP it is now just average:

College places cut

Nursery education roll-out flagging

And schools have seen massive cuts to their budgets.

We said a transformational investment using a progressive penny on income tax for education would project Scotland right back up to the best again.

Progressive, optimistic, outward looking.

Scotland’s police were the pride of the nation, helping to train other forces across the world.

But with the SNP the new force is a shadow of its former self.

Our plans would bring democracy back to the police and would put that pride back.

We would guarantee our civil liberties by rejecting the intrusive super ID database, industrial scale stop and search, and armed police on routine duties.

Progressive, optimistic, outward looking.

With renewable energy resources in abundance Scotland could be a world leader on tackling climate change.

The SNP have struggled to meet their own targets.

Their response is to add 60,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere through tax cuts for the aviation industry, with their proposal to end Air Passenger Duty.

And the SNP is keeping the door open for fracking. They should take a stand against the new frontier of fossil fuels that fracking represents. We say no fracking in Scotland.

Progressive, optimistic, outward looking.

Hundreds of young people in Scotland have to wait over one year to get the mental health treatment they deserve.

A mother told me about her son.

Regularly he would lie curled up on the floor screaming. She had to phone every day for weeks on end to get the mental health support he needed.

That is a disgrace and an embarrassment to our country.

They are not alone.

The waiting lists grow.

People wait an age.

Yet the SNP committed just 22 words to mental health in their long programme for government last week.

Scotland used to have a world leading mental health strategy now it does not even have one.

As a result £70million available for mental health remains unspent because they do not know what to do with it.

I know what to do with it.

Our plan will put mental health professionals into accident and emergency, into primary care, alongside the emergency services, and into child and adolescent mental health services.

We will give people the support they need.

Progressive, optimistic, outward looking.

After almost ten years in government the SNP talk a good game but they are not progressive.

I want to make Scotland the best again so that everyone can have the opportunity to succeed no matter what their background, where people can live as they wish as long as it does not cause harm to others and where we pass on the planet in a better state than we found it.

It’s why we were clear on mental health.

Clear on a transformational investment.

Clear on the future of Scotland together with the United Kingdom.

We were progressive, optimistic and outward-looking.

It was a big, bold programme of Scottish liberal values and Liberal Democrat action.

No more timidity.

No more coalition caution.

Proud of our values.

Proud to be liberal.

Just as I did in the Holyrood elections I intend to use this five year term to provide a progressive, optimistic, and outward-looking voice.

And it will be a voice for the United Kingdom and a voice for Europe.

In a No Borders approach we will oppose independence and we will support strong relationships with Europe.

Tim Farron is spot on about Europe. He spoke for every bereft remain voter in the hours after the result. He was a tall statesman when others never looked so small.

In the direct interests of the country and of our democracy he wants to give voters the democratic choice to accept or reject the deal that the Tories finally agree with the European Union.

He is right to demand that the British people should have their say on the final deal in a referendum.

Voting for departure is not the same as voting for a destination.

This is not an attempt to re-run the first referendum; it is to enable the public to vote on the final deal.

You’ll have seen our First Minister over the summer.

While our Leader Tim Farron was making the case for cleaning up after the chaos of the Brexit vote our First Minister was on a mission to make it a whole lot worse.

Nicola Sturgeon’s response to breaking up Europe is to break up Britain too.

After withdrawing from Scotland’s second biggest economic market – the EU – she thinks it would be a good idea to compound that by withdrawing from our biggest market – the UK.

I had hoped before the summer that she meant what she said about building a broad consensus on seeking solutions to Brexit. I hoped she would act in the interests of the whole country and not just in the interests of the SNP. But with her actions since she has trashed that consensus.

I want to be clear. There is no place on the independence fence for this party. We won a mandate in May to oppose independence and stand up for our place in the United Kingdom. And we will stick to that mandate like glue.

After everything we have been through I can tell you I meant what I said. No independence.

In the face of a belligerent, destructive campaign from the SNP we will oppose independence.

Nicola Sturgeon has adopted a special code book, a new dictionary of nationalism. And I can help you translate.

When they say all of us should keep an “Open mind” they mean independence is back on the table.

When they say everyone else should “consider all options” they mean independence is back on the table.

When they say “Good faith” that means independence is back on the table.

But every reasonable-sounding phrase is code for breaking up Britain.

And I can tell Nicola Sturgeon – we are not falling for it.

We have read the book. We know how you want it to end.

I have already explained that if we leave progressive politics to the SNP then that will fail.

If we leave the campaign for Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom to the Conservatives it will fail too.

When Prime Minister David Cameron had a chance to heal the nation after the bruising Scottish referendum campaign he made a grubby appeal to English nationalism instead.

Exactly two years ago today, at one of the most significant constitutional moments since the formation of the United Kingdom, David Cameron put his party’s interests before our country’s.

The Tories compounded that misjudgement by seeking to scare middle England with the prospect of the rise of the Scots.

Their election poster of a Scotsman, pick-pocketing an English taxpayer was a reckless act, promoting an inaccurate characteristic of Scots and was a disgrace. How on earth does that help keep the country together?

Conservatives were only interested in election victory, and never mind the damage done to the relationship between Scotland and England.

And in the final arrogant misjudgement the Tories divided the country in attempt to heal the divisions of the Conservative Party.

That dragged us out of Europe which has put further strains on the unity of the United Kingdom.

No amount of draping themselves in the Union flag and singing Rule Britannia will hide their record of putting the future of the United Kingdom at risk.

The Tories are not unionists. They are divisionists.

I have a warning to you today here in Brighton.

It is an alarm that should sound across the whole of Britain, and should worry us all.

With the blow of Brexit and the threat of another Scottish independence referendum it means that divisive constitutional politics remain at the centre of our national debate.

It is a dismal scene that has been visited upon us by the Conservatives and the SNP.

Stalled investment.

Uncertain future for EU citizens.

Divided families.

Split communities.

Economic instability.

Tensions between the nations of the UK.

This is the work of the terrible twins of politics.

The Tories and the Nationalists have so much in common. They have a shared interest.

The Tories need nationalists to scare voters in England.

The nationalists need the Tories to scare voters in Scotland.

It’s a campaign based on fear, not hope.

Our future will be a divided one if we leave it to the Tories and the Nationalists.

The terrible twins of divisive politics.

The threat to the UK by a politics dominated by those two should be taken seriously by all liberal-minded, progressive people in Britain.

This is why we need progressive moderate, optimistic, hopeful voices that advance a No Borders approach.

That is why we need the Liberal Democrats.

Progressive, optimistic, outward looking.

That progressive alternative to the terrible twins of division is what our country needs.

And it is the progressive alternative that we will provide.

Liberal Democrats will provide that clear voice.

A clear voice to guarantee our civil liberties.

For our environment.

For education

And for mental health.

A clear voice for Europe

And a clear voice for the United Kingdom.

Progressive, optimistic and outward-looking in Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom.

September 22, 2016
Sal Brinton – 2016 Speech to Liberal Democrat Party Conference

Below is the text of the speech made by Sal Brinton, the President of the Liberal Democrats, to the 2016 party conference on 20 September 2016.

Good morning, Conference. Here we are, constitutional amendments concluded – how will we all manage next week without the excitement?

But seriously, I want to thank you for your involvement and responses to the challenge I put to you over a year ago to think how we could improve our Federal structures, and how we can work more effectively as a party. The thousands of suggestions and comment that you made to the Federal Executive have truly helped shape what came to Conference, and your contributions to the debates over the last four days has been genuinely helpful.

The policy debates have been outstanding too, and I particularly want to thank the many people who spoke at Conference for the first time. In debate after debate, new members and first time speakers were called to the stage to give your views, and what effective contributions they were!

As we wait to hear from Tim Farron later this morning, I have been very aware how during this conference we have been reflecting on our history, with some on Twitter even going as far back as the Whigs! Tim reminded us at the Rally that nearly one hundred years ago the Liberals lost touch with the base, the core voters, and forgot what we were there to do, and we spent years in the wilderness. And yet, many of our members worked tirelessly even though it was very tough going.

Once again the press and media are bemused that we are in such good heart. I have taken a particular delight in telling them that it is because we are open, tolerant and united, unlike Labour, the Conservatives and UKIP!

Diane James’s honeymoon period as new leader of UKIP was short lived. Within an hour of taking up her post on Friday, she had scrapped the speeches of her four opponents, and perhaps most fun of all, turned Neil Hamilton’s speech on Saturday into a coffee break.

Yes, a coffee break.

What’s more, he discovered this from a reporter from Newsnight who had a copy of the revised schedule before Neil Hamilton. UKIP’s purges aren’t even done behind the scenes.

And then there is THAT photo of her and Nigel Farage that was all over the press and media. I know that Nigel Farage backed Diane James as his successor, but that photo is so revealing. She just didn’t want him that close. So UKIP score nul points for being neither open, tolerant nor united.

And Labour? Well, here in Brighton and Hove, Momentum have taken over the local party, and are so public about their attempts to de-select him that *they* have been suspended. And it isn’t just here in Brighton – across the country, Jeremy Corbyn’s activists are taking over local parties and moving against anyone perceived as anti-Corbyn. Some MPs are threatening to sue those trying to deselect them.

Pro-Corbynites hate dissent so much that anything that doesn’t come out of the Corbyn playbook is attacked in a vile and vicious way.

Unpleasant politics when used against political opponents is distasteful.

When used against people in your own party it is unforgivable. But that is what they are, unforgiving. Certainly not open, tolerant nor united.

And watching all of this from her new home at No.10 Downing Street is Theresa May. Last week she yet again re-affirmed that Brexit means Brexit, even though it is now absolutely clear that neither she nor her 3 Brexit ministers have any idea of what it means….

Does it mean remaining or leaving the Single Market –

Theresa May or she may not.

Does it mean keeping or curtailing free movement of people

Theresa May or she may not.

Does it mean continuing to invest in our universities to keep them the best in the world?

Theresa May or she may not.

Does it mean working with European countries to protect the environment and tackle climate change?

Theresa May or she may not.

The Tories have been good at papering over the cracks of their splits, but the resignation of David Cameron as an MP seems to have encouraged his wing of the party to speak out.

Theresa May’s Conservative party record on police stop and search on BAME people, on immigration, and on the Snoopers Charter are not open, tolerant or United.

And the Liberal Democrats?

This Sunday, one paper’s editorial headline was ‘Lib Dems’ revival is a blow to sorry Labour’,

and it then went on to say:

‘fair play to the Lib Dems.

under Leader Tim Farron the party has risen from the ashes of electoral oblivion to reposition itself as the only effective opposition…

The Lib Dems have not only capitalised on the fallout from the EU Referendum but also the disintegration of the Labour Party…

They are speaking up for ordinary voters on issues that really matter, such as the NHS and education.’

The Observer on Polly Toynbee’s day off?

The Independent?

No, this, my friends, is the Sunday Express!

I’m delighted that Tim is at last getting the recognition that he deserves, and I suspect that phrase ‘the only effective opposition’ might appear in a few leaflets and tabloids over the next few months.

We are the only major party that has not traded on fear, that challenges the racism, nationalism and populism that is sweeping the country at the moment. We’ve not just watched the appalling increase in hate crime, but we heard on Sunday in the combatting racism debate how our own friends and members have been attacked. That is why I still wear a safety pin – and I do get comments from people who say how reassuring it is to know that there are people who will call out any hate crime. Keep calling it out, every time YOU see it. You cannot know how powerful it is to intervene, politely but firmly, to support a victim of such behaviour.

I want to finish by returning to my theme from last year – the future of the party. It’s wonderful that we have had 18,000 new members since the referendum and that we are doing so well in by elections and I want to ask you to do three things over the next few weeks, regardless of whether you are a new member, or an old lag, like myself to help propel the Lib Dems further in winning ways.

Firstly, should Jeremy Corbyn be re-elected, I know that a number of Labour supporters and members will be feeling very lost.

Befriend them.

Let them know that we are still the party that is pro the EU, that whilst Labour are facing inward and fighting, we will be the party who holds the May Tory Government to account, on investment in the NHS, and on fighting against a growth of grammar schools. They may now want to support us, and even join us because they share our values.

Secondly, I want to see new people coming forward to stand for elections in the party, whether local party elections, regional elections or federal elections.

One of the very strong messages you told us in the governance review was that too few people stand for office in the party.

So, do not assume it is someone else’s job! You want fresh faces in these roles – please stand!!

This is especially important if you are from an under Represented group – women, BAME, disabled and LGBT+. Your party needs you!!

Find out what the role entails and put yourself up for election. It’s that simple. And it’s your destiny!

And finally, thirdly, help build on our by election successes.

Go to help in Witney – we have one month to make our mark. Tonight the local party selects their candidate, but the first leaflets have already gone out. Much more help is needed, and parliamentary by elections are so much fun too. I promise you will enjoy it!

And go and help in your nearest council by election – every extra pair of hands truly makes a big difference. I promise you’ll learn skills there that you can use in your patch.

And last, but not least, try to stand a candidate in every election. The reception so different, so much more positive out there than even six months ago.

We won Tupton, in North East Derbyshire, even though we didn’t stand a candidate in the previous election. Even if we won’t do as well every time, standing a candidate reminds the voters we are there fighting for them, and using ALDC’s brilliant toolkit ‘Pick a ward and win it’, you can build up you supporters network, campaign locally, and move on to victory.

I am so proud to be your President.

Proud that you have refused to allow the press and the media to write us off.

Proud that you are in the front line of the revival of our party.

Proud that you stand alongside Tim Farron in showing this country that there is one party, and one party only:-

who will fight for the vulnerable and dispossessed,

who will fight for our place in Europe and the world

And who believes that Britain is and should be Open, Tolerant and United.

September 22, 2016
Tim Farron – 2016 Speech to Liberal Democrat Party Conference

Below is the text of the speech made by Tim Farron, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, at the 2016 party conference.

Liberal Democrats are good at lots of things. But the thing it seems that we’re best at, is confounding expectations.

We were expected to shy away from taking power, but we stepped up and we made a difference.

We were expected to disappear after the 2015 election, but we bounced back, we are almost twice the size we were then, we’ve gained more council seats than every other party in this country put together.

And I’ve being doing a bit of confounding expectations myself. You see, I am a white, northern, working class, middle aged bloke. According to polling experts, I should have voted Leave.

May I assure you that I didn’t.

But mates of mine did. People in my family did. Some of them even admitted it to me. And some of them didn’t. But you told my sister didn’t you, and somehow thought it wouldn’t get back to me. You know who you are.

I have spent most of my adult life, worked and raised a family in Westmorland. I’m proud to call it my home.

But I grew up a few miles south, in Preston in Lancashire.

Preston is where I learnt my values, it’s where I was raised in a loving family where there wasn’t much money around and at a time when, it appeared to me, the Thatcher government seemed utterly determined to put every adult I knew out of work and on the scrapheap.

But our people and our community were not for breaking.

The great city of Preston is a no nonsense place, proud of its history, ambitious about its future.

It is the birthplace of the industrial revolution;

It is the place where Cromwell won the most important battle in the English Civil War. The complacent establishment stuffed by the outsiders.

Which links rather neatly to the referendum. Preston voted 53% to leave. There were some places in Lancashire where two-thirds of people voted out.

And I respect those people.

If you’ll forgive me, they are my people.

And if they’ll forgive me, I’m still utterly convinced that Britain should remain in Europe.

I was on the 23rd June, I am today, I will continue to be.

Not because I’m some starry-eyed pro-European with Ode to Joy as my ring tone – we all know what I have as my ring tone – but because I am a patriot and believe it’s in our national interest to be in.

For more jobs, for lower prices, to fight climate change, to stop terrorism, catch criminals, to have influence, to be a good neighbour, to stand tall, to stand proud, to matter.

And, above all, because I believe that Britain is an open, tolerant and united country – the opposite of the bleak vision of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.

Britain did not become Great Britain on fear, isolation and division – and there is no country called Little Britain.

There is nothing so dangerous and narrow as nationalism and cheap identity politics.

But there is nothing wrong with identity. I am very proud of mine.

I am a Lancastrian, I am a Northerner, I am English, I am British, I am European. I am all those things, none of them contradict another and no campaign of lies, hate and fear will rob me of who I am.

But we lost didn’t we?

Now – I was born and raised in Preston but the football-mad half of my family is from Blackburn, so I’m a Rovers fan. Defeat and disappointment is in my blood.

So those who say I’m a bad loser are quite wrong.

I am a great loser.

I have had loads of practice.

But the referendum result to me was like a bereavement. I was devastated by it.

We Liberal Democrats worked harder than anyone else in that campaign, we put blood, sweat and tears
into it.

We put the positive case for Europe, while Cameron and Osborne churned out dry statistics, fear mongering and shallow platitudes.

It’s easy to say – after such a narrow a referendum result – that we are a divided country. But in many ways we are.

And the split between leavers and remainers is just a manifestation of that division.

Britain today is far too unequal. There is too much excess and too much poverty.

Too much wealth concentrated in some parts of the country and too little in others.

So a couple of weeks after the referendum I went back to Preston. We booked St Wilfrids Church Hall just off Fishergate.

When my office booked the place they had no idea that it meant something to me personally. You see, the last time I’d been in there was for my Nan’s funeral ten years earlier. The last time I’d walked out of that church was as a pall-bearer for her.

So I was in what you might call a reflective mood when I began the meeting. There were perhaps 70 people there. Most of them had voted to leave. And most of them pretty much fitted my demographic.

They weren’t mostly die-hards. I reckon, honestly, that three quarters of them could have been persuaded to vote Remain up until about two or three weeks out.

One guy said that the clincher for him was George Osborne’s ‘punishment budget’.

And when he said that, pretty much the whole room chipped in and agreed with him.

There was near universal acknowledgement that this had been the pivotal moment.

Here was this guy, George Osborne, who they didn’t really like.

And who they felt didn’t really like them.

And he’d appeared on the telly bullying them into doing something they weren’t sure they wanted to do.

And they reacted.

You see, if you base your political strategy on divide and rule, do not be surprised if the people you have divided decide to give you a kicking.

I don’t blame the people in that church hall for their anger – actually, I share it. I’m angry.

And I’m angry at the calculating forces of darkness who care nothing for the working people of this country, nothing for our NHS, nothing for those who struggle to get by, and who exploited that anger to win an exit from Europe that will hurt the poorest the hardest.

The people in that church hall in Preston, they’d voted differently to me but I thought, you know what, we’re on the same side here.

We see a London-centric – no, Westminster-centric – approach from politicians and the media. Treating the provinces as alien curiosities.

Those people in Preston – and Sunderland and Newport – see a divide between those who win and those who lose. When the country is booming, they don’t see the benefit. And when the country is in decline they are the first to be hit.

At that meeting they talked about low wages. About poor housing. About strains on hospitals and schools.

Their problems weren’t caused by the European Union, they were caused by powerful people who took them for granted.

By politicians who have spent decades chasing cheap headlines and short-term success for their political careers, and never acting in the long-term interests of the whole country.

So those people in that room, like millions of others, wanted, quite understandably, to give the powerful a kicking. So they did.

I wanted Britain to remain in the European Union and I still do.

But we have got to listen, to learn and to understand why millions of people voted to leave. We can’t just tell them they’re wrong and stick our fingers in our ears.

So I want to do two things.

I want to persuade those who voted leave that we understand and respect their reasons, that we are determined to take head on the things about today’s Britain that have left so many people feeling ignored.

And I want to give them their say over what comes next.

Theresa May says Brexit means Brexit. Well thanks for clearing that up.

Nearly three months since the referendum and we have a government with new departments, new titles, a new prime minister…but no plan. No vision. No clue.

And no leadership.

Theresa May did so little in the Remain campaign that she actually made it look like Jeremy Corbyn pulled a shift.

And today, the absence of leadership from the Prime Minister is astonishing, the absence of clarity as to what will happen to our country is a disgrace.

Three months on, it isn’t good enough to have brainstorming sessions at Chequers while investment and jobs steadily bleed away;

…while our standing and relevance in the world diminishes in direct proportion to the number foreign visits by Boris Johnson.

…while British industry is crying out for direction, for certainty, for any idea of what lies ahead.

Make no mistake, the Conservative Party has lost the right to call itself the party of business. It has lost the right to call itself the party of the free market

It no longer supports business, no longer understands the need for calm economic pragmatism – but instead pursues the nationalist protectionist fantasies of the Brexit fundamentalists who have won the day.

Indeed, my message to any business in this country – large or small – is if you are backing today’s Conservative Party, you are funding your own funeral.

There is only one party now that believes in British business – large and small; that believes in entrepreneurship and innovation: the Liberal Democrats

We are the free market, free trade pro-business party now.

Theresa May – tell us what Brexit really means.

You’ve had three months. You are the Prime Minister. Stop dithering. What is your plan?

The Liberal Democrats have a plan. We know what we want and we know where we want to take our country.

When Theresa May does agree a deal with the EU, we want the people to decide.

Not a re-run of the referendum, not a second referendum, but a referendum on the terms of the as-yet-unknown Brexit deal.

And if the Tories say, ‘we’ve had enough referendums’, I say ‘you started it!’

We had a democratic vote in June. We can’t start this process with democracy and end it with a stitch up.
If we trusted the people to vote for our departure then we must trust the people to vote for our destination.

Short-termism

Politics is about serving people. And millions of people have not been well served by generations of politicians who put their own short-term political needs before the long-term interests of the people they were supposed to be serving.

David Cameron’s handling of our relationship with Europe is a master class in selfish, shallow short-termism. Party before country at every turn.

The Conservatives risked our country’s very future, the life chances of millions of our young people, all in a failed attempt to unite their fractured party.

David Cameron risked our future, and he lost. And while he waltzes off to riches and retirement, our country is plunged into economic uncertainty, insecurity and irrelevance on the world stage.

The Tories took the gamble, but Britain will pay the price. What an absolute disgrace.

Their short-termism doesn’t stop with Brexit.

Look at their handling of the refugee crisis. The biggest crisis facing our continent since the Second World War.

They did nothing to help right until the point they thought it was in their short-term interest to act, when a photo of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi face down in the sand was on the front page of every newspaper.

The people were shocked, heartbroken, they demanded action and the Tories did the bare minimum.

But since the front pages have moved on, they have barely lifted a finger.

Now there are some on the centre left who are squeamish about patriotism, but not me.

I’m proud of my country; I hate it when my government makes me ashamed.

When I was on the island of Lesbos last year, after we’d helped to land a flimsy boat of desperate refugees, I was handing out bottles of fresh water.

And a few yards away was an aid worker from New Zealand, who knew that I was a British politician.

She looked at me and shouted, “stop handing out bottles of water and take some f***ing refugees.”

Because that is how Britain is seen. Mean and not pulling its weight.

And maybe that doesn’t bother some people, but it bothers me.

Because I am proud of who we are – always a sanctuary for the desperate, the abused and the persecuted; and I will not stand by and watch my country become smaller, meaner and more selfish.

That is not Britain. We are better than that.

And a year on. The crisis is worse, not better.

Not that you’d know it. We don’t see those desperate families in the media every day.

We aren’t confronted so often with the knowledge that they are just like us and that they need our help.

Much to the Government’s delight, compassion fatigue has set in. The news has moved on.

We’ve had Brexit, a new Prime Minister, a Labour leadership contest.

And none of that makes a blind bit of difference to a nine-year-old kid stuck alone and hungry and cold in a camp in northern Greece.

Or to the family, this morning, fleeing their burning camp in Moria.

This government wants us to forget this crisis, it’s too difficult to solve, too risky to take a lead.

But we have not forgotten, we will not forget, those children could be our children, how dare the Government abandon them.

But short-termism in politics goes back a lot further than just this government.

Look at the way the Conservatives in the 80s and Labour in the 90s treated the banks. Sucking up, deregulating, encouraging a culture of risk and greed.

Instead of building an economy that served the long-term needs of the whole country, they put all their eggs in one basket – the banks.

And, for a while, things were good. Britain boomed.

But they didn’t invest in the modern infrastructure that could benefit the north of England, or Scotland, or Wales, or the Midlands, or the South West.

They didn’t invest in the skills the next generation would need.

They didn’t invest in our manufacturing base.

All they did was allow the banks to take bigger and bigger risks, and build up bigger and bigger liabilities.

And when the banks failed, we were all left paying the price.

In lost jobs, in lower wages, in debt, in cuts to public services.

Short-term thinking. Long-term consequences.

And nowhere is the danger posed by short-term thinking greater than with the future of the National Health Service.

Can you remember a time when there weren’t news reports on an almost daily basis saying the NHS is in crisis?

For years, politicians have chosen to paper over the cracks rather than come clean about what it will really take – what it will really cost – not just to keep the NHS afloat but to give people the care and the treatment that they deserve.

And that means, finally, bringing the NHS and the social care system together.

In my Grandpa’s journey through Alzheimers, he had good care in the home he spent his last couple of years in. But when he first became ill after the death of my Grandma, the place he was put in was despicable.

Lonely, unclean, uncaring.

It’s a few years back, but as I fought to get him out of that place and into somewhere better, it occurred to me that this was a standard experience for too many older people and their loved ones.

Maybe some people can just shrug and accept this, well I can’t.

I’ve seen enough terrible old people’s homes. And I’ve seen enough people who’ve had to wait forever for treatment – particularly people who don’t have someone to fight their corner.

It’s not civilised to let people slip through the net.

It’s not civilised towards the people who love them, who go out of their way to try and make their lives easier when everything else is making their lives harder.

It’s not civilised and it’s not good enough.

I worry about this, not just for the NHS in general, but, if I’m honest, for myself and my family.

We will all, if we’re lucky, grow old.

We all deserve to know that, no matter what happens, we will be cared for properly and treated with dignity and respect.

If the great Liberal William Beveridge had written his blue print today, when people are living to the ages they are now, there is no doubt that he would have proposed a National Health and Care Service.

He would have been appalled about the child who has to look after their disabled parent or the hundreds of thousands of women across the country who are unable to work because they are disproportionately the care givers.

So let’s today decide to do what Beveridge would do. Let’s create that National Health and Care Service.

And let’s stop being complacent about our NHS.

We have of course a brilliant NHS, the best staff in the world, free care at the point of access…but we are spending far less on it every year than we need to.

Of the 15 original EU countries – including Spain, Greece and Portugal – we rank behind them in 13th place when it comes to health spending. It would take tens of billions of pounds a year just to bring ourselves up to their average.

It’s not good enough.

So we need to face the hard truth that the NHS needs more money – a lot more money – not just to stop it lurching from crisis to crisis but so that it can meet the needs and the challenges it will face in the years ahead. So that it can be the service we all need it to be for the long-term.

That means having the most frank and honest conversation about the NHS that the country has ever had.

What Beveridge did for the 20th century, we need for the 21st century.

In Norman Lamb we have the politician who is most trusted and respected by the health profession – and deservedly so. And Norman and I are clear, we will not join the ranks of those politicians who are too scared of losing votes to face up to what really needs to be done.

We will go to the British people with the results of our Beveridge Commission and we will offer a new deal for health and social care, honest about the cost, bold about the solution.

If the only way to fund a health service that meets the needs of everyone, is to raise taxes, Liberal Democrats will raise taxes.

Short-term thinking is the scourge of our education system too.

Governments have designed an education system – especially at primary school level – that is focused not on developing young people for later life, for work or for further study, but on getting them through the wrong kinds of tests.

It’s not about whether kids can solve problems, or converse in other languages – or even their own. It’s about statistics. Measurements. League tables.

Instead of building an education system, we have built a quality assurance industry.

It’s no wonder so many teachers are so frustrated. No wonder so many leave the profession.

Parents deserve to know that their child’s teacher is focused on teaching.

Teachers are professionally undervalued, driven towards meeting targets instead of developing young minds.

And, as ever, it is the poorest kids who suffer the most.

In the last government we introduced a policy – a long-term policy – to try and help the poorest kids keep up with their better off classmates: the pupil premium. And this school year more than two million children will benefit from that Liberal Democrat policy.

And I am so proud of Kirsty Williams, who is making a real difference, every day, to the lives of children of across Wales.

The Pupil Premium is not safe in the Tories’ hands – but it is safe in Kirsty’s.

And what’s more, she’s doubled it. That’s what happens when you get into power.

But we need to do so much more.

I talk a lot about opportunity – about breaking down the barriers that hold people back. Nowhere is that more important than in education.

I want our schools to be places where our teachers have the freedom to use their skill and their knowledge to open young minds, not just train them to pass exams.

I want them to be places where children are inspired to learn, not stressed out by tests.

So I want to end the current system of SATS in primary schools that are a distraction from the real education that professional teachers want to give their children; that weigh heavy on children as young as six and add nothing to the breadth of their learning.

What are we doing wasting our children’s education and our teachers talents on ticking boxes?

And what are we doing, in 2016, threatening to relegate 80% of our children to education’s second division by returning to the 11-plus?

Every parent wants to send their kids to a good schools. But more selective schools are not the answer.

We need better schools for all our children, not just those who can pass an exam at the age of 11. We can’t just leave children behind.

Over the last 40 years, millions of children have been liberated by comprehensive education who would otherwise be consigned to second class status in the secondary audience.

And it’s important to remember who did that: Shirley Williams.

We will defend your legacy Shirley. It’s not just about being a liberal – this is personal.

Assessment is vital, exams are important, but let’s have assessment that leads to a love of learning and a breadth of learning; that is relevant to what children will need next at school and in their future as adults.

There is nothing more long term than the education of a child that stays with them for their entire life.

So let’s end the box ticking. Let’s teach our children. And let’s trust our teachers.

The country needs an opposition

One thing you can’t accuse Jeremy Corbyn of is short-term thinking. His lot have waited over a hundred years for this.

Finally, they have taken the Labour Party. Like all good Marxists, they have seized the means of production.

They’ve even seized the nurseries too – opening branches of ‘Momentum Kids’. Or as they are also known, Child Labour…or Tiny Trots.

The Lib Dems have never had any trouble with entryists – unless you include the Quakers.

My problem with Jeremy Corbyn is nothing personal. After all, I used to see him quite a lot. In the Blair years he was always in our lobby.

No, my problem with Jeremy Corbyn is that, for him, holding the government to account is not a priority.

Winning elections is a bourgeois distraction – unless it’s his own leadership election.

It is baffling to see the Labour Party arguing about whether or not they should even be trying to win an election.

Can you imagine that? The Liberals and Liberal Democrats spent decades out of power and then when the opportunity finally came – in incredibly difficult circumstances, when the easiest thing in the world would have been to walk away – we chose to take power because we knew the point of politics is to put principles into action. To get things done. Not just to feel good, but to do good.

So we took power … and we got crushed.

So you could forgive us for thinking twice about whether power is really worth it.

But of course it’s worth it.

Having fine principles but no power is just turning your backs on the people who need you the most, its letting someone else win the day.

We have huge crises in Britain today – in our NHS, in our economy, in our relationship with the rest of the world.

We have a Conservative government that got the support of less than a quarter of the electorate at the last election, led by a Prime Minister who nobody elected, that has plunged our country into chaos.

They spent a year going for the working poor, refugees and junior doctors.

And what have the Labour Party been doing? Going for each other.

Instead of standing up to the Conservatives, they were sitting on the floor of half-empty Virgin trains.

Because maybe Jeremy Corbyn thinks there are more important things than winning elections, but for millions of people desperate for an affordable home, for a fair wage, for a properly funded NHS, they cannot wait. How dare the official opposition abandon them?

Whichever party you supported at the last election, we all know that Britain needs a decent, united opposition.

So if Corbyn’s Labour has left the stage, then we will take the stage.

People say to me, ‘this is a great opportunity for the Liberal Democrats’…

…but this is more than opportunity…it is duty.

Britain needs a strong opposition. The Liberal Democrats will be that strong opposition.

Do you ever listen to these Labour people arguing among themselves, throwing around the word Blairite as if it’s the world’s most offensive insult?

I even hear some of the Momentum folks referring to Gordon Brown as a Blairite – I’m pretty sure he’s a Brownite.

So, just to reassure you, I am not a Blairite.

I was proud to march against his illegal invasion of Iraq. I was proud to stand with Charles Kennedy. And I was incredibly proud when Charles’ brave stance was vindicated in the Chilcot report.

I was also proud to be in the party that stood up against his government’s attempts to stamp on our civil liberties – from compulsory ID cards to 90-day detention without charge.

And I was proud of Vince as he called out his government for de-regulating the banks.

But there is more to Tony Blair’s legacy than that.

I kind of see Tony Blair the way I see The Stone Roses, I preferred the early work.

Tony Blair’s government gave us the National Minimum Wage.

It gave us working tax credits.

It gave us NHS investment and a massive school building programme.

I disagree with him a lot, but I will not criticise him for those things. I admire him for those things.

I respect him for believing that the point of being in politics is to get stuff done, and you can only get stuff done if you win.

Otherwise you’re letting your opponent get stuff done instead.

The Corbyn crowd like to talk in terms of loyalty and betrayal.

Well, there is no surer way to betray the people you represent than to let your opponents win.

I believe in working across party lines. I’m prepared to work with people of all parties and none if it will make people’s lives better.

But I couldn’t work with Jeremy Corbyn, because Jeremy Corbyn would never work with me.

I wanted to work with him during the referendum campaign, but he wouldn’t share a platform.

Labour is having its leadership contest in a few days’ time, so of course Jeremy Corbyn may not be leader for much longer. In which case, it could be Owen Smith.

Now, I don’t know Owen Smith that well. But, unlike Corbyn, he is certainly on our side of the European debate.

So, if Owen Smith wins, I want to make clear that I am open to working together.

And there are others I could work with too.

There is a contest happening now for the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee – it is an important position but, let’s face it, it’s a retirement position.

Among the contenders are Yvette Cooper, Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna.

Shouldn’t that be their leadership contest?

What are these people doing, jostling for position in a sideshow. They should be centre stage.

The Government needs an Opposition, and that means progressives should be prepared to put our differences aside in order to hold them to account.

But if Jeremy Corbyn does win, where does that leave us?

A Conservative Brexit Government that, without us to restrain them, are showing their true colours: reckless, divisive and uncaring; prepared to risk our future prosperity for their own short-term gain.

And a Labour Party that has forgotten the people it is there to stand up for. Hopelessly divided and patently unfit for government, with no plan for the economy or the country; led by a man who is obsessed with re-fighting the battles of the past and ignoring the damage the Government is doing to our future.

There is a hole in the centre of British politics right now; a huge opportunity for a party that will stand up for an open, tolerant and united Britain.

There is a hole in the centre of British politics right now for a rallying point for people who believe in the politics of reason, of evidence, of moderation…

…who want facts, not fear;

…who want responsibility, not recklessness;

…who want to believe that someone is looking out for the long-term good of our country.

There is a hole in the centre of British politics right now that is crying out to be filled by a real Opposition.

We will stand up to the Conservative Brexit Government.

If Labour won’t be the opposition Britain needs, then we will.

That’s what we’re fighting for. A Britain that’s open, tolerant and united.

And we will only build that Britain if we win. So here is my plan.

We will dramatically rebuild our strength in local government, deliberately, passionately, effectively.

Winning council seats is our chance to shape, lead and serve our communities to put liberalism into practice.

Liberals believe in local government, I believe in local government, every council seat matters to me.

So my challenge to you is to pick a ward and win it, and my commitment to you is that I choose to build our party’s revival on victories in every council in the country.

And my plan includes continuing to grow our party – our membership is up 80% in just 14 months – but that is merely a staging post, we will continue to build a movement that can win at every level.

I will lead the Liberal Democrats as the only party committed to Britain in Europe, with a plan to let the people decide our future in a referendum on the as yet non-existent Tory Brexit deal.

I will lead the only party with a plan for our country’s long-term future. Green, healthy, well-educated, outward-looking, prosperous, secure.

I will build the open, tolerant, united party that can be the opposition to this Conservative government. On NHS underfunding, on divisive grammar schools, on its attacks on British business.

I want the Liberal Democrats to be ready to fill the gap where an official opposition should be. I want the Liberal Democrats to be the strong, united opposition.

I want us to be audacious, ambitious and accept the call of history.

A century ago, the Liberals lost touch with their purpose and their voters, and Labour took their chance and became Britain’s largest progressive party.

Today I want us utterly ready and determined to take our chance as the tectonic plates shift again.

I didn’t accept the leadership of our party so that we could look on from the sidelines, I did it because our destiny is to once again become one of the great parties of government, to be the place where liberals and progressives of all kinds gather to provide the strong opposition that our country needs.

That is my plan. I need you to join me to fight for it.

Let’s be clear, we’re talking about doing a Trudeau.

Now, he’s better looking than me and he’s got a tattoo – I can fix one of those things, if you insist.

I wouldn’t get into the boxing ring with him, but I reckon I could have him in a fell race.

But the point is Trudeau’s Liberals leapt over an inadequate official opposition to defeat a right wing Conservative government. Do you fancy doing that? ‘cos I do!

And there are some who will say…steady on. You’ve only got eight MPs.

Well look, maybe for the time being you might be sceptical about us doing a Trudeau, but let’s agree that we can definitely do an Ashdown.

To take this party from a handful of seats to dozens of seats, from the fringe to the centre, from irrelevance to importance.

But what would us doing an Ashdown mean for Britain today?

Well, look, no one believes, whether boundary changes happen or not, that Labour will gain a single seat from the Tories.

The SNP could only possibly take one seat off the Conservatives.

But there are dozens of Tory seats in our reach.

Which means that the only thing standing between the Conservatives and a majority at the next election is the revival of the Liberal Democrats.

So let’s make it happen.

And we have to make it happen. Because there is a new battle emerging – here and across the whole western world – between the forces of tolerant liberalism and intolerant, closed-minded nationalism.

Of all the things that depressed me the morning after the referendum, seeing Nigel Farage celebrating really took the biscuit.

Here is a man who fought a campaign that pandered to our worst instincts: fear, anxiety, suspicion of others.

And he is not alone. His victory was welcomed by Marine Le Pen in France, Golden Dawn in Greece and by nationalists and populists all across Europe.

And in a few weeks he went from standing in front of that odious Breaking Point poster demonising desperate refugees…

To standing on a podium in Mississippi next to Donald Trump.

And make no mistake, Farage’s victory is becoming the Government’s agenda.

When Conservatives talk about a ‘hard Brexit’, this is what they mean.

A Brexit that cuts us off from our neighbours, no matter what the consequences for people’s jobs and livelihoods.

A Brexit that toys with the lives of hard-working people who have made Britain their home, paid their way and immersed themselves in their communities, just as more than a million Brits have made their homes on the continent.

A Brexit that will leave us poorer, weaker and less able to protect ourselves.

But we will not let Nigel Farage’s vision for Britain win.

To coin a phrase. I want my country back.

To people who support Labour who look at the last election result and say, can I really take the risk of backing the Liberal Democrats? Let me blunt with you: the risk is for you to do nothing.

In 20 years’ time we’re all going to be asked by our kids, when our NHS, our schools system, our unity as a country has been impoverished by 20-odd years of Tory rule, and when our economy has been relegated, our green industries trashed, and our status diminished after two decades of isolation from Europe.

We’re going be asked, why did you let that happen? What did you do try and stop it?

You might explain, well we lost the referendum so we had to move on and live with it.

Or you might explain, well I was in the Labour Party, Momentum destroyed it but I couldn’t bring myself to leave and back someone else.

And they’ll look at you and say, why didn’t you even try?

Why did you let us limp out of Europe? Why did you stick with a party that handed the Conservatives unlimited power?

And you’ll know that you could have done something different. You could have joined us. You could have fought back. You could have taken a risk.

Because joining the Lib Dems today, is a risk. It’s a big ask.

But let me very clear. As we stand on the edge of those two horrific realities: Brexit and a Tory stranglehold on Britain, the biggest risk is that you do not join us.

So be absolutely certain of this reality.

The only movement with the desire and the potential to stop the calamity of Brexit and the tragedy of a generation of Conservative majority rule, is this movement, is the Liberal Democrats.

So, you can despair if you want and accept the inevitability of a Tory government for the next quarter of a century.

Or you can recognise that the Liberal Democrats can prevent that inevitability.

That means you. It means us. Together.

Together, we must fight to keep Britain open, tolerant and united.

Together, the Liberal Democrats must be the real voice of opposition.

Together, we must win.

September 22, 2016
John McDonnell – 2016 Speech to Co-operative Party Annual Conference

Below is the text of the speech made by John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the Co-operative Party Annual Conference in Cardiff on 9 September 2016.

I want to pay tribute to the Co-operative Party which is now 99 years old and looking forward to its century next year.

It is refreshing to be addressing the Co-operative Party who have partnered with the Labour Party through thick and thin since our electoral pact in 1927. It’s our unity as a movement that has always been our strength.

But let’s be clear: the whole labour movement is at a turning point.

The Leave vote was one marker for that. Simply put, it means the status quo is no longer an option.

The despair that helped fuel the vote to Leave was driven by a deep disaffection with the political process.

Successive governments have used an economic model that concentrated too much wealth in too few places and in too few hands.

It was this model that spectacularly blew up in the crash of 2008, and whose consequences we are still living with.

But the challenge for the labour movement stretches beyond criticising the failures of the old model.

We have to recognise that if our solution to the crisis today is to pretend the clock can be turned back, we will fail.

Since the Second World War, a political strategy has come to dominate the left that stressed the central importance of central government in transforming society.

A successful progressive government would just have to oversee growth, and then redistribute the proceeds.

The strategy for the left was then to win control of the state, and use the state to redistribute incomes from a growing economy.

For seventy years, through Old Labour and New, this fundamental model of social democracy held.

Some of Labour’s greatest successes were built on this model, whether the NHS or Sure Start centres. Tax money was taken from rising incomes and spent in a progressive manner.

That model now seems to have come to an end.

The economists talk about “secular stagnation”, which is the idea that the developed economies are in for a period of extended low growth. The International Monetary Fund, in its latest forecasts, has downgraded its expectations for economic growth in the developed world.

And we know from OECD figures, analysed by the TUC, that real hourly wages have fallen 10% in this country since the crash – a worse performance than any other OECD member, except for Greece.

We have to search for a different approach.

The next Labour government will stand ready to invest across the whole country.

Whilst this government still intends to cut public investment in real terms over the next few years, we know that it is investment that will deliver the economic transformation this country now urgently needs.

That is why we have proposed a £500bn investment programme, backed up with a National Investment Bank and a network of regional development banks.

This will deliver the funding needed to allow every part of our country and every person to reach its full potential.

There’s a growing consensus, in these times of economic uncertainty and faltering economies, that public investment is essential to delivering prosperity.

From the OECD to the IMF, and from the TUC to the CBI, responsible organisations concerned with the state of our economy have identified public investment as central.

It beggars belief that Phillip Hammond has not already turned his back on former Chancellor George Osborne’s failed austerity strategy.

The co-operative economy

The evidence that co-operative enterprises and worker-owned companies can produce far better results is compelling.

Twice as many co-operatives survive the crucial first five years as other businesses. And worker-owned enterprises offer a clear productivity advantage.

So that is why after this conference season is over, we will begin a major piece of work on developing the co-operative economy.

With UK productivity now lagging further and further behind the US, Germany, and France, it’s time to turn the corner on the model of economic growth that promotes low-paid, insecure work in huge quantities.

It’s a disgrace that zero hour contracts have risen by 20% in the last year alone.

But by giving people a stake in the companies they work for and spreading the ownership of those companies, we can start to transform corporate Britain.

That’s why I’ve argued for a “Right to Own” for employees. If a company is facing a change of ownership or closure, they should have first refusal on forming an alternative employee-owned business plan.

Backed up by financing from the new regional development banks, who will be tasked to deliver low-cost financing to co-ops, this can be one way to resolve some of the issues now bearing down on our local economies.

With two-thirds of Britain’s family businesses at risk of closure when their owners retire, employee ownership can help solve our brewing succession crisis.

But we should be looking to the examples of Germany and the US and elsewhere, where co-operatives form a major part of how their economies operate.

I want to see the next Labour government put in place measures that will at least double the size of our co-operative sector, giving a nearly £40bn boost to the whole economy.

We’d look to introduce legislation to assist the formation of mutual guarantee societies, mobilising funds for small businesses by enabling them to club together to raise credit.

Over 8% of lending to SMEs across Europe is made through mutual guarantee societies. We can end the starvation of funding for our small businesses here.

We plan in the coming weeks to launch a guide, jointly with the Association of British Credit Unions, helping councillors and local authorities up and down the country to support the work of local credit unions.

September 12, 2016
Matt Hancock – 2016 Speech on the Creative Industries

Matt Hancock

Below is the text of the speech made by Matt Hancock, the Minister for Digital and Culture, on 9 September 2016.

This summer in Rio, Team GB had the whole world talking when we beat most of them to second place in the Olympics.

Our sports men and women proved that, when talent is supported, this small group of islands can make an outsized contribution on the world stage.

It’s a point you in our creative industries make year in, year out.

Let’s consider the evidence.

BBC Worldwide is the biggest non-American distributor of TV.

We are the second biggest exporter of music. The whole world sings along to Coldplay, Stormzy and Adele, though it’s probably best I don’t prove the point right now.

Our film studios at Pinewood and Leavesden have lately been home to some of the planet’s biggest franchises; not just to British heroes like Harry Potter and James Bond but Jason Bourne and Han Solo.

And as new forms of entertainment come along, we excel at those too.

What’s the best-selling entertainment product of all time?

It’s Grand Theft Auto V, which took a billion dollars in just 3 days – and it was made right here in Britain, in Edinburgh.

So when people say the problem with our economy is that we don’t make things any more, let’s get out there and tell them this.

We make immersive stories, uplifting music, iconic characters, and beautiful designs.

We produce, on an industrial scale, all the things that enrich life and make it worth living.

As Picasso said “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our shoulders.”

And while the product is often fun, even frivolous, it’s serious business.

The creative industries consistently outperform the rest of the economy.

I want to pay tribute to my brilliant predecessor, Ed Vaizey, for the work he did to help make this happen.

And creative industries will be absolutely central to our post-Brexit future.

Economically, because where artistic design intersects with digital capability is the nexus at the heart of the future economy.

This nexus of art and technology is how Britain will pay her way in the 21st Century.

But not just economically. Perhaps more importantly culturally.

As my friend and colleague Karen Bradley, our new DCMS Secretary of State, has said, art and the culture that underpins it has intrinsic value too.

Our creative industries are, and always have been, central to how we are seen and how we see ourselves as a nation.

We must define Brexit Britain as open and optimistic, gregarious and global.

Progressive and positively engaged in the world, as Britain is when we are at our best.

The creative industries are critical to securing that status.

Our cultural capital has long served as our global calling card, delivered by James Bond in his Aston Martin, Doctor Who in his TARDIS, or as a simple Hello from Adele.

This matters more than ever, not just because of Brexit, but because of the transformation technology has unleashed over a generation.

As routine work – the filing, the sifting, the sorting – is increasingly handed over to robots and AI, our human skills, our creative skills.

Empathy, intuition, aesthetic and moral judgment.

These are things which can’t be taught to a machine.

Even the most sophisticated CGI relies on human creativity.

The tech revolution is happening.

No King Canute can stop it.

But we can, and must harness it, so yes we support the disruptors, but also support those disrupted by change, to change.

By growing the stock of jobs that rely on those skills, we can humanise jobs while we automate work.

And the point is this: that this sector, which is so central to who we are as a country – which can trace its lineage back to the Southwark playhouses of the sixteenth century, and beyond – is also central to our future prosperity as a nation.

This country benefits so much from your work.

From Manchester to Margate, Dundee to Dalston, start-ups and entrepreneurs come to cluster around the creative institutions that make up a city’s cultural quarter.

The lesson is clear: make an area interesting and you attract interesting people to work there.

The hipster is a capitalist.

Cultural rebirth, connectivity, and economic revival go hand in hand.

So, the question I want to address today is how do we in government help you deliver on that promise?

We can’t do it top-down, with a prescriptive approach.

Kennedy once said that “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”

This surely is true.

It’s been at the heart of the Arts Council’s approach over the past seventy years.

It’s an approach I strongly support.

Before entering politics I worked in tech.

Just as in high art, so in the creative art of technology you can’t prescribe these things from the top.

If the Government had tried to reinvent the Internet as some kind of “Open Knowledge Library” instead of leaving it to Jimmy Wales and his amazing team at Wikipedia, it would have taken years, probably billions over budget, and would undoubtedly be more ugly and clunky than the organically developed version we all love.

No, we can’t prescribe creativity from above.

But similarly creativity isn’t automatic or exogenous. Creativity doesn’t flow down like manna from heaven.

It is in our gift to create the conditions for creativity to thrive: the spaces, the skills, the connections, the leadership and the public financial support to make that chaotic, invigorating magic ecosystem grow.

We can and must strive to create the circumstances in which the essential humanity of every person can find expression, no matter how flawed each and every one of us are.

This is a mark of a civilised society.

Today I want to set out three broad principles based on the many conversations I’ve had so far, that will inform my approach to this job: Principles of backing success, access and synthesis.

Let me take each in turn.

The first principle is backing success.

As I hope you can tell, we are passionately committed to the success of our creative industries, not only because of the jobs you create, but lives you enrich, the horizons you broaden, the worlds you unlock for millions.

Across music and theatre and tech and the arts, with fashion week – which I adore – next week.

From coding to craft, from publishing to production.

Advertising, architecture, TV, film, radio, photography, design, dance, drawing, games, museums and our world beating galleries.

Their full value cannot be always quantified by the Office for National Statistics but we value them for what they are.

And we have shown, time and again, we are prepared to invest.

In practical terms, what this means is: I will fight to ensure that the creative and digital industries are at the heart of this Government’s industrial strategy, with a tax, regulatory and public investment framework that supports you to grow.

And whatever ideas, whatever your fears, my door will be always open and we will ensure that you are heard at the highest levels of government.

I know the huge importance industry places on the creative sector tax reliefs, and I want to assure you that they will not be adversely affected by Brexit.

And I know the Chancellor shares his predecessor’s enthusiasm for the sector.

Looking at the figures, it is clear the tax reliefs have been a great success.

Since the film tax relief was introduced 1,800 films have been supported, accounting for over £8 billion of UK value.

And since then we have introduced new reliefs for video games, animation, children’s television, theatres and just this week passed the legislation for the orchestra tax reliefs, to encourage business and support British creativity.

In 2013 we introduced the high-end television tax relief to capitalise on the nascent boom in high quality television dramas.

145 programmes have since been supported.

And we have provided some £45 million in video games tax relief since it was introduced in 2014, supporting over £400 million games production spend in the UK.

We have committed £60 million a year to the pioneering GREAT campaign, which works with 21 Government Departments and over 140 British Embassies and High Commissions, to support and promote your businesses abroad and attract world-class events to the UK.

Yes, there will be challenges to overcome but we are committed to ensuring that as we prepare to leave the European Union we do so in a way that protects the British economy and ensures Britain remains an attractive destination for investment.

And still more can be done.

I can today tell you that we have just launched a consultation on the next tax relief for museum and gallery exhibitions, and we want to hear your ideas and views on its design.

And I look forward very much to working with the Creative Industries Federation and Creative Industries Council, and listening to the views you represent, not least the work you’ve done on the challenges and opportunities of Brexit.

Working together we will build on success: the success of the creative industries and the tax credits that underpin them.

That’s my first principle, backing your success to the hilt.

My second principle is access.

We want to build an economy that works for everyone not just the privileged few.

Your sector is potentially one of the greatest forces for openness and social mobility we have.

Talent knows no boundaries.

It was found in four lads from Liverpool who just wanted to make music, in a girl from Margate who wanted to share her art, in kids from homes up and down the country with a flair for acting, writing, gaming.

Imagining.

Talent is not restricted to the privileged and the comfortable.

And as talent is so even-handed, so should its gatekeepers be.

No one should be excluded from any of your industries because of their accent, their gender, or their postcode.

As the Prime Minister said on the steps of Downing Street: it’s part of building a country that works for all, not just the privileged few.

Just as culture transcends boundaries and speaks to the common humanity in us all so creativity allows us to transcend the circumstances of our lives.

So let us drive open diversity. In recent years we’ve learnt many important lessons about how to improve diversity in elite institutions, from mentoring to name-blind recruitment and targeted campaigns.

We are ready to help you apply them in your own industries.

And I make no apology for holding you to a higher standard than the rest of the private sector.

You have a special responsibility to be a force for openness and social mobility in Britain.

There’s already some great work being done.

As a backbencher I worked with Suzanne Bull and her team at Attitude is Everything to improve access for disabled people to music venues, and I want to see that agenda go further.

As Skills Minister I funded Creative Access, and I want to see that agenda go further.

Once of my first acts in this job was to launch Project Diamond, and I want that to go further.

I think you get the message: the access agenda needs to go further.

And access means more than just access to creative industry jobs.

We also need to improve geographical access to arts, culture and creativity.

It’s about diversity in all its forms: it’s about social mobility as well as gender, ethnicity, disability or sexual identity.

It’s about education too and encouraging and supporting children and young people to engage with and have access to arts and culture from an early age both inside and outside of school to support the next generation of the creative industries.

Since 2012, we have invested over £460 million in a range of music and cultural education programmes including the creation of the National Youth Dance Company and the BFI Film Academy.

Pilots for our Cultural Citizens scheme which will connect disadvantaged children with arts organisations in their local community will start this month in three areas of England where cultural participation is low.

I’m working with my colleagues at the Department for Education to support creative subjects in schools.

As well as social mobility we want to drive geographic diversity, and see London’s success matched in every part of our land.

This matters to me personally too.

Coming from Chester, support for provincial theatres like the Gateway, and for regional brilliance in Liverpool and Manchester are important to me.

And just as important, when I came to London as an enthusiastic but unconnected twenty year old, it was places like the National Portrait Gallery, the Wallace, the ENO, and then the Tate Modern that welcomed me in.

We need to pull off the trick off supporting world-beating excellence, and spreading that excellence to all parts.

If there’s anyone who knows how to make the spreading of excellence build on not dilute that excellence, it is Sir Nick Serota.

So I’m absolutely delighted he is stepping up from the amazing work he’s done at the Tate to pursue this agenda at the Arts Council.

We want to blast British culture out of its heartlands of WC1 to every part of our islands.

I have asked Neil Mendoza to lead a full review of our museums.

It will cover how best to support museums large and small, widening participation, supporting both digital innovation and learning.

We need to learn from the best, from the heights of the British Museum’s glorious Pompeii exhibition a couple of years back, to the innovation of thriving small museums like in Wrexham.

It will give a frank assessment of the challenges, and propose ways to overcome them.

The only thing not up for review is free entry to the permanent collections of national museums.

I want all to engage in how we support our amazing museums.

Next year will see the City of Culture in Hull – a place I know well from my youth – and I’m incredibly excited to support Hull in delivering on its excellent promise – though I’m not sure I’m ready to get naked and paint myself blue just yet.

This will be a great chance to showcase the transformative power of our creative industries.

You need only look at Liverpool’s renaissance since its year as City of Culture.

Then, the following year will see the first Great Exhibition of the North, a two-month display of culture, creativity and design, in one of England’s great northern cities.

We have four brilliant bids – Blackpool, Bradford, Newcastle/ Gateshead, and Sheffield.

We want to show directly elected city mayors how they can use you to boost their local economies while defining a regional identity.

So those are my first two principles: backing success and improving access.

My third is synthesis, of culture with digital technology.

Like the creative industries, the digital economy is something we as a country are disproportionately good at.

London is home to the biggest and fastest growing tech cluster in Europe and similar hubs are growing all over the country.

We do more e-commerce per head than any other nation.

And on the digital transformation of government, we are the source code.

Other countries copy our methods.

But there is more that we can do to build on the symbiotic relationship between technology and culture.

There is a reason we have a Minister for Digital and Culture.

Apple became a global behemoth, not because it invented much of the tech in an iPhone but because it combined that with of Sir Johnny Ive’s iconic design work.

Of course it functions amazingly well but, let’s face it, the clincher is it looks so cool.

Increasingly we’re able to meld time-honoured craft with cutting edge technology.

The live streaming of plays now brings West End shows to audiences nationwide – this very weekend, for the first time ever, Shakespeare’s Globe will livestream a production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream – while London Fashion Week streams to over 200 countries.

The soon-to-open hip-hop musical Hamilton will use Uber-style dynamic pricing, so ticket prices respond in real-time to consumer demand.

And many of our most important museums are now digitising their collections, so they can be accessed by scholars around the world.

We want to bring the two worlds even closer. Our aim is to have not only the best content in the world, but also the best digital platforms on which to display it.

This is our sweet spot for the twenty-first century.

And I want to say this about creators, platforms and the corporates who work with them.

You know just how critical, and how disruptive this nexus of culture and technology can be.

Enforcement and fair treatment of rights owners is critical to healthy creative industries.

You can’t grow the digital market if you don’t support content.

And ultimately, content and distribution grow together.

Yes there’s a debate and negotiation about shares. But our task is to grow together.

The Digital Economy Bill, which I will take through parliament this autumn drives that forward.

This synthesis also means treating fast, reliable connectivity, broadband and mobile, as the fourth utility, as essential to modern life as access to water or electricity.

It means both digital and artistic skills getting the attention they deserve in education.

And it means a culture that is deeply supportive of enterprise, of creativity, of innovation.

Where if anyone around the world wants to test an innovation – to try their cutting edge health practices on patients or literally roadtest a driverless car, they look to the UK first.

We are living through a period of profound innovation and the digital revolution has brought huge challenges.

But it also brings exciting opportunities.

By their nature many modern advances, both digital and artistic, aren’t measured in GDP.

What price the sight of a beautiful building, or of a family connecting over Skype, even of the health benefits from running around playing Pokemon Go?

Measurable or not, I passionately believe that human lives the world over are enhanced through your creativity.

It is incumbent on us to use that creativity to benefit all, not just the privileged few, to spread the advantages widely, and ensure all are supported in this time of great change.

These are the principles that will guide my approach to the creative industries: success, access, synthesis.

To maintain UK culture’s immense, powerful, vital, growing, essential and defining role in our economy.

To capture the nexus of creative technology that is the sweetspot for our future prosperity.

And to make sure the benefits are felt by and the opportunities are open to everyone from every community from all parts of this land.

I can’t wait and I look forward to working with you all to make that happen.

September 12, 2016
James Brokenshire – 2016 Speech to Washington Chamber of Commerce

Below is the text of the speech made by James Brokenshire, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in Washington DC, United States of America, on 8 September 2016.

It is a great pleasure for me as the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to have the opportunity to share some words with the Washington Chamber of Commerce today.

And I’m very grateful to you for agreeing to host me, and to your Senior Vice President for International Policy, John Murphy, for moderating this session.

This is my first overseas visit since being appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by the new UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, in July. And I was particularly keen to come to the United States which has played such a supportive and important role in Northern Ireland over recent years.

So today, I’d like to say a few words about the current state of affairs in Northern Ireland – including why it is such a great place to do business – and about the impact of the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union.

Special Relationship

But I should like to underline at the outset the enduring strength of relations between the United Kingdom and the United States.

As President Obama said last year “The special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is rooted in our shared values and mutual commitment to global peace, prosperity and security”.

And the reality is that no two countries on earth do more together.

Our relationship has been a bulwark of international peace and security for over seventy years. Economically, the US remains the largest single country for UK exports, while the US is the UK’s largest inward investor. And in 2015 the UK and the US were the two fastest growing economies in the G7. So be in no doubt. The alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States is one of the oldest and strongest in the world.

It’s a force for democracy, peace and security the world over. And we remain deeply committed to ensuring that it both endures and prospers.

Northern Ireland – open for business

One place where successive US administrations and key individuals have helped to move things decisively forward in recent years is in Northern Ireland. And the progress in Northern Ireland is rightly held up as an example of what can be achieved when democracy and dialogue prevail over the alternatives.

Today, Northern Ireland enjoys almost unparalleled political stability with the longest unbroken run of local, devolved government since the 1960s.

The economy continues to grow, with unemployment falling and over 55,000 more people in work since 2010. And in the last year Northern Ireland’s exports to the US have increased by a staggering 74 per cent. Relations between Northern Ireland and Ireland have never been stronger. The overall security situation is unrecognisable from the period of the troubles.

And Northern Ireland is a highly competitive place in which to invest. We have a highly educated, skilled and dedicated workforce. We have two world class universities with strong links to local business and commerce. There are great transport links into the rest of the UK, Ireland, Europe and beyond. Invest Northern Ireland is able to offer imaginative packages to potential investors.

Our operating costs are over 48 per cent lower than London and 14 per cent lower than Dublin. Northern Ireland benefits from the UK having the joint lowest rate of corporation tax in the G20 – 20 per cent today coming down to 17 per cent by 2020.

And the UK Government remains committed to handing corporation tax powers to the local administration which has set itself the goal of bringing the rate down to 12.5 per cent, the same as in the Republic of Ireland. So it’s not surprising that Belfast is one of the leading destinations for foreign direct investment into the UK outside of London.

But don’t just take my word for it. Our greatest ambassadors are the companies that have invested in Northern Ireland.

Like the Executive Vice President of Allstate who said “As a result of investing in Northern Ireland 15 years ago Allstate has saved over a billion dollars”.

Or the Executive Producer of Game of Thrones, filmed largely at the Titanic Studios in Belfast. As he put it “I can’t imagine any other city or any other area where we could have done this show. Anything we throw at Northern Ireland they deliver.”

All of this is why Northern Ireland has attracted almost 900 international investors – companies like Citi, Allen and Overy and the New York Stock – as well as a multitude of companies from the rest of the UK.

My clear message here in the United States today is that Northern Ireland is open for business.

Brexit

And it will continue to be open for business after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. Of course I realise that decision has caused some uncertainty, so perhaps I can comment on some of the implications of the referendum in June and say some words both of reassurance and of optimism.

First, the people of the United Kingdom were given a choice in the referendum, and they voted decisively to leave the European Union.

I campaigned for remain, but I am clear that we must and will respect that democratic decision and give effect to it.

And while respecting the views of those parts of the UK that voted to remain, this was a United Kingdom vote. The UK as a whole voted to leave – and it is the whole of the UK that will leave the EU. There is no provision for some parts of the UK being within the EU while other parts are outside.

I am also confident the UK will make a success of life outside the EU. Indeed, I believe it presents us with great opportunities.We will succeed because the UK is a great global trading nation. And we’ll make a success of Brexit because the fundamentals of the UK economy are sound.

As a result of the difficult decisions we have taken since 2010 the UK’s deficit is down by nearly two thirds. As I said earlier along with the US we were the fastest growing G7 economy last year. Employment is at record levels – with an average 1,000 jobs a day created over the past six years.

We continue to attract more foreign direct investment than any other country in Europe. And, according to the World Bank, in 2015 we overtook the United States as the top country in the world for ease of doing business.

So while, yes, leaving the EU will inevitably involve some challenges and as the Prime Minister said at the weekend it will not all be plain sailing, we approach this with optimism and a positive view of what we can achieve for the UK.

Protecting Northern Ireland’s interests

For my part, as Northern Ireland Secretary I want to ensure that the unique interests of Northern Ireland are protected and advanced. This is particularly the case in relation to the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

So let me try and offer these words of re-assurance. The UK Government emphatically does not want to see a return to the borders of the past. And I know that determination is shared by the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. The open border and the Common Travel Area have served us well for many years. So we shall be working hard together in our efforts to keep them for people and business.

Support for the Agreements

There have been some suggestions that leaving the EU risks unravelling all the progress that has been made in Northern Ireland in recent years, and that it could fatally undermine the settlement forged by the 1998 Agreement and its successors. I fundamentally reject that argument.

The UK Government remains fully committed to the Agreement and its successors. That includes the political institutions. Those elements of the Agreements that deal with people’s rights and identity. And all the constitutional guarantees – underpinned by the consent principle.

Working in close partnership with the Northern Ireland Executive, the Irish Government and our friends in the United States the UK Government will always do the right thing for Northern Ireland.

Conclusion

In conclusion Brexit will work for the United Kingdom. As a strong, outward looking country we are well placed to forge exciting new trading relationships with existing partners, like the United States, but also with emerging economies.

We are in a strong position to negotiate our own trade agreements and be a positive and powerful voice for free trade. We will forge a new relationship with the EU that works for the UK. And we’ll get out into the world and do business right across the globe.

Outside the EU the United Kingdom will prosper and have a strong and positive future – remaining always a staunch ally of the United States.

Thank you.

September 12, 2016
Theresa May – 2016 Speech on Meritocracy

Below is the text of the speech made by Theresa May, the Prime Minister, at the British Academy in London on 9 September 2016.

When I stood in Downing Street as Prime Minister for the first time this summer, I set out my mission to build a country that works for everyone. Today I want to talk a little more about what that means and lay out my vision for a truly meritocratic Britain that puts the interests of ordinary, working class people first.

We are facing a moment of great change as a nation. As we leave the European Union, we must define an ambitious new role for ourselves in the world. That involves asking ourselves what kind of country we want to be: a confident, global trading nation that continues to play its full part on the world stage.

But at the same time, I believe we have a precious opportunity to step back and ask some searching questions about what kind of country we want to be here at home too.

In fact, it’s not just an opportunity, but a duty. Because one thing is clear. When the British people voted in the referendum, they did not just choose to leave the European Union. They were also expressing a far more profound sense of frustration about aspects of life in Britain and the way in which politics and politicians have failed to respond to their concerns.

Some voted for the first time in more than 30 years. Some for the first time ever. And they were inspired to do so because they saw a chance to reject the politics of ‘business as usual’ and to demand real, profound change.

Fed up with being ignored or told that their priorities were somehow invalid, based on ignorance and misunderstanding, or even on occasion that they were simply wrong to voice the concerns that they did, they took their opportunity to send a very clear message: they will not be ignored anymore.

They want to take back control of the things that matter in their lives. They want a government that listens, understands and is on their side. They want change. And this government is going to deliver it.

Everything we do will be driven, not by the interests of the privileged few. Not by those with the loudest voices, the special interests, the greatest wealth or the access to influence. This government’s priorities are those of ordinary, working class people. People for whom life sometimes can be a struggle, but who get on with things without complaint.

They get on with their jobs – sometimes 2 or even 3 of them – because they have families to feed and support, bills to pay and because to work for a fair reward is the right thing to do.

They get on with their lives quietly, going about their business, going out to work, raising families, helping neighbours, making their communities what they are.

They don’t ask for much, but they want to know that the people that make the big decisions are on their side, working for them. They want to believe that everyone plays by the same rules and things are fair.

And above all they want to believe that if they uphold their end of the deal – they do the right thing, they work hard, they pay their taxes – then tomorrow will be better than today and their children will have a fair chance in life, the chance to go as far as their talents will take them.

These are not outrageous demands or ridiculous desires, but for too many of these people today life does not seem fair. They are the people who made real sacrifices after the financial crash in 2008, though they were in no way responsible.

They wonder if others – some of whom really do bear responsibility for the crash – did the same.

More than anything else, they worry – truly worry – that the changing world around them means that their children and grandchildren won’t have the same opportunities they have enjoyed in life.

They deserve a better deal.

And to give them that, we should take this opportunity to step back and pose a fundamental question: what kind of country – what kind of society – do we want to be?

I am clear about the answer.

I want Britain to be the world’s great meritocracy – a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow.

I want us to be a country where everyone plays by the same rules; where ordinary, working class people have more control over their lives and the chance to share fairly in the prosperity of the nation.

And I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege; where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like.

Let us not underestimate what it will take to create that great meritocracy. It means taking on some big challenges, tackling some vested interests. Overcoming barriers that have been constructed over many years.

It means not being afraid to think differently about what disadvantage means, who we want to help and how we can help them. Because where once we reached for simple ways of labelling people disadvantaged and were quick to pose simple – and often fairly blunt – solutions, in these modern times disadvantage is much more complex.

It’s often hidden and less easy to identify. It’s caused by factors that are more indirect and tougher to tackle than ever before.

But tackle it we must if we are to give ordinary, working class people the better deal they deserve.

It means marking a significant shift in the way that government works in Britain too. Because government and politicians have for years talked the language of social justice – where we help the very poorest – and social mobility – where we help the brightest among the poor.

But to make Britain a great meritocracy, we must move beyond this agenda and deliver real social reform across every layer of society so that those whom the system would currently miss – those just above the threshold for help today yet those who are by no means rich or well off – are given the help they need.

It means putting government firmly on the side of not only the poorest in our society, important though that is and will remain, but also of those in Britain who are working hard but just about managing. It means helping to make their lives a little easier; giving them greater control over the issues they care about the most.

This is the change we need. It will mean changing some of the philosophy underpinning how government thinks and acts. It will mean recalibrating how we approach policy development to ensure that everything we do as government helps to give a fair chance to those who are just getting by – while still helping those who are even more disadvantaged.

I don’t pretend this change will be easy – change rarely is – but this is the change we need if we are to make Britain the great meritocracy I want it to be.

Over the coming weeks and months the government will set out an ambitious programme of economic and social reform that will help us make this change and build a true meritocracy in our country.

But there is no more important place to start than education. Because if the central concern ordinary working class people have is that their children will not enjoy the same opportunities they have had in life, we need to ensure that there is a good school place for every child, and education provision that caters to the individual needs and abilities of every pupil.

Schools that work for everyone

We start from a position of strength. This government has a proud record of school reform. We have opened up the system, introducing a real diversity of provision. We have schools where teachers and headteachers are free to make the decisions that are best for them.

And through successful policies such as a renewed focus on learning the basics of reading in primary schools, and initiatives to help young people pursue a strong academic core of subjects at secondary level, we are ensuring that every child has the opportunity to develop the core knowledge that underpins everything else.

We have put control in the hands of parents and headteachers, and encouraged people from all walks of life who are passionate about education to bring their best ideas and innovations to our school system.

The Academies and Free Schools movement overseen by pioneers such as Andrew Adonis and Michael Gove has been a huge success and begun to build an education system fit for the future.

As a result, there are more good or outstanding schools today than ever before in our country. And there are now more than 1.4 million more pupils in schools rated good or outstanding than in 2010.

Our curriculum reforms mean that the proportion of pupils taking core academic subjects at GCSE is up by almost 4-fifths. We are driving up school standards to match the best international comparisons, with a record number of pupils securing a place at one of our world-class universities this summer. We can be proud of these achievements but there is still a long way to go.

Because for too many children, a good school remains out of reach. There are still 1.25 million attending primary and secondary schools in England which are rated by Ofsted as requiring improvement or inadequate. If schools across the north and Midlands had the same average standards as those in the south, nearly 200,000 more children would be attending good schools.

Let’s be honest about what these statistics mean.

They mean that for far too many children in Britain, the chance they have in life is determined by where they live or how much money their parents have.

And they mean that for far too many ordinary working class people, no matter how hard they work, how many hours they put in or how many sacrifices they make, they cannot be confident that their children will get the chances they deserve.

For when you are working 2 jobs and struggling to make ends meet, it is no good being told that you can choose a better school for your children if you move to a different area or pay to go private. Those aren’t choices that you can make. And they are not choices that you should have to make.

So we need to go further, building on and extending our reforms so that we can truly say that there will be a good school place for every child, and one that caters to their individual needs.

But as we do it, we also need to change our philosophy and approach, because at the moment the school system works if you’re well off and can buy your way into the school you want, and it provides extra help and support if you’re from a disadvantaged family.

If you’re eligible for free school meals, and your parents earn less than £16,000 a year, then there is extra help on offer. That is good and right – and as long as I am Prime Minister, the pupil premium for the poorest children will remain.

But the free school meals measure only captures a relatively small number of pupils, whose parents are on income-related benefits.

If we are going to make the change we need and build a great meritocracy in Britain, we need to broaden our perspective and do more for the hidden disadvantaged: children whose parents are on modest incomes, who do not qualify for such benefits but who are, nevertheless, still only just getting by.

If you’re earning 19, 20, 21 thousand pounds a year, you’re not rich. You’re not well off. And you should know you have our support too.

At the moment there is no way to differentiate between the school experience of children from these families and those from the wealthiest 10%.

Policy has been skewed by the focus only on those in receipt of free school meals, when the reality is that there are thousands of children from ordinary working class families who are being let down by the lack of available good school places.

Putting this right means finding a way to identify these children and measuring their attainment and progress within the school system. That work is underway and is central to my vision of a school system that truly works for everyone.

But we must also deliver a radical increase in the capacity of the school system so that these families can be sure of their children getting good school places.

And this is really important. Because I don’t just want to see more school places but more good school places. And I don’t just want to see more new schools, but more good new schools that each in their way contribute to a diversity of provision that caters to the needs and abilities of each individual child, whoever they are and wherever they are from.

Every child should be given the opportunity to develop the crucial academic core. And thanks to our reforms that is increasingly the case. But people understand that every child is different too, with different talents, different interests, different dreams. To help them realise their potential and achieve those dreams we need a school system with the capacity and capability to respond to what they need.

School capacity

So as we radically expand the number of good school places available to all families – not just those who can afford to buy an expensive house, pay for an expensive private school, or fund the extra tuition their child needs to succeed – I want to encourage more people, schools and institutions with something to offer to come forward and help.

In the last 6 years, we have seen individuals and communities put staggering amounts of time and effort into setting up good new schools. Some of the best state schools, charities, universities, private schools, and businesses have stepped forward to get involved.

And, increasingly, the best state schools are sponsoring the least good. This has been a revolution in our schools system.

But with 1.25 million children still attending schools that are struggling, we need to do much more to increase the capacity of the system so every child can get the education they deserve.

So let’s now build on the success of school reform, let’s encourage others to play their part, and let’s remove the barriers they face so we can do more.

Let’s sweep away those barriers and encourage more people to join us in the task of delivering a good school place for every child.

Let’s build a truly dynamic school system where schools and institutions learn from one another, support one another and help one another.

Let’s offer a diverse range of good schools that ensure the individual talents and abilities of every child are catered for.

That is my ambition.

And there are 4 specific proposals I want to talk about today that I believe will help.

Universities

Firstly, I want to build on the success we have already experienced when some of our great universities have stepped in to help by sponsoring or supporting a local school.

Universities have a huge amount to offer England’s schools. They have been part of the fabric of our education system since the 13th century and have had a profound impact on our schools over generations.

Recently we have seen The University of Cambridge establish The University of Cambridge Primary School and The University of Birmingham open an impressive new free school for secondary school pupils and sixth formers.

The new specialist Sixth Form, King’s College London Mathematics School, is already performing impressively and the University of Brighton is involved in sponsoring more than a dozen different primary and secondary schools.

These are the kinds of innovation I want to encourage. This kind of active engagement in building the capacity of our school system is in my view far more effective than spending huge sums on bursaries and other financial support that tackle the symptoms but not the cause.

The right for a university to charge the higher level of tuition fee has always been dependent on their ability to fulfil specified access requirements. And this year, in fulfilling these requirements, they are expected to spend over £400 million on bursaries and other forms of financial support for students.

Yet the evidence is clear: it is the attainment of pupils at school that is the over-riding factor in predicting access to university.

I am not saying there is no place for bursaries. But overall, I do think the balance has tilted too far. We need to go to the root of the problem, which is that there are not enough students from disadvantaged backgrounds and from ordinary families fulfilling their potential with the grades to get into the best universities.

So I want our universities to do more to help us to improve the quality of schools so that more students of all backgrounds have the grades, the subjects, and the confidence, to apply to top universities and to be successful in their exams in the first place.

So the government will reform university fair access requirements and say that universities should actively strengthen state school attainment – by sponsoring a state school or setting up a new free school. And over time we will extend this to the sponsorship or establishment of more than one school, so that in the future we see our universities sponsoring thriving school chains in every town and city in the country.

Faith schools

Second, I want to remove the obstacles that stop more good faith schools from opening.

Britain has a long history of faith schools delivering outstanding education. They already account for around a third of all mainstream schools in England. They are popular with parents and significantly more likely than other schools to be rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding.

I believe we should confidently promote them and the role they play in a diverse school system.

Yet for Catholic schools in particular there are barriers in their way. When a faith-designated free school is oversubscribed, it must limit the number of pupils it selects on the basis of faith to 50%.

The intention is to improve the diversity of the school’s intake but in practice it has little impact on many Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu schools because they tend not to appeal to parents of other faiths.

So despite the best intentions, the rule is failing in its objective to promote integration. But it does prevent new Catholic schools opening, because the Catholic Church believes it contravenes its own rules for a Catholic bishop not to prioritise the admission of Catholic pupils.

This is especially frustrating because existing Catholic schools are more ethnically diverse than other faith schools, more likely to be located in deprived communities, more likely to be rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, and there is growing demand for them.

So we will remove this 50% rule to allow the growth in capacity that Catholic schools can offer. Instead we will consult on a new set of much more effective requirements to ensure that faith schools are properly inclusive and make sure their pupils mix with children of other faiths and backgrounds.

Of course, there must be strict and properly enforced rules to ensure that every new faith school operates in a way that supports British values. And we should explore new ways of using the school system to promote greater integration within our society generally.

We will encourage the grouping together of mono-racial and mono-religious schools within wider multi-racial and multi-religious trusts. This will make it easier for children from different backgrounds in more divided communities to mix between schools, while respecting religious differences.

We will explore ways in which schools can enter into twinning arrangements with other schools not of their faith, through sharing lessons or joint extra-curricular activities to bring young people from different schools together.

And we will consult on the idea of placing an independent member or director who is of a different faith or no faith at all on the governing body of new faith schools.

We will also explore new requirements for new faith schools to prove that parents of other faiths would be happy to send their children to the school through a proper process of consultation.

But fundamentally I believe it is wrong to deny families the opportunity to send their children to a school that reflects their religious values if that’s what they choose. And it’s right to encourage faith communities – especially those with a proven record of success, like the Catholics – to play their full part in building the capacity of our schools.

Independent schools

Third, I want to encourage some of our biggest independent schools to bring their knowledge, expertise and resources to bear to help improve the quality and capacity of schools for those who cannot afford to pay.

This is entirely in keeping with the ethos that lies at the heart of many of these institutions. Most of the major public schools started out as the route by which poor boys could reach the professions. The nature of their intake may have changed today – indeed these schools have become more and more divorced from normal life.

Between 2010 and 2015 their fees rose 4 times faster than average earnings growth, while the percentage of their pupils who come from overseas has gone up by 33% since 2008. But I know that their commitment to giving something back to the wider community remains.

These are great schools with a lot to offer and I certainly don’t believe you solve the divide between the rich and the rest by abolishing or demolishing them. You do it by extending their reach and asking them to do more as a condition of their privileged position to help all children.

Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.

It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.

Smaller independent schools who do not have the capacity to take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help such as direct school-to-school support where appropriate. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable. It could include ensuring their senior leaders become directors of multi-academy trusts; providing greater access to their facilities and providing sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils in year 11 at each local school.

But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.

Alternatively, we will ask them to fund a number of places at their own school themselves for those from modest backgrounds who cannot afford to pay the fees.

We know this can work. For example, Westminster School is the key partner in sponsoring Harris Westminster Sixth Form, where students at the free school share the facilities and teaching expertise of Westminster School.

In my own constituency, Eton College sponsors Holyport College, offering Holyport pupils access to its sports facilities and the chance to join its educational activities.

And before it became a state-funded academy, Belvedere School in Liverpool worked with the Sutton Trust to create an Open Access Scheme where places were awarded purely on the basis of academic merit, and parents were then asked to pay on a sliding scale of fees fairly tailored according to their means.

I want all independent schools with the appropriate capacity and capability to take these kinds of steps.

I want them to play a major role in creating more good school places for children from ordinary working families; because this government is about a Britain that works for everyone – not just a privileged few.

Selective schools

There is one final area where we have placed obstacles in the way of good new schools – obstacles that I believe we need to take away.

The debate over selective schools has raged for years. But the only place it has got us to is a place where selection exists if you’re wealthy – if you can afford to go private – but doesn’t exist if you’re not. We are effectively saying to poorer and some of the most disadvantaged children in our country that they can’t have the kind of education their richer counterparts can enjoy.

What is ‘just’ about that? Where is the meritocracy in a system that advantages the privileged few over the many? How can a meritocratic Britain let this situation stand?

Politicians – many of whom benefited from the very kind of education they now seek to deny to others – have for years put their own dogma and ideology before the interests and concerns of ordinary people. For we know that grammar schools are hugely popular with parents. We know they are good for the pupils that attend them. Indeed, the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils is reduced to almost zero for children in selective schools. And we know that they want to expand.

They provide a stretching education for the most academically able, regardless of their background, and they deliver outstanding results.

In fact, 99% of existing selective schools are rated good or outstanding – and 80% are outstanding, compared with just 20% of state schools overall.

So we help no one – not least those who can’t afford to move house or pay for a private education – by saying to parents who want a selective education for their child that we won’t let them have it.

There is nothing meritocratic about standing in the way of giving our most academically gifted children the specialist and tailored support that can enable them to fulfil their potential. In a true meritocracy, we should not be apologetic about stretching the most academically able to the very highest standards of excellence.

We already have selection to help achieve this in specialist disciplines like music and sport, giving exceptionally talented young people access to the facilities and training that can help them become world class. I think we should have more of this. But we should also take the same approach to support the most academically gifted too.

Frankly, it is completely illogical to make it illegal to open good new schools. So I want to relax the restrictions that stop selective schools from expanding, that deny parents the right to have a new selective school opened where they want one, and that stop existing non-selective schools to become selective in the right circumstances and where there is demand.

In return, we will ensure that these schools contribute meaningfully to raising outcomes for all pupils in every part of the system.

In practice this could mean taking a proportion of pupils from lower income households, so that selective education is not reserved for those with the means to move into a catchment area or pay for tuition to pass the test.

They could, as a condition of opening a new selective school, be asked to establish a good, new non-selective school. Others may be asked to establish a primary feeder school in an area with a high density of lower income households to widen access. They might even partner with an existing non-selective school within a multi-academy trust or sponsor a currently underperforming non-selective academy.

But the principle is clear: selective schools have a part to play in helping to expand the capacity of our school system and they have the ability to cater to the individual needs of every child. So the government will make up to £50 million a year available to support the expansion of good or outstanding existing grammars.

Now I know this will be the source of much debate in the consultation over the coming months, so I want to address very directly some of the key arguments made by those who oppose the expansion of grammar schools.

First, there are those who fear this could lead to the return of a binary system, as we had in the past with secondary moderns. But this fear is unfounded: there will be no return to secondary moderns.

As I have set out today, far from a binary system we are supporting the most diverse school system we have ever had in our country.

From free schools sponsored by universities and independent schools, to faith schools and selective schools, the diversity of high quality school provision means we will be able to cater properly for the different needs of all pupils and give parents real control over the kind of school they want for their children.

We do not want to see whole new parts of the country where the choice of schools is binary. So we will use the approvals process to prevent that from happening.

Second, there are those who argue that selective schools tend to recruit children from more affluent backgrounds. The problem here is not selective schools per se but rather the way that wealthier families can already dominate access to the schools of their choice through selection by house price. I want to stop that and new grammars can help.

We are going to ask new grammars to demonstrate that they will attract pupils from different backgrounds, for example as I said, by taking a proportion of children from lower income households. And existing grammars will be expected to do more too – by working with local primary schools to help children from more disadvantaged backgrounds to apply.

Third, there are those who argue that grammars don’t actually select on ability because wealthy families can pay tutors to help their children get through the tests. This might have been the case in the past with the old 11-plus. But it does not have to be the case today.

While there is no such thing as a tutor-proof test, many selective schools are already employing much smarter tests that assess the true potential of every child. So new grammars will be able to select in a fair and meritocratic way, not on the ability of parents to pay.

Fourth, there are those who worry about the cliff-edge of selection at 11. Some fear it is too early, some fear it is too late. The truth is that it doesn’t have to be a cliff-edge at all. This is back in the old mindset of the grammar schools of the past. A modern, meritocratic education system needs to be much more flexible and agile to respond to the needs of every child. So we will demand that new grammars make the most of their freedom to be flexible over how students move between schools, encouraging this to happen at different ages such as 14 and 16 as well as 11.

This means that children who are at a non-selective school sponsored by a grammar might join the grammar for specific subjects or specialisms where they themselves are outstanding – or they might move to the grammar full-time later than aged 11, based on their performance at their current school.

Finally, people get lost in the argument about whether the grammars schools of the 1950s and 60s improved social mobility or not. But I want to focus on the new grammars of the future: those that will be just one element of a truly diverse system which taken as a whole can give every child the support they need to go as far as their talents can take them. And give every parent access to a good school place for their child.

This is the true test of schools that work for everyone. And the true test of a meritocratic society.

The great meritocracy

There has been a lot of speculation in the last few weeks, but as you now know this is not a proposal to go back to a binary model of grammars and secondary moderns but to build on our increasingly diverse schools system. It is not a proposal to go back to the 1950s but to look to the future, and that future I believe is an exciting one.

It is a future in which every child should have access to a good school place. And a future in which Britain’s education system shifts decisively to support ordinary working class families.

These families are not asking for the world. They just want to know that their children and grandchildren will enjoy the opportunities they have enjoyed and be given the chance to go as far as their talents will take them. Unhindered by background or circumstance. And by the artificial barriers some want to put in their way.

In a country that works for everyone it doesn’t matter where you were born, or how much your parents earn. If you work hard and do the right thing, you will be able to go as far as you can.

I want this country to be a great meritocracy. I want to see more houses built, better productivity so we can have more well-paid jobs, more economic growth not just in the south-east of England but across the whole country to help more people get on.

But more than anything else, I want to see children from ordinary, working class families given the chances their richer contemporaries take for granted. That means we need more great schools.

This is the plan to deliver them and to set Britain on the path to being the great meritocracy of the world.

September 12, 2016