Next Wednesday, NATO heads of state and government will gather not far from here to mark the 70 anniversary of the organisation. Founded in 1949 this inter-governmental military alliance of 29 European countries and the U.S. has sought to safeguard the freedom and security of its members.

It has been one of the lynchpins of the liberal international rule-based order established in the wake of the Second World War to spread liberal democracy across the globe and guard against authoritarianism and oppression.

The UK was instrumental in establishing this order and NATO itself. It was Winston Churchill who signed the Atlantic Charter of 1941 on behalf of the UK which set out the framework for this order, its aims and values. Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin played pivotal roles in founding of NATO. We should be proud of this.

Other institutions which facilitate the multilateralism which is essential to maintaining this order include the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, the IMF, the World Bank and, of course, the European Union.

So this a fitting moment to say something about what the Liberal Democrats’ approach would be in the next Parliament to the liberal international rule-based order, NATO and UK foreign policy.

Because UK voters have a choice to make at this election:

Give a majority to Boris Johnson, a man determined to take us out of the EU, who has chosen to align with right wing, authoritarian, nationalist forces who are opposed to the liberal international rule-based order;

Or elect as many Liberal Democrat MPs as possible, necessary to deprive Johnson of a majority and ensure the arithmetic in a new House of Commons can deliver a People’s Vote, and pave the way to secure not only Britain’s place at the heart of Europe but as a world leader too.

The situation is pressing and urgent – we have just 17 days to do it.

NATO

Let me start by underlining our commitment to NATO, which has been a cornerstone of the defence of our country.

Alongside our fellow NATO ally, France, we are the most capable military power. Our intelligence gathering capacity remains indispensable. Our membership of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership makes us a global leader in the fight against terrorism. And in NATO Britain holds the position of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Long may that continue.

But NATO must reform and adapt to the changing nature of threats we face. For example, we need to increase NATO’s conventional deterrent and help develop the application of Artificial Intelligence. Cybersecurity is afterall now a tier 1 threat and Britain has a key role to play in the integration of internal security and external defence to meet the new challenges of hybrid warfare. Above all, we must provide credible deterrents that convince others that NATO is committed to Europe’s collective defence.

This is why Liberal Democrats will ensure the UK upholds our NATO responsibilities, including by spending 2% of GDP on defence. Under Liberal Democrats in government, this 2% will be worth £993 million more in 2024-25 than under a Tory government because, using the Remain Bonus, we will enhance the UK’s ability to play our part in NATO and maintain our security. In so doing, we will ensure the men and women in our armed forces have the support and resources they need to do their jobs.

However, it is alarming that other NATO members’ commitment to the alliance is less than fulsome. US President Trump described NATO as “obsolete” during his 2016 Presidential campaign. President Macron quite rightly cited Trump’s failure to consult NATO allies, before his abrupt decision to pull forces out of northern Syrian, as evidence of the US’s waning commitment to the alliance. This, in turn, paved the way for Turkey – another NATO member – to start an offensive into Syria to create what it called a security zone along its border. Consequently, out of some exasperation, President Macron described NATO as “brain dead” and warned European countries that we can no longer rely on America to defend NATO allies.

No one is more happy to see this state of affairs than President Putin of Russia, an active opponent of NATO which suspended contact with his government over the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Of course, President Putin, President Erdogan of Turkey and Trump not only share a poor regard for NATO, they share a politics: right wing, conservative, nationalist and authoritarian.

America

It is Trump, perhaps more than any other, who has taken this politics mainstream in the Western World. In his words and deeds he has been unafraid to engage in bigoted, racist, sexist, and Islamophobic behaviour, to lie and to break the law. All the same criticisms apply to the UK’s Prime Minister who is following the Trump playbook and has become part of this global network of populist, right wing, authoritarian nationalists.

I do not need to repeat the various offensive things the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has said about different groups in our society. His capacity to lie – even to our Queen – is there for all to see. He unlawfully sought to shut down our legislature. He refuses to publish a parliamentary intelligence and security committee report into Russian interference into our democracy, in spite of the fact a former Conservative Attorney General chairs the committee, a former head of MI5, the former National Security Advisor and a former head of the Civil Service, all say it should be published. What does he have to hide? Why is he hiding this report from the British public? It is all very Trumpian.

We know that before his election Johnson was regularly in touch with and took advice from Steve Bannon, the man who was instrumental in seeing Trump and his unedifying brand politics into the White House.

On Johnson taking office, Trump lauded him as “Britain Trump”. Indeed, it was Trump who gave the order that the UK’s Conservative and Brexit parties should form an electoral pact. Nigel Farage obliged and so it has come to pass, with Farage claiming yesterday that the 2019 Tory manifesto is a copy of UKIP’s 2015 offer.

Giving Johnson a majority would be to give carte blanche to this type of politics in the UK – something which should worry us all and should strongly be resisted. As British patriots, we must defend our liberal, internationalist, progressive values – British values – in the face of this politics of hate and division.

Of course, our partnership with the US – our closest ally – is bigger than one man and will endure in spite of Trump. It is a partnership that has defined the West’s foreign policy, forged in two world wars, the Cold War and more recently in the fight against Islamic extremism.

It is often described as “special”. The truth is the relationship is neither special, nor is it sentimental. But it is based on hard-headed national interests.

Our mutual sharing of intelligence and the interoperability of our nuclear submarine forces makes it more than just a transaction. Our army, navy and air force are designed to fight alongside the US in a supporting role. The relationship gives us security, and it amplifies our capabilities across the world. We are very much committed to it for that reason.

Yet Britain cannot settle for just being a useful component of US foreign and defence policy. As Attlee remarked to Bevin in a Cabinet meeting discussing the nuclear deterrent, ‘We ought not to give the Americans the impression that we cannot get on without them; for we can and, if necessary, will do so.’ In this, our EU membership has been key. We have not only acted as a bridge between the EU and the US, but our membership of the EU has acted as a useful counterweight in our relationship with the U.S.

This delicate balance is under threat. Not only will we cease to be that important bridge between the EU and the US but, by withdrawing from the EU, inevitably Johnson will become more reliant on Trump in the short term if he is re-elected. Johnson is desperate to

secure a US trade deal to make up for the damage done to our global standing if Brexit happens. From my own contact with the US Government, it is clear a high price will be demanded and close alignment with US rules and regulation demanded – so we risk becoming a vassal state of the U.S. if Boris Johnson gets a majority. Leave the EU and the UK under Johnson will become President Trump’s poodle. This is what is at stake at this election.

Europe

It underlines the importance of stopping Brexit from happening in 17 days time.

Since the end of the Second World War the UK has been at the heart of the European project. It was Winston Churchill who called for a united Europe, declaring that the continent could not afford to drag forward the hatred and revenge from injuries of the past, and that the first step must be to recreate the ‘European family’ of justice, mercy and freedom.

While he may wish to portray himself as a Churchillian figure, Boris Johnson does a disservice to our country’s great war-time leader by claiming Churchill’s mantle for his own nationalist, isolationist agenda.

Seventy years later and our continent, once scarred by conflict and bloodshed, has healed.

The EU continues to be essential for peace, security, and cooperation in our part of the global neighbourhood. And the UK’s economic, political and security interests dictate that we continue to be a member of the European Union.

We share the same values, we have common interests, and can achieve more together than we can alone in a global economy that does not recognise borders. I simply do not understand how any political activist in our country can be “neutral” on this. And I am proud to be led by a leader who is resolute: our country is stronger, safer and better off in the EU.

This is an emergency. Things will move very quickly after polling day. The December EU Council summit starts on polling day and the election results will come through whilst it is still meeting. Whoever wins, may well head straight to that summit. And the clock will be ticking down towards the current scheduled date of departure, 31st January 2020. Once you discount the Christmas break, exit day will be due just over a month after polling day.

So two things can happen after polling day:

Sufficient numbers of MPs are elected to pass the necessary motions and legislative measures to provide for a People’s Vote in the Spring of 2020, for which the EU will grant a further extension. As the last parliament illustrated, what matters is the parliamentary arithmetic, not the wishes of any minority government. Every Liberal Democrat MP and the full weight of our party will be thrown behind Remain in that scenario.

Or, Boris Johnson is given a majority, allowing him to more or less blank cheque to do exactly as he pleases. He has said he will seek to bring his Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons before Christmas, leaving little time for further scrutiny of it by the new parliament. He is clear: he will see to it that we walk away from the club which we entered being dubbed as the sick man of Europe but would leave as the world’s fifth largest economy, in no small part due to our membership of it.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak let the cat out of the bag over the weekend as to what would happen next when he disclosed that, regardless of whether the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement passes, if re-elected the Tories will continue to plan for “no deal”. That makes sense because it is the course they are embarked upon. They say they have an “oven ready” trade deal but it is not even half baked. It will be impossible to conclude this free trade agreement – which is Canadian in flavour – with the EU by the end of December 2020. The Prime Minister has said he will not extend the implementation period beyond 2020 so, in all probability, the UK will be trading on “no deal”, WTO terms with the EU from 2021 under the Tories, with all the damage and fallout for our country which that will entail.

In order to stop this calamity and for the numbers to add up to stop Brexit in a new House of Commons, at the very least we must reduce the numbers of Conservative MPs – all of their candidates have signed a pledge in this election to deliver this hardest of hard Brexits. Here the Liberal Democrats have a vital and decisive role to play because only we can take seats from the Tories in significant numbers.

As Sir John Curtice has said, given current polling, in a substantial number of seats we are now likely to be the stronger challenger to the Conservatives. This is borne out by current in-seat polling. Over the last two weekends, The Observer has carried out seat polls in a number of constituencies that usually vote Tory, which show the Lib Dems in second place with us poised to be beat the Tories particularly if Remainers vote tactically.

Conversely, the Labour party would lose in all of them. Far from taking seats from Johnson, Labour is trying to defend its own from the Tories, particularly in the West Midlands, North East and Yorkshire. For the betting folks out there, Ladbrokes does not have Labour as favourites to win in any Tory-held seat – but it does with the Lib Dems. This highlights the crucial role voters have in Tory/LibDem marginals in the coming weeks – stopping Brexit and stopping Boris Johnson’s extreme Brexit is the prize.

Conclusion

And the UK deciding to remain in the EU will not only be a boost to the UK and the EU, but it will provide a much needed injection of oxygen into the liberal rule-based international order itself, which is under threat.

I’ve already mentioned Trump, Putin and Erdogan’s disregard for it. In China, we see in Hong Kong human rights abuses, democracy and the rule of law under attack. In Kashmir, the abolition of the region’s special status by the Indian government is a cause of alarm.

Across the world, nationalist populism – the pernicious mantra that one people is superior to another – is making strides. Matteo Salvini and his Northern League dominate Italian politics. Viktor Orban has distorted public life in Hungary to monopolize power there. President Jair Bolsonaro is undermining democracy in Brazil. The list goes on.

The order is imperfect. Yes, it must do far better at reducing inequality and fostering a more inclusive global economic system. But however flawed it may be, this liberal international order has none the less created peace and prosperity.

It helped transform states which had been aggressive autocracies – Germany and Japan – into liberal democracies.

The trade it has opened up between countries has helped ensure global competition no longer results in military conflict. In turn, this has helped lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and people are more healthy than before.

Furthermore, the liberal democracies that fall within the order have, in the main, also provided better protection of the rights and civil liberties of their peoples.

And Extreme nationalism was forced to retreat.

NATO and the EU – as key parts of the order’s architecture – have been instrumental in all of this.

Going forward, the great challenges of the twenty-first century are global – the climate emergency; human trafficking; the illegal arms trade; global poverty and inequality. I do not see how we tackle them if not through this order.

Re-electing a government that aligns itself with the forces ranged against the liberal rule-based order, forces which undermine NATO, cannot be the answer. Giving free reign to a government which seeks to separate our country from the EU and so diminish Britain’s capacity to cooperate with our closest neighbours in response to these threats, will be a huge backward step.

We offer a different course. Liberal Democrats are internationalists. This is at the heart of who we are as a party, it flows through everything we do.

To finish where I started: under that 1941 Charter which Chruchill signed, all countries would have the right to self-determination. All people the right to freedom of speech, of expression, of religion, and freedom from want and fear. The rule of law would be promoted. All nations would collaborate to ‘improve labour standards, economic advancement, and social security’ for all. If you vote for the Liberal Democrats at this election, that is precisely what we will work to make happen.

Thank you.

Thank you for inviting me to speak here today.

Before I start, I want to get one thing out of the way…

People keep asking for my political predictions.

What’s going to happen with Brexit? Will there be a deal?  Will there be a snap General Election?

I predicted that Labour would win the 2015 General Election…

I predicted that the UK would vote to Remain in the European Union…

And I predicted that Hilary Clinton would beat Donald Trump…

So, I’m following my wife’s advice, and I’ve stopped making political predictions.

‘I don’t know’ is the answer but I think we will have an answer by this time next year.  That’s all I will say.

I don’t blame you for asking.

Before coming into politics, I worked as an employment lawyer here in the Cities of London and Westminster, where I am the Liberal Democrat candidate at the next general election.  Almost all my clients were based in this constituency.  Most traded internationally, particularly into EU markets. 

So, I do understand just how frustrating not knowing what our trading relationships will be are for business.  And I appreciate that decisions on whether to spend, hire and invest cannot be made in isolation of from all the political volatility.

The Liberal Democrats are winning and will be decisive, when the next election comes.

What I can say is that it will be a truly extraordinary election, with some unprecedented results, and a very high level of tactical voting.  And the Lib Dems are on course to play the most decisive role in any general election in my lifetime.

It is not a question of whether we can win more support – we are already winning.

This year, in the European Elections in May, we beat Labour and the Conservatives in a national election for the first time in 100 years, scoring 20.3% to their combined 23.2% of the vote.

In the local elections in England which occurred shortly beforehand we gained over 700 councillors whilst the Tories lost 1,300 and Labour lost control of 6 councils.

In spite of our strong Remain stance, in June we overturned a Tory majority of 8,000 in a seat that voted to Leave the EU and won the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election.

Following the defections of 8 MPs, we now have 19 MPs in Parliament.

And 50,000 new members have joined our party in the last year taking our membership to over 127,000, our biggest ever.

Usually after Local and European Elections, third parties’ polling goes down.  But our polling position has stabilised at around the twenty percent level, with us beating Labour into second place in several surveys.

People tell us they are fed up with our broken two party political system with two parties at its heart who are part of the problem.  They are deeply divided and have failed to provide the clear direction the country needs.  And they have been so preoccupied dealing with their own internal problems that they cannot perform their jobs competently. 

Fundamental change is needed and our success this year tell us the public like what we are offering, with Jo Swinson being a complete breath of fresh air compared to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.  She does the work, is on top of the detail, reads her brief, actually cares and is of a new generation.

So we say, bring on a General Election – but we must make sure a No Deal Brexit is off the table first.  We cannot carry on with the current uncertainty, a government that has no majority and a legislature incapable of properly functioning. 

That is why we published our Bill for an election yesterday which not only protects against No Deal, but also prevents the Prime Minister ramming through his flawed Withdrawal Agreement without proper scrutiny, and it fixes the date of the election as 9 December 2019 into law so that it cannot be changed by a premier who has a habit of lying and breaking the rules.

Where next on Brexit

We know business wants to end this uncertainty too.  I can understand why some want to simply waive through and make do with the PM’s Brexit proposals.

But let us be clear: Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals only offer more uncertainty.  They will not “get Brexit done”.

If the Withdrawal Agreement is finalised, we would enter an implementation period shortly after which would expire in December next year.  We have no idea what our trading relationship with the EU will be after that point.  The type of Canada style free trade agreement the Prime Minister envisages negotiating will take several years to settle and can’t be concluded in this timeframe.

If Brexit takes place, it will also increase the risk of the splitting up of the United Kingdom, with the SNP agitating for another Scottish independence referendum and instability in Northern Ireland.

And if Brexit takes place, should the current PM still be in office and not get the kind of trade deal he seeks by the end of next year from the EU, he is more than happy to gamble the country’s futures on starting 2021 without one.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party’s position is all over the place.

Labour’s leadership are split, with some wanting a People’s Vote, and others wanting to renegotiate a Labour Brexit deal, or a jobs-first-Brexit – a contradiction in terms.

It is still unclear, even if Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell managed to negotiate a Labour jobs-first Brexit, whether they would campaign for or against their own deal. They cannot even agree amongst themselves on whether to support having an election.

We, on the other hand are clear – we want to Stop Brexit and Remain in the European Union.  It is the only way to quickly end this uncertainty and restore confidence back into the economy.

We aim to achieve this by way of a democratic vote of the British people, either through a People’s Vote or at a General Election.  Our preference has always been a People’s Vote but with a significant minority of Labour MPs and around half of the ex-Tory rebels in the House of Commons refusing to back it, it is clear we do not have the numbers for one which is why a General Election and a new parliament now offers the most likely way we can achieve this aim.

Until there is a democratic vote, there will be no resolution to the impasse, and we cannot hope to move on, address the real issues facing our country and heal the divisions.

Brexit is already harming the economy.  We have already witnessed a fall in the value of Sterling, higher inflation, and low or negative GDP growth – and we haven’t even left yet.

The Government’s own analysis concluded that in the next 15-years, any form of Brexit will damage our economy.  Relative to Remaining in the EU it is estimated that the kind of free trade agreement envisaged by the PM will lead to GDP and real wages being 6.7% and 6.4% lower in the long term.

Our plan for the future

So what are our plans?  The Lib Dem plan for our economy aims to tackle the causes of Brexit by investing in Britain’s future.

Let me start with where the economy is right now.

GDP growth has been under 2% in the last three years and weaker than in other G7 economies.

According to data from the Department of International Trade, the number of foreign investment projects into the UK dropped by 14% in the fiscal year ending March 2019.

Since December 2017, business investment has been falling each quarter, with the only exception being Q1 2019.

R&D investment is low – below the EU28 average of 1.9%, the OECD average of 2.3%, and lower than key competitors such as France, the US and Germany.

We have recorded a persistent trade deficit every year since 1998, with it widening from -1.3% of GDP to -1.5 of GDP in the last year.

The 2016 Brexit vote has exacerbated these underlying problems.

Jo Swinson, Ed Davey and I all understand the impact this is having on the environment you operate in, the undermining of confidence in the economy, and how this leads you to delay decisions or cancel investment plans.  And we intend to reverse it.

And we want to work with you to support enterprise, invest in the physical and digital infrastructure our economy needs, and build a balanced partnership of the public and private sectors to get the British economy moving, and ensure our economy is fit for the future.

Our record

When the Liberal Democrats were last in Government we helped provide a stable business environment – as you can see that stability fell apart soon after we left office.

Above all, we adopted an active industrial strategy and worked with business to both strengthen and modernise our economy.

We set up the Green Investment Bank – the world’s first-ever state-backed bank of its kind.  The Bank has channelled more than £15bn into green infrastructure and has funded 60% of the UK’s offshore wind generation capacity.

We established the series of ‘catapult’ innovation and technology centres to bridge the gap between R&D and industry and help ensure our most innovative ideas are commercialised and drive benefit to the UK economy.

We founded The British Business Bank. The bank is independently managed but 100% Government owned and has increased the supply of finance to smaller businesses.

We can be proud of these achievements.  However our goal is a society in which every citizen, regardless of circumstance, background or postcode, can lead a happy, prosperous and secure life. This is not the case in Britain today.

Inequalities and regional economic decline and underinvestment played a big part in creating the Brexit chaos we find ourselves in.

Anyone who thinks that the status quo is a viable business plan for the future needs a reality check.

There are different varieties of capitalism – the current model is dysfunctional and needs to be repurposed.

The kind of capitalism we need must be more inclusive and progressive, fairly distribute the proceeds of growth so all communities, regions and nations benefit from the proceeds of globalisation.  Fail to do this and the forces of the extreme and populist Left and/or Right will flourish.

This will require greater equality of opportunity, and government working together with the private sector to harness the power of enterprise and spur inclusive prosperity and growth.

The state and the market, working in partnership, both have a role – and there should be a balance between the two.

We call it a social market economy.

We will create this social market economy by investing in people, innovation and infrastructure in order to give people the tools to be competitive in our economy and ensure our country a world leader.

Ed Davey, our Shadow Chancellor, will set out our plans in detail during the election campaign but I want to highlight four pillars today and some examples of what we intend to do.

First, skills and training for a 21st century economy.

The rapidly changing nature of work means more people are changing career and need to retrain multiple times within their lives.

Even if people don’t switch career they need to be able to develop their skills to keep pace with changes in technology and working practices.

So a Lib Dem government will introduce Lifelong Learning Entitlements – individual ring-fenced funds to enable access to high-quality training schemes for adults.

A higher-skilled workforce will also boost the UK’s economic productivity, which has been lagging behind our international competitors for too long.

Again, the public and private sectors working together in a balanced partnership.

Second, we will support innovative businesses and new developing technologies, which will be the foundation of a thriving twenty-first century economy

As part of an active industrial strategy, a Lib Dem government will expand the remit of the British Business Bank to perform a more central role in the economy.

This will help tackle the shortage of equity capital for start-ups and growing firms, and providing long-term capital for medium-sized businesses developing these technologies.

A Lib Dem government will also pursue year-on-year real increases in public funding on R&D for the next 10 years, so the UK economy achieves our 3.4% GDP goal.

The flawed business rates system acts as a disincentive to investment.  We wish to replace it with a system based solely on the land value of commercial sites rather than their entire capital value, thereby stimulating investment.

Third, an economy which cares for our environment and climate.

We want to see businesses take greater responsibility for the impact they have on the environment.

That is why we want a general duty of care for the environment, to ensure that companies are avoiding behaviour in their operation and supply chains that is damaging to the environment.

This is something that more and more consumers want, and that many businesses are already doing.

So, by regulating for it, it creates a higher floor for standards,

It creates a more level playing field for businesses,

and it doesn’t penalise those who are seeking to protect the environment – but incentivises those who need to do more.

And fourthly, we will help drive regional growth.

As I mentioned earlier, our vision for the economy is one where government supports enterprise, invests in the right infrastructure, and builds a balanced partnership of the public and private sector.

A Liberal Democrat government will examine the current £270bn a year procurement budget to ensure a more decentralised and devolved approach, which will benefit regional economies.

We plan to use public sector procurement and infrastructure budgets to partner with private sector investment in order to increase regional growth in digital and physical infrastructure. This will be an important economic stimulus directed to the regions.

Achieving dynamic local economies, with vibrant, productive cities – economically connected with industrial and rural communities – requires improvements to transport.

That is why a Liberal Democrat government will be committed to the electrification of the rail network, improving stations, reopening smaller ones, restoring twin-track lines to major routes and proceeding with HS2, HS3 and Crossrail 2.

Of course, we must ensure all parts of the country have good digital connectivity.

For the avoidance of doubt: there are no mansion taxes, punitive business tax hikes, programmes to appropriate private property or policies that will lead to our key sectors and industries being walloped with new trade tariffs in our plans.  Neither Labour nor the Tories can say this.

How does our overall approach compare to the offer from the other parties?

Since 2015, this Tory government has overseen a year-on-year drop or stagnation in GDP growthfrom 2.3% in 2015 to 1.4% in 2018.

Meanwhile poverty is up with 14.3 million people living in poverty as of July 2019, that is 22% of the UK population, including 4.6 million children.

This is unacceptable for the fifth richest country in the world.

And this is before we even get to Brexit, a form of which Boris Johnson is happy to plough ahead with, despite all of the warnings of the business, academics and even the government’s own impact assessments.

Instead of listening to you these last few years, senior cabinet ministers have gone on the attack. The PM said “f**k business”, while the former Foreign Secretary said it was “completely inappropriate” for you to air your concerns on government policy. 

Consequently many business leaders I speak to believe the government provided by the Tories since 2017 has been the worst for business they can remember. Yes, they point to Brexit but, they also point to their sheer ineptitude and incompetence.

Meanwhile, under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s leadership Labour are failing to even provide proper parliamentary scrutiny to hold the Government to account.

John McDonnell has outlined his plans for renationalising key parts of the British economy.

The CBI’s own analysis shows that Labour Party’s renationalisation plans will cost £196bn.  That’s as much as the annual spend on the health and social care and education combined.

And by their own admission, if elected a Labour Government is likely to spark panic amongst major employers and businesses, leading the party to ‘war game’ for capital flight and a run on the pound.

In our words and deeds, I would argue we are now the only main party that is pro-business, enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, The Liberal Democrats can win – and we are already winning.

In the local elections.

At the European elections.

We are the only sensible pro-business choice at the next general election.

We have a record of working with business to both strengthen and modernise our economy.

I ask you today to work with us again on this.

Whereas Labour and the Tories are two competing visions of the past – our vision is one where government supports enterprise, invests in infrastructure, and builds a partnership of the public and private sector.

The Lib Dem plan for the future of the economy will tackle the causes of Brexit by investing in the Britain of tomorrow.

That is how we build a brighter future for our country.

Thank you.

Conference, it is an honour and a pleasure to be addressing you as a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament and as your Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Now, I’ve been to a few parties and I hope I don’t sound immodest when I say my experience of joining this party underlines that it was one of the best decisions I have ever made since going into politics.  

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for making me feel so welcome.  I could not be more at home in the wonderful Liberal Democrat family.

And the decision to join was not made out of crude self interest…If self interest or climbing the greasy poll is your goal, I would not recommend following my example.  

The truth is, all the incredibly difficult decisions I have made on the journey I’ve been on this year were routed in my values and principles.  I joined this party out of conviction.

As you know, I am a Remainer and proud of it – we have spent far too long apologising for being pro-European in this country.  Because you cannot be pro-Britain and put our national interest first without seeking to put Britain at the heart of Europe. 

But, even more importantly, I am a social democrat with liberal values.  You see, to be a Remainer is not only to be an advocate of our continued membership of the European Union; it is to hold a set of liberal, internationalist values of which we Liberal Democrats are the champions and defenders in Britain.

In an attempt to smear those of us who have an internationalist outlook, Theresa May said “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.  What utter garbage. We are citizens of the world and – just you watch – at the next election you will see Liberal Democrats taking seats from the Tories in every part of the country as so many people are flocking to us, the strongest and biggest Remain party. 

Be in no doubt: this is the battle of our time and it goes far beyond Britain’s borders.

What it is to be a liberal

Our party exists to build and defend a fair, free and open society, a society in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity……That was taken straight from our constitution – as you can see, I’ve done my homework.

In essence, the society we seek to build is one where if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be free to lead a happy, prosperous and secure life free of domination of either the state or the market.  And we want to ensure future generations can do the same by preserving our planet for the long term continuity of life in all its forms.

I grew up in world in which we took these values for granted.

As a family of mixed heritage – English, Irish and Nigerian – our back story, alongside that of millions of others, stands as an example of Britain’s liberal, open, internationalist spirit.

The notion that we all share the same basic rights and should live together in peace, regardless of background is something we will always fight for.  

That different cultures should be able to develop freely and that there is diversity in modern Britain is not something simply to be tolerated – it is something we positively celebrate.

And, whatever the political complexion, we will always demand our governments respect the rule of law, with an independent judiciary able to uphold those laws, free from abuse and attack by the Executive.

This is the Britain we know and love – and Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and the peddlers of hate and division in our country better know that this is what we will fight for at the coming election.  

It is our job to make sure this country’s heart beats in a liberal and internationalist direction; not nationalist, populist authoritarianism. This is the new fault line in British politics and we know where we stand.

The liberal rules based international order

Because we recognise that these things cannot be achieved in isolation and that the pursuit of individual and social justice does not stop at the border, we seek to work together with other liberal democracies who share our values to overcome cross border obstacles to achieving our goals.  As Menzies Campbell said at conference back in 2005, “in an inevitably interdependent world, cooperation is not only in our interests, it is essential to survival”. And rhe best way to protect British interests, he argued, was “strong and effective multilateralism”.  He was right then and still is now.

That is why we are internationalists. That is why we are pro-European. Liberalism is needed at home to protect personal freedom and liberty; Liberalism and cooperation are also needed abroad to secure peace, promote democracy and defend human rights.

If we are elected, we will fight poverty, oppression, hunger, ignorance, disease and aggression wherever they occur and we will seek to promote the free movement of ideas, people, goods and services.  Conference, there is no constructive ambiguity on this in this party.

So we support the liberal international rule-based order established in the wake of the Second World War which has underpinned liberal democracy across the globe and guarded against authoritarianism and oppression.  The Atlantic Charter of 1941, of which the UK was a signatory, set out the framework for this order, its aims and values. 

With the memory of fascism and the threat of communism, collective security was paramount and a robust national defence married to a passionate commitment to social and global justice was the goal.

Under the Charter, all countries would have the right to self-determination. All people the right to freedom of speech, of expression, of religion, and freedom from want and fear. The rule of law would be promoted. And this struck a chord with President Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ – nations would collaborate to ‘improve labour standards, economic advancement, and social security’ for all.

It led to the international institutions which facilitate the multilateralism which is essential to maintaining this rules based order today: the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation; the IMF and the World Bank; and, of course, NATO to defend our democracies.  In fact it was in the 1940s that the Liberals were the first UK political party to vote in favour of a European Union.

The EU, once it came into being, evolved to become not only an important lynchpin of this order on the continent but it expanded this order to cover Central and Eastern Europe states too.  In government, we will seek to maximize British influence in all these institutions and play the most active possible role because, as Liberals, we put our values into action. 

There is no better an example of this than the late, great Paddy Ashdown, whose life and achievements we remember this week. 

As the first High Representative in Bosnia Paddy pulled together multilateral resources and created the political will to push ahead with political reforms. In a lesson that still rings true today, Paddy often liked to say that “if the international community is united, there is absolutely nothing we cannot do in the Balkans. If the international community is divided, there is absolutely nothing we can do in the Balkans.” 

Of course, the first thing we will do in Government is revoke Article 50 so that, once again, the British people can resume their role of providing leadership as a full and active member of the European Union.

This order is imperfect. It must do far better at reducing inequality and fostering a more inclusive global economic system. But however flawed it may be, this liberal international order has none the less created peace and prosperity.  

It helped transform states which had been aggressive autocracies – Germany and Japan – into liberal democracies.  

The trade it has opened up between countries helped ensure global competition no longer resulted in military conflict.  In turn, this has helped lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and people are more healthy than before.

Furthermore, the liberal democracies that fall within the order have, in the main, also provided better protection of the rights and civil liberties of their peoples.  

And Extreme nationalism was forced to retreat.  

Yet the advances made then are now at risk.

The decline of the liberal rules based order and the need for renewal

Today it is that liberal international order that is now in retreat.  As a result the world is becoming a more dangerous place.  Consider what has happened since Conference gathered last year.

If his attempted travel ban for muslims and scapegoating of Mexican immigrants were not enough to convince you that far Right politics has entered the White House, we have watched President Trump telling four congresswomen of colour to “go home.”  It is racism, pure and simple. What a disgrace.  

Abroad he is seeking to pull the US out of the Paris Climate agreement, he is flouting WTO rules in the pursuit of what he calls “fair trade”, and he has pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal.

In China, we are witnessing violent and repressive scenes in Hong Kong with the disproportionate use of force against the protests calling into question China’s commitment to upholding Hong Kong’s way of life and the “two systems, one country” model which demands the rule of law, human rights and democracy be observed.

Russia’s President Putin has claimed international “liberalism is obsolete” and at the same time made remarks which amounted to thinly veiled homophobia.  He also suggeste Trump’s racist rhetoric was justified given immigrants kill, plunder and rape with impunity.  This of course is the man who went into another country – Ukraine – and annexed part of it, Crimea.

In Kashmir, the abolition of the region’s special status by the Indian government, and the unrest and human rights abuses we have seen subsequently in the area, should be a cause of alarm around the world.

In short, across the world, nationalist populism – the pernicious mantra that nations should be homogeneous and one people is superior to another  – is making strides. Matteo Salvini and his Northern League dominate Italian politics. Viktor Orban has distorted public life in Hungary to monopolize power there. President Erdogan and President Jair Bolsonaro are undermining democracy in Turkey and Brazil respectively. 

So a giant battle is raging globally, between the pluralist, progressive creed of liberal democracy on the one hand and a desiccated authoritarianism on the other. 

Let us be clear: the Liberal Democrats are the only party that can get into office which is capable of meeting this challenge in Britain today.

Only the Liberal Democrats are capable of renewing international liberalism

You see, you cannot defend a liberal, rules based order abroad if you so openly flout the rules at home.  

Boris Johnson has facilitated the takeover of Her Majesty’s Government by the remnants of Vote Leave campaign  – an outfit  that was not only was found guilty of lying during the 2016 referendum in relation to its claims on the NHS by the Statistics Authority, but it was found guilty of cheating and breaking the law by the Electoral Commission.  

Now, as he seeks to force through a catastrophic “no deal” Brexit, the Prime Minister has shut down Parliament and is threatening to break the law if necessary.  The Tory right, who have taken over their party, like nothing more than to bang on about incarcerating more and more people who break the law, but strangely think a different approach should be adopting in relation to their law breaking.

And, as he seeks to force the UK out of the EU, he will become ever reliant on President Trump, whose political playbook he follows.  But President Trump has always been clear – it will be America not Britain First.

Beyond Brexit and cosing up to President Trump, no one seems to know what the foreign policy strategy of this government is.  What is clear is that we will not see the leadership on the world stage required from the new occupant of No 10.  He likes to think of himself as a modern Winston Churchill.  Churchill was of course the Prime Minister who signed the Atlantic Charter and played a private role founding the liberal international order – Boris Johnson has been busy kicking his relatives out of the Tory party.

This brings me to the Opposition.  The Labour Party likes to think of itself as a champion of liberal values at home and abroad.  Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin played pivotal roles in the founding of NATO but this is not the party of Attlee and Bevin; this is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.

You cannot be a champion of liberalism if you are currently subject to a formal investigation by the Equality & Human Rights Commission for institutional racism against Jewish people.  You cannot be a champion of liberalism when your leader’s supporters think it is acceptable to abuse, vilify and deselect anyone who dares to question the leader. And you cannot claim to be liberal when the political editor of the BBC needs to take a bodyguard to your conference.

And then you look at Jeremy Corbyn’’s foreign policy positions.  Acting as an apologist for a hard-right -Russian government that thinks it can poison people on British soil, lauding authoritarian regimes in Venezuela and Iran, failing to support the prescription of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.  Attlee and Bevin helped found NATO – Jeremy Corbyn and those around him want to abolish it. 

Of course what unites both Johnson and Corbyn is the fact that they want to leave the EU, the organisation which has been the biggest champion of liberalism in our part of the global neighbourhood.  Neither is fit to lead this country.  

Its time for a change and someone who I know can provide that leadership: Jo Swinson.

Conclusion

Under Jo’s premiership we can breathe a progressive breath of fresh air into the British foreign policy. 

Liberal Democrats are internationalists. This is at the heart of who we are as a party, it flows through everything we do. 

We believe in tearing down walls, not building them. We believe in working together through multilateral organisations, not standing alone. 

And we believe that to tackle the biggest issues facing us today, from the climate emergency to terrorism, we need to ensure that the UK is at the table, achieving consensus internationally.  

Perhaps now more than ever, UK foreign policy is yearning for clear liberal, democratic values. A Liberal Democrat government would not be tied to outdated tropes or biases, but would be clear that the UK must continue to work with allies from across the world, playing a leading role in the EU and other international institutions. 

With Jo as our Prime Minister we will revive our reputation on the world stage and get on with helping to improve the lives of those across the world. 

As Liberal Democrats we have a duty to do this, to defend the values of human rights, democracy, and equality. 

And as your Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary I can promise you that I will stand up for a truly global Britain.

Thank you. 

My values and principles come first – they are the reason I started a political journey in leaving the Labour Party. 

I am a social democrat with liberal values. Those values revolve around a fair and open Britain, which has a strong, mixed market economy, in which everyone can achieve their dreams regardless of their background. I am unapologetically an internationalist which is why I oppose Brexit and am fighting for the UK to remain in the European Union. These are very much the values of those I represent in Streatham and the same things that I stood on at the last General Election. And they are the values of the Liberal Democrats. 

Our politics is broken and the two main parties, which sit at the heart of the system, are simply not up to addressing these challenges because they are part of the problem. They have exacerbated the problems and are fuelling the divisions not only within their parties but in our country too. They have failed to provide the leadership and clear direction which the UK desperately needs, and to properly fulfil their constitutional duties as a government and opposition.

In spite of all the upheaval, there is cause to be hopeful and optimistic – this is an exciting time for progressive, centre ground politics. The local and European elections illustrated that millions of voters agree that the two main parties in UK politics are broken. It is clear the tectonic plates are shifting and the public is now more in favour of upending the two party system than at any time in my lifetime. This provides a historic opportunity to realign, change the system, fix our broken politics and resolve the problems which caused people to vote for Brexit in the first place. For the sake of all our citizens, we must grab this opportunity. 

After leaving Labour, I had thought that Britain needed a new party and I believed that was what the millions of politically homeless people in Britain wanted. I was wrong. You have your ups and your downs in politics. Politicians are all human, and we have our flaws. I have plenty! The important thing is to learn the lessons from your mistakes, to listen to what your constituents and the electorate are telling you, and to strive to do better. 

First, I massively underestimated the challenge of building a new, fully fledged party like Change UK in the midst of a national political crisis and attempting to do so at the same time as running a national election campaign. Vince was right to point to the importance of having a party infrastructure and existing relationships with hundreds of thousands of voters which hugely contributed to the party’s recent election successes. 

Secondly, there is also no doubt that under the First-Past-The-Post electoral system used in Westminster elections, there is space for only one main centre ground offer. That is clearly the Liberal Democrats. 

So what more was stopping me from joining? I found it hard to come to terms with the impact of the public spending cuts which were instigated by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of 2010-2015. And, as you would expect, the comments I made then as Shadow Business Secretary are doing the rounds on social media – they are actually getting even more of an airing today than they did then! 

I did not disagree with the need to reduce the public sector deficit and debt – indeed Labour’s last Chancellor Alistair Darling accepted this. But I did disagree with the speed and severity of fiscal consolidation, and the extent to which cuts to public spending as opposed to tax increases were made to carry the burden. 

Four years on from their time in office, things have changed. The Liberal Democrats have voted against every Tory budget since 2015. They stood on an anti-austerity manifesto in 2017 with, for example, commitments to end the public sector pay cap, increase tax to pay for the NHS and reverse cuts to housing benefit and Universal Credit. Senior figures – including Vince – have since said that, although they curbed George Osborne’s worst excesses, they should not have allowed measures like the bedroom tax to be introduced. They also accept that a major mistake was made in making and then breaking a pledge on university tuition fees, which should never happen again. 

Most importantly, the biggest impediment to ending austerity currently is pressing on with Brexit. In every Brexit scenario tax receipts will be hit hard, depriving the Exchequer of much needed revenue to invest in public services. Both Labour and the Tories are committed to facilitating Brexit and you can’t end austerity if you want to sponsor Brexit. The Liberal Democrats are not – they were committed to a People’s Vote and remaining in the EU from the start. 

I suspect those who will be most critical of the decision I have made will be many of those I left behind in the Labour Party. The question they must answer is how, if they are committed to ending austerity, continued support of a party’s leadership that is committed to Brexit helps achieve that goal. Privately, many accept this, and know that a visceral hatred of the West and anti-Semitism is all too common place in too many Labour circles. They also abhor the bullying behaviour by supporters of the leadership as much as they do the fact it is tacitly sanctioned. In its words and deeds, Labour is not being true to the progressive values I believe in, and they know it. We all do. I say to them – particularly the social democratic centre left – there is a home for you. It is the Liberal Democrats. 

And I am convinced the Liberal Democrats, as the spearhead of a broader progressive movement in civil society, offer the best chance to improve the lives of those I represent as well as countless other citizens across our country. The time has come to put past differences behind us and, in the national interest, do what is right for the country. 

Thank you.

And we chose to focus on this issue, because of the grave concerns many of us have about the deep political divisions that seem to have emerged between different generations in this country.

We saw these divisions very clearly in the 2016 Brexit referendum and then again in the 2017 General Election. Indeed, according to Ipsos Social Research Institute, the voting patterns in the 2017 General Election showed the greatest divisions between age groups they have ever recorded.

Alongside this, we also had a feeling that, although the idea of social integration seems more important now than it has ever been – and I believe it will become even more prominent as we think about the future direction of our society – the specific question of intergenerational connection is one that hasn’t yet received the attention it deserves.

In the course of this inquiry we are aiming to change that and what we have found so far has fully underlined the importance of doing so. 

Because the evidence that we have seen has provided us both with real cause for concern as to the current state of affairs, but also with some really inspiring examples of what we might be able to do to change things. H

Our concern over the extent of age-based divisions has been further underlined by evidence which suggests that the young and old are not only displaying polarised outlooks, but are increasingly in danger of living quite separate lives, with little regular interaction with one another.

Take these statistics for instance: 

· For the typical child in our largest cities, just 5% of people in their immediate neighbourhood are over 65. In 1991 this was 15%. 

· Between 1981 and 2011, three-quarters of the increase in 45-64 year olds and over-65s across the country took place in villages, and small and medium sized towns. By contrast, 80% of the growth in 25-44 year olds occurred in large towns and core cities. 

What we appear to be seeing is that, not only has the extended family become increasingly geographically separated since the mid-twentieth century, but that the impact of this on intergenerational connection appears to have been exacerbated in recent decades by increasing residential segregation of young and old.

However, we have also found real inspiration through hearing from a whole range of civil society organisations who are fighting back against the age divide and finding new and innovative ways of bringing different ages together to form meaningful and lasting connections. 

Groups, some of whom are with us today. Like Good Gym, who are active in Bath and whose founder Ivor Gormley is with us. Good Gym encourages younger people to combine getting fit with connecting with older people in their communities, for instance by running to the home of an older citizen who will act as a buddy and coach. 

Or take the Cares Family, who we visited in Manchester, who create community networks of young professionals and older neighbours to come together to socialise and support one another. 

We have seen numerous examples of pioneers like these who are pointing the way to how we create a better future in which people of all ages live much more inter-connected lives, lives in which we get to draw on, understand and learn from the experiences of all generations. 

And in the current context in which we find ourselves, I don’t think we can any longer afford to see this as a ‘nice to have’. The growing generation gap we have seen is one of a number of divides which are threatening to fundamentally undermine the health and cohesiveness of our society.

Polling we have undertaken for the launch of this report, confirm this:

· Most British people agree that Brexit has further widened the age gap between older people and younger people. Only 11% disagree. 

· Most people in Britain believe that older people got a better deal when they were young than today’s young generation. 

· Yet, most older people unfortunately view younger British people as less hardworking than older generations were and more inclined to moan. 

While civil society may be leading the way, rising to a challenge of this magnitude will also require political leadership, at both national and local level. 

But crucially it seems clear that it will also require new types of leadership, and new ways of thinking that will push all of us outside of our comfort zone and our typical ways of thinking. Because this is not just about spending more money (although that may well be necessary), or about public solutions versus private solutions. 

As I think this report shows, tackling the age divide requires, as much as anything, fundamentally new ways of thinking about how we deliver services and for whom; new ways of thinking about public spaces and private spaces and how both can build or prevent meaningful connections between people. And it will require present and future technologies that aid the building of these connections, rather than expanding the divides. 

That is a massive challenge for all of us. One that we are just beginning to answer today, but one this report makes a significant step towards. 

And I’m going to handover now to Wera Hobhouse, a familiar face for many of you I’m sure, and someone who had been an important supporter and contributor to this report and the work of the All-Party Group on Social Integration, to talk in more detail about some of the key ideas in this report and what these mean to her.

Context for the APPG

We launched this APPG, a cross party group of MPs, in March 2016, which is less than three years ago, but in political terms feels like a different era of calm and stability compared to the chaos you see now. The impetus behind this was a real and growing concern about the ways in which our society seemed to be fragmenting along various lines and the damaging effect this is having on us all. 

And what is happening is not just some vague feeling but very real.  There is a significant body of evidence that too often, people from different cultural, socio-economic and age groups may be living side-by-side, but they aren’t actually mixing with one another, or leading lives that are really interconnected. 

Three years on, concerns about social division have only risen. In many ways, the question of social integration, or lack of it, sits at the heart of many of the most prominent social, political and economic concerns of our time. But it often sits there unnoticed. Somehow we perceive it and feel it, but too often it is left unarticulated and unexamined. I think that is changing in light of the debate on Brexit – the Prime Minister and I had an exchange about social cohesion in the House of Commons following her EU statement on Monday and it came up in my meeting with David Liddington, her de-facto deputy, in the cross party talks I took part in this week as well.

Our first inquiry looked at the integration of immigrants and our report called for a much more proactive approach to the integration of new immigrants, and much clearer routes to citizenship and English language provision. We will be looking at the forthcoming Immigration Bill to see to what extent these principles are, or can be, embeded into that Bill through amendments.

Intergenerational connection inquiry

Our second and current inquiry has picked up the question of intergenerational connection. This is a question that hasn’t always received much attention, but the voting patterns we saw in the 2016 Brexit referendum and 2017 General Election, brought into very sharp relief the extent of the political divides that have opened up between young and old in this country. The Ipsos Social Research Institute has said that the 2017 General Election saw the greatest political division between age groups they have ever measured.

Furthermore, polling published on behalf of the APPG by The Challenge and YouGov in December 2017 suggested that more than one in four Leave voters of retirement age believed lower wages for the next generation was a price worth paying for exiting the EU, while one in four Remain voters aged 18-34 would have accepted pension reductions for older people if it meant Brexit was stopped. 

That is pretty dispiriting, but I think just goes to show that this is something we cannot afford to shy away from. Because disagreement over Brexit has served to shine a light on the issue of generational division in this country, but Brexit is not the cause of that division.  This is something the Prime Minister would do well to reflect on. 

In some ways, what has been most shocking to see in the course of this inquiry has been the evidence of the extent to which young and old are in danger of physically living completely separate lives. Take these statistics for instance:

• For the typical child in our largest cities, just 5% of people in their immediate neighbourhood are over 65. In 1991 this was 15%.
• During the 24 years between 1991 and 2014, the median age of rural areas rose nearly twice as quickly as the median age in urban areas. 
• Between 1981 and 2011, three-quarters of the increase in 45-64 year olds and over-65s across the country took place in villages, communities, and small and medium sized towns. By contrast, 80% of the growth in 25-44 year olds occurred in large towns and core cities.

So, it is not just that different generations appear to have increasingly polarised outlooks; but there appears to be an increasing tendency for them to live quite separate lives, with little regular interaction with one another.  So it is unsurprising they have such different outlooks. 

Clearly we have a decision to make: do we simply accept these divisions as a regrettable fact of modern life, or do we attempt to do something about them. I believe not only that we must attempt to tackle these divisions, but that we cannot afford not to. 

Examples of good practice

In seeking to find solutions, we are not starting from scratch. Our inquiry has heard evidence from and paid visits to a whole range of organisations who are attempting to build bridges between the generations within their communities. 

From organisations like the Cares Family, who we visited in Manchester, who create community networks of young professionals and older neighbours to come together to socialise and support one another, to Apple and Honey Nightingale, who we visited in South London, which in 2017 opened the first nursery to be based at a care home in the UK. We have seen numerous examples of pioneers like these who are pointing the way to a better, more integrated future. You can read more about all of them when we launch our interim report is the coming weeks. 

But all of these organisations could do with much more support than they are getting. And the principles they are putting into practice deserve to be taken up much more widely than they currently are. 

Recommendations 

So, our upcoming  interim report will set out the foundations of a policy framework which we believe might help achieve this.  We had hoped to launch the report this month but that has been knocked sideways with the ongoing Brexit drama in Westminster.  However, I want to give you a bit of preview today of what some of those recommendations will look like. 

1. Local government is hamstrung by a lack of resources at the moment, but notwithstanding the financial constraints, it could play a vital role simply by viewing its policies and programmes through a more inter-generational lens than local authorities currently do. 
2. In our public services, and in our nursery and care provision, the principle of co-location of facilities for different age groups should become a watchword and the norm.
3. We must be explicit in our housing and planning policies about the need to nurture intergenerational connection, and look to foster public and private spaces in which all generations mix. 
4. And we must look more closely at what role technology, and digital technologies in particular, can play in building intergenerational connections rather than becoming spheres of increasing segmentation and division.

Political implications 

So, these are some of the ideas and types of recommendations we will be putting forward. 

However, if we are going to make a serious attempt to build and improve intergenerational connections, there we need to be clear there will be some difficult decisions to make. And those decisions will pose challenges to those of all political viewpoints. 

If we agree that increasing dislocation between generations is something we need to address, then a laissez-faire approach will certainly not suffice. The right balance of sticks and carrots will be necessary and central government will need to take the lead in this. To give one example, fostering greater intergenerational connections through hospitals and care homes, will only happen in a systematic way if driven by the Department for Health and Social Care.

Yet, intergenerational connections cannot be formed by governments. They are formed in local communities, through clubs, activities and local services, in neighbourhoods designed for all ages. As such, communities will normally be best placed to know what might work for them and to develop their own initiatives, and we should enable local councils and others to empower them to do this. 

At the same time, we must recognise that supporting and enabling these initiatives will be difficult without any extra money to do so. And we have seen in the course of this inquiry that the closure of shared spaces, like community centres and libraries, and the reduction in local transport services – things that have clearly resulted from the austerity policies of recent years – have served to reduce opportunities for different generations to connect.

But we need to beware of thinking that the ending of austerity would be a silver bullet which fixes all of this. It won’t. Rebuilding our intergenerational bonds will require, not just investment, but whole new ways of working and thinking, and in some cases fundamental reform. 

These are the challenges we face. But face them we must. Now more than ever we need to act to rebuild bridges between the generations, if we are to have any change of bringing our country back together again.

Thank you.

In some senses, my family’s story is a modern British story. My father was 23 when he arrived in 1964 from Nigeria. He had one suitcase and no money. He found a job as a cook in south London, then worked in a car wash. He was ambitious. He saved his money. He took an accountancy course and then he built his own import-export business. He worked damn hard.

My mother was a probation officer and in the early years she supported the family while my father built up his business. Later she set up a catering business, ran a market stall and then became a lawyer.

They both gave me the desire to work hard to provide for my own family. They both put their family, and the welfare of their children, first. They taught me responsibility and love.

Through the incredible stories and experiences of our families – of immigrants who travelled from far and wide to these shores – we have learned those values of working hard, of making a contribution, and of playing fair. I believe these progressive values are deeply rooted in the traditions and institutions of our country.

I was 13 when my father was killed in a car crash and cruelly taken from us. This tragedy taught me that life can be dark and precarious. As you would expect, his death changed my life. I had imagined I would follow him into his business. But that was all gone. So instead I took a different path and trained to become a lawyer. I practised as a solicitor specialising in employment law, acting for companies, entrepreneurs and individuals.

My father’s death taught me that people need one another. We need a society which recognises our mutual obligations, and our need to belong. We share in the good times and we support one another in the bad. These beliefs are what make me a social democrat, they are what make me centre-left. Up until the last couple of years, the centre-left was always considered to be a legitimate part of the Labour tradition.

My social democratic, centre-left beliefs are what drove me to seek to put something back into my community as its member of parliament. Our tradition is one that in office ensured the MacPherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was established and acted on; which outlawed discrimination not only on the basis of one’s race but on the basis of your religion too; which saw to it that SureStart children’s centres, which disproportionately benefit BAME families, were set up in every community; which instituted the first ever national minimum wage; which put in place the education maintenance allowance; and so much more.

There is now a clear and present danger that this tradition is driven out of our party. Having only been re-elected by their constituents last year, already centre-left MPs are being targeted systematically with motions against them for standing up for these values – for demanding we have a zero tolerance of racism in our party. More motions such as this are expected by colleagues. My message to our leadership: it is within your power to stop this so call off the dogs and get on with what my constituency, one of the most diverse communities in the nation, demands we do – without equivocation, fight this Tory Brexit. That is where all our efforts should be.

Because today we are meeting as parliament seeks to tackle the biggest issue this country has faced since the second world war. An issue that impacts on every policy area like no other, and every family like no other. As we seek to make our way through this mess which the Tories have created, we will need to be guided by our centre-left values more than ever because only those values can provide a route through all of this.

The vote to leave the EU has already had a materially adverse impact on people’s lives and we have not even left yet. Our different diverse communities will be affected more than most, which is why it is so important that BAME voices are heard loud and clear in this Brexit process. This conference could not be better timed.

The handling of Brexit in the two years since the referendum has been an utter shambles. Whether you voted Leave or Remain, nobody said it would be like this and no one voted for such chaos and incompetence.

Food prices have already increased as a result. If we leave without a deal, the chair of one of our biggest supermarkets tells me they will increase by a further 10 per cent. This hammers those on low and middle incomes whose weekly supermarket shop makes up a higher proportion of their spending.

The promised £350m extra per week for the National Health Service is nowhere to be seen. Instead, doctors and nurses from the EU are leaving the NHS in droves just when we have a staffing shortage. Over 10,000 EU health workers have already left and the number of EU nurses joining the register to work in the UK fell by 91 per cent in the last year. Boris Johnson omitted to plaster these devastating consequences on his big red bus.

Businesses are already moving European operations and jobs from here to the continent.

Panasonic has announced it is moving its European head office to Amsterdam to avoid potential tax issues related to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Airbus warned in June it could move operations out of the UK if Britain leaves without a deal.

Over 10,000 EU health workers have already left and the number of EU nurses joining the register to work in the UK fell by 91 per cent in the last year. Boris Johnson omitted to plaster these devastating consequences on his big red bus.

In short, the gap between what was promised and what has happened, is gaping. Whatever you thought of the claims made and however you voted in 2016, 2018 has proved Brexit in the form it was sold is impossible to deliver.

And what have the Brexiters done, having visited this chaos on us. Of the many Brexit cons few are greater than the idea that this is a fight for the people against the elite. How can it be when even before leaving the EU the average family is now £900 a year worse off?

That may be peanuts to the people leading the charge to the cliff edge. But it is a huge amount of money to the ‘Just About Managing’ families that Theresa May said would always come ahead of the ‘privileged few’. It is a huge amount of money to people in my constituency who cannot make ends meet.

Let me be absolutely clear – it is a privileged few who are the ones pushing hardest for a hard or no deal Brexit, but it will make those ‘just about managing’ families even poorer.

Hard Brexit is a project of the elite. For the elite.

And what exactly have they been doing to protect themselves from the fallout from Brexit? Jacob Rees-Mogg’s City investment firm has shifted money to Ireland amid concerns about being cut off from European investors. Nigel Lawson is seeking residency in France. And Boris Johnson has gone back to his previously £275,000 a year column writing, rather than sticking to the job and delivering what he argued for. He is more concerned with the Tory party leadership.

Which is why we on the left must fight it.

Of course, our different diverse communities already feel all of this. But we have felt something that we thought we would not have to live through again, certainly not in the same way as the first generation who arrived here decades ago like my father: the normalisation of the hatred which this Brexit debate has unleashed.

In Britain, the level of hate crime committed rose by 49 per cent in the weeks following the referendum. This is now backed by a substantial body of academic research showing that the referendum materially increased hate crime in this country during and after it occurred. The UN’s committee on the elimination of racial discrimination concluded that ‘British politicians helped fuel a steep rise in racist hate crimes during and after the EU referendum campaign’. In the evidence they gave to the cross party Home Affairs select committee, Hope Not Hate identified Johnson, Nigel Farage and the campaigns of which they were a part for carrying a heavy responsibility for creating the environment in which this happened.

As a result, a small unpleasant minority felt licenced to engage in and vocalise hate due to the disgraceful nature of the Leave campaigns. Stoking hatred and division will be part of their appalling legacy and our different BAME communities have already paid the price and are still doing so.

In the face of all of this, it would be a complete betrayal of our values for the Labour party to act as a bystander and wave through this disastrous Brexit, for which there is no majority in parliament, let alone the country. It is simply not good enough to adopt a position which refuses to make the case for a People’s Vote on the deal and at the same time leave it on the table as an option in the event of impasse in the House of Commons. That is simply constructive ambiguity continued, which needs to be junked.

An overwhelming majority of our voters and our members, alongside important affiliates – such as Community Union, the GMB and the TSSA – have a clear and unequivocal position: democracy demands the people get the final say on how this country leaves the EU and whether ultimately we leave, given the appalling Brexit we have been saddled with. So let us dump the prevarication, stop using internal factional reasons as an excuse to avoid it, and back a People’s Vote wholeheartedly now.

We owe it to future generations – no other course can ensure progress. Progress is what we are supposed to be in the business of securing, for everyone in this country, regardless of creed, colour, class or background. So let’s do it.

My main argument: the Golden Rule – that you do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself – is a two way street.  We provide young people with an environment in which they can thrive; they abide by the norms, rules and values of society of which they are a part. This mutual obligation between society and young people has been broken.  There can be no excuse for the violence but we won’t end it unless we renew this social contract.

Exactly 11 years ago – back in August 2007 – before I became an MP, I wrote in The Guardian that it had been a grim year for urban youth.

At the time I was a trustee of the 409 Project on Stockwell Park Road, literally round the corner from here – a charity that worked to prevent young people from getting involved in serious violence.

By August of that year 17 teenagers had been shot or stabbed to death in London.

It was grim, but here we are today, eleven years later, and already this year more than 20 teenagers have been murdered in London alone.

Following a fall in the number of fatalities and violent incidents between 2009 and 2014, the numbers yet again have been on the increase, with almost daily news stories about the murder of mainly young boys and men; parents grieving their dead sons; frightened communities demanding action; and our media producing one lurid investigation after the other about the growing threat of youth violence.

A lot has changed over the last decade but it shames our society that the bloodshed continues and we now need to take a fresh look at this problem because we have failed to stop the tragedy. So I welcome the national debate we’ve been having these last few months.

The Government has published its Serious Violence Strategy and established its Serious Violence Taskforce to oversee its implementation. It is chaired by the Home Secretary and I was appointed to sit on it, alongside the Mayor of London and others.

The cross party Youth Violence Commission, which I am also a member of and which is brilliantly led by my colleague Vicky Foxcroft, the MP for Lewisham Deptford, has published its interim report.

And the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime, under the stewardship of Croydon Central MP, Sarah Jones, has been making an important contribution too.

What’s the problem?

So what is the problem?

To illustrate what is going on I’ll begin with an account of one incident which happened a few weeks ago not far from here.

On 25 July, two boys on a moped pulled up next to a parked car in Denmark Road very near to our local hospital, Kings College – its five minutes by car from here.

The moped passenger slid sideways off the seat and fell onto the road.

The driver shouted to those nearby “Help him! Help him! He’s been stabbed.”

Two men in the parked car jumped out  to help and the moped driver just sped off.

The boy lay in the road, bleeding.

He died a few hours later.

His name was Laatwan Griffiths and he was 18 years old.

He also went by the name of Splash Addict or SA Harlem, and was part of the Harlem Spartans drill (rap) group based in and around the Kennington Park Estate.

A week later on 1 August, Sidique Kamara – also known as Incognito and a member of Moscow 17 – who was 23 was stabbed to death yards from his home on the Brandon Estate in Camberwell.  That estate is Moscow 17’s base.

Laatwan and Sidique were reportedly good friends; Moscow 17 and Harlem Spartans are allies.

Back in May on the same estate, another member of Moscow 17, 17 year-old Rhyhiem Barton, had been shot and died outside his home.

A year earlier Sidique and another member of Moscow 17 had been cleared of the murder of teenager Abdirahman Mohamed who had belonged to rival drill group, Zone 2.

Zone 2 are at war with Harlem Spartans and Moscow 17.

Last Thursday, there was another incident involving up to 20 young boys fighting with knives, again not far from here.

Several were stabbed, including a constituent of mine.

Word is that this fighting was a result of the continuing tension between the groups.

This is a just snap shot of what is going on.

I have listened to the music of these groups.

You can watch their videos on YouTube.

I was almost moved to tears by the aggression, the talk of violence, the waste of lives, the senselessness of all of it.

The tragedy.

The failure of politics to respond

 This violence is a scar on our nation and yet British politics today is incapable of adequately responding to it.

The job of politicians, particularly those in Government, is to explain what this bloodshed on our streets says about modern Britain; to provide the leadership and vision necessary to galvanise central and local government agencies, and other stakeholders to act; and to put in place policies which will effectively end the violence.

We must make ending this violence a national mission. Westminster has failed to do so.

And lets be absolutely clear: this is not simply an issue of black boys killing other black boys in socially deprived neighbourhoods.

It must not be put into a box as if it only affects one part of society.

You see…we live cheek by jowl in this city – you cannot gate off your family from what is happening in the rest of the community.

Anyone with a teenage son worries when he is out – parents across London know this.

And what happens in one part of the community – indeed one part of the country – impacts on others.

The  demand for illegal drugs from well off middle class people is a major driver of this violence.

Young people and children from this borough are being used to traffic drugs to other parts of Britain.

We are all interconnected – no-one is an island.

That is why ending youth violence must be a national priority for all of us.

This is the story our country’s leaders should be telling.

The populism of left and right both here and in Europe has reduced politics to simple, black and white, tweetable answers to every problem.

One side thinks the answer is to throw money at the problem and pull the levers of state.

The other argues for ever tougher sanctions.

Nothing illustrates the futility of these responses more than the issue of serious youth violence which is a complex and a very modern phenomenon.

Instead of relying on old solutions that don’t work, we need a paradigm shift in our understanding of serious youth violence and in the action we take to stop it.

That starts with understanding what is happening and why.

Popular explanations for the violence

Let me now give you three of the most common popular explanations.

The first is ‘knife crime’.

But ‘knife crime’ doesn’t explain serious youth violence.

It doesn’t make sense of the lives of these young people nor the causes that lead to the stabbings.

It does not explain why young people do not feel safe on the street.

Nor why many carry knives because they do not believe the police can protect them.

The second explanation – inferred or made explicit – is ‘black culture’.

I’m not sure quite what they mean but basically the problem we are told is the behaviour of young black men.

Those who put forward this explanation point to the disproportionate number of victims and perpetrators who are black, rather than white or Asian.

Even in Liverpool where victims are predominantly white, victims of minority ethnic groups have been overrepresented.

This is interpretation is wrong.

Street violence is associated with the most economically deprived areas.

Their populations are disproportionately black and minority ethnic.

So of course one would expect young black people to be overrepresented as both victims and perpetrators.

Yes, there is a culture of ‘badness’ and ‘Road life’ that attracts black boys who feel excluded from society – but not exclusively so.

Some blame the families.

Some the attitudes of the youth.

Parts of our media play up racial stereotypes of black men and the myth of black criminality.

They point to global gangsta culture that influences boys masculinity and attitudes to women.

They are now saying Drill music is the cause of knife crime.

Its aggressive visual style and taunting of rival groups certainly influences and exacerbates the violence.

But it is not the root cause of it.

The violence was around long before Drill came about.

The third explanation is that the problem is ‘gangs’, which has come to imply drug-dealing ‘black gangs’.

Back in 2011 David Cameron’s Coalition Government came up with an official definition of ‘a gang’ as a “relatively durable group for whom crime and violence is intrinsic to its identity and practice.”

This model continues to underpin official policy on serious youth violence.

It defines a single model of a street gang which distinguishes it from boys’ peer groups and from adult organised crime groups.

Politicians know what to talk about.

The Criminal Justice System, charities and state agencies can agree the target of their policy interventions.

This approach is leading to policy failure.

Critics argue that a narrow focus on gangs can be used to impose a model of behaviour onto young people’s relationships with friends, family and community.

There is a lot of worry that it reinforces the myth of black criminality.

Groups of black boys just hanging out become ‘gangs’ to be harassed, and the wrong individuals get criminalised.

Pigeonholing our young people in this way is counter-productive.

In any event, the way young people congregate and communicate has radically changed this last decade.

So after a decade of violence we do not have an agreed view of the problem, but there is a common thread running through most of the explanations given.

Serious youth violence has largely been concentrated in poor urban neighbourhoods affecting young people trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.

For the last decade Government has been pulling the ladder up and abandoning them.

So society has been creating the conditions for this violence and we have been turning our backs on it.

Too many of our young people feel disrespected and disenfranchised by society.

Reciprocity is at the heart of my politics – the idea that the practice of give and take ensures a fair balance between different interests in society.

You receive the support and care of the community and in return, you contribute your share and abide by the accepted rules and norms.

Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.

I believe that this mutual obligation between society and the young people we are talking about has broken down.

They are leading parallel lives with their own values system.

I’m not excusing the extreme violence – there is never an excuse for it – but it goes to the heart of the problem.

Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime is not wrong; it is just that in 2018 it is not the right starting point for this conversation.

It is not the right way to frame this discussion.

The dispossession of young people

Young men and boys involved in knife crime are not innocent victims.

They must be responsible for their actions.

But there are larger forces at work that can make it harder to do the right thing.

London is a global city.

All around us is wealth, glamour and exciting culture.

People from around the world want to come and live here.

But our city can be a very cruel and dark place.

Over the last forty years inner London has been transformed by the commercial property market and gentrification.

Tory austerity and welfare reforms have dismantled public services and infrastructure.

We have let global market forces rip through our society, scattering people here and there, concentrating wealth and income, dispossessing those on low incomes.

People have been forced out by property prices or confined to social housing estates and neighbourhoods.

On one side of the street are two million pound houses, on the other side is a precarious community with huge social challenges.

Rich and poor live side by side, but light years apart.

People overwhelmed by poverty, or mental illness, addiction or family break up are concentrated in certain neighbourhoods and estates.

Some struggle daily to feed themselves.

Fathers without work or working in poverty can barely support their families.

Some mothers working two even three jobs as well as caring for their children.

Families under immense pressure and unable to provide their children with love and care.

In my view, family life – in all its forms – and emotional relationships are the building blocks of community and society.

Yet, these are hard places to bring up families and they are hard places to grow up.

I meet mothers and fathers who are towers of strength.

Their children full of ambition and promise.

But boys and girls need family support and guidance to make their way into adulthood.

And those who don’t have it are left to find their own path.

It is much harder to find a secure, good quality, job as a young person today.

Benefits, allowances and support have been withdrawn.

With no secure job, inappropriate education and no benefits, taking a wrong turn in life can feel like the best option available.

However, this on its own is not an adequate explanation.

Respect

We need to understand the ways in which boys get caught up in a culture of violence.

It doesn’t matter what their colour is, the dynamics tend to be the same.

Their friendships create a sense of family.

But it’s a family without parental authority and so without an arbiter of justice.

Each boy has to prove his worth and that’s not a problem when it’s about being good at football or looking cool.

But it’s much more serious if its disenfranchised boys without money or hope in the future, who lack self-esteem and feel disrespected.

In areas where legal authority is weak, a reputation for violence is seen as the only effective deterrent against attack.

Each boy must prove his own worth and protect his name in a culture of honour.

Respect has to be earned and it has to be seen to be earned.

Locally powerful criminals can offer boys an alternative path to respect and manhood.

And the illegal trade in drugs can provide the status symbols of money and women.

The promise of respect and money radiates out.

Boys who are desperate, boys who are looking to prove themselves or are bored by life where they live are drawn toward it.

The culture of honour and respect and the violence that goes with it permeates the whole youth culture, and with it comes the fear of shame.

Walking away from being disrespected means the shame of losing face and the fear of shame is a big cause of the violence.

Community building

Stopping the killing means preventing young men getting involved in this culture and helping them exit it, by having real opportunities to make connections to the wider world.

It requires two things.

Helping them make new relationships in which dignity depends on an inherent sense of self-worth, not status symbols and the opinion of others.

And helping them use their talent to find legitimate means of making money.

That’s how you empower them and society meets its side of the bargain.

Far too many of our approaches to tackling youth violence have been top down measures that work from the outside in.

Politicians and civil servants don’t want to take any risks and lose control.

So we repeat the same financial waste and failed interventions, imposing so called solutions that are not going to work but tick the ministerial and bureaucratic boxes.

Let’s have a paradigm shift and start from the inside and work outward.

The solution will be community building that is community led.

It will be state supported.

A multi-agency, national programme to transform the left out areas of our cities.

It will require national leadership from the centre which should set a framework.

In the Youth Violence Commission’s interim report we endorse the public health model, based on the World Health Organisation’s principles of treating violence like a disease, which has been used very successfully in Scotland.  You cannot deliver that model without whole system, cultural and organisational change with sustained political backing.

Every relevant organisation and service will need to collaborate in a concerted effort to break down the structural and institutional exclusions that push young people into criminal behaviour and into the violence of honour culture.

And it does mean a heavy penalty for those who choose to continue on the path of violence.

Empowerment

There should be four strategic priorities to empower our young people to take the right course.

1. Building community capacity

Young people caught up in road life and  a culture of honour need relationships of trust and esteem.

They need real opportunities to make connections to the wider world.

It requires the full cooperation and approval of mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, and older trusted men.

This work has been ongoing.

Community projects and small charities have sprung up, turning youth at risk away from violence, helping them find a path into a better life.

But they are ad hoc, there is little coordination and they spend their time scrabbling around for bits of money.

We often don’t know how effective they are.

There is a need to professionalise their operations and provide a more strategic approach to their funding – this is not something that should be left to volunteers.

This is the frontline and we need to invest in it, to demand effective outcomes from it, and listen to those involved.

2. Investment in community resilience

We must tackle the big structural problems with policies to boost the everyday economy of our poorest neighbourhoods.

We need to improve wages and skills in the low productivity sectors of the economy;

give more protection to workers in the gig economy;

rebuild pathways into work with support for young entrepreneurs, apprenticeships, and a national system of high quality vocational education.

We need investment in our public services.

Mental illness is a major problem amongst young men.

Let’s start at the beginning for the long term by providing pre-natal and post-natal mental health care;

supporting new mothers to bond with their babies and ongoing support for vulnerable small children;

improving mental health support in schools, making educational needs assessments more effective;

innovating alternative approaches to tackling disruption;

and providing more work placements so that we can reduce school exclusions.

And let’s expand the National Citizenship Service to broaden the horizons of young people.

And make sure there is more funding for youth centres and outreach workers.

3. Increasing access to opportunities

If teenagers don’t listen to adults, they hear their cultural heroes.

Drill music came out of South Chicago and has been re-made in South London.

It’s bleak and nihilistic.

The young people producing it say it provides a commentary on real lives, on the street, however uncomfortable we may find this.

Be in no doubt: these are commercial operations that make money.

The intelligence I receive from the police locally and nationally supports claims that the content they produce can trigger and incite further violence.

Reciprocity means the drill groups who are now looked up to by young people have to end their tit for tat violence or lose the opportunity to make money.  Its as simple as that.  We should require social media companies to adopt a zero tolerance approach where their content incites violence.

But I do not believe banning this music outright is practicable nor will it stop the violence.  There needs to be a dialogue with these groups on how they can set a better example – carrot and stick.

Above, I would like to see us provide other pathways and opportunities for young people to use their creative talents and to pursue positive enterprise.

Many business people complain about the difficulties involved in getting finance to start a new business – you try doing so as a young person living on one of my estates. Impossible.

4. Reform the criminal justice system

Of course, we need more neighbourhood police.

It is ridiculous to suggest having more police officers – who the Home Secretary will need to enforce his new Offensive Weapons Bill – will not help to reduce youth violence.

But, this is not simply a police matter.

The police can’t solve this alone.

Law enforcement is necessary but it is not enough.

We need to overcome distrust of the police with more visits to primary schools, an emphasis on community safety and an increase in community policing with regular beat coppers.

Stop and search can create serious tensions between young black people and the police.

But there are times when it is necessary – it can and should be done without humiliating and degrading young people in the way we have seen.

I’m pleased that Police body worn cameras, which I campaigned for in this borough, are already making a big, positive difference to these interactions.

And our Criminal Justice System is failing.

It is failing to stop young men re-offending and it is failing to give them a second chance.

The recent report on the ‘Through the Gate Resettlement Services for Prisoners’ is a damning indictment of the chronic failure of the Community Rehabilitation Companies and the prison service.

They are simply not fit for purpose.

 In short, these priorities, will help give our young people the capabilities they need to get on in life, and to take advantage of the opportunities our global city has to offer..

Conclusion

I want to end with this reflection.  Most of what I have put forward this evening in relation to serious youth violence can be found the Riots Communities and Victims Panel report into the August 2011 riots.  That was a different series of events, involving a wider demographic of people and yet so many of the causes and the solutions identified there were the same. Had there been the political will to properly act on the lessons learned from the August 2011 riots and to properly implement all of the Panel’s recommendations, instead of leaving that report on a shelf to gather dust, it is my we would not be seeing the amount of bloodshed on our streets today.  It is a damning indictment of British politics.

Ultimately, thought, this is our problem. These are our young people and we know them better than anyone else.  They are talented, dynamic, energetic and full of ambition. Just look at the 4000 young people who rode on BMXs from London Bridge to Oxford Street as part of the #BikesUpKnivesDown campaign against this violence earlier this year.  It is our job to bring out the best in them, so lets get on and do it.

Thank you to the High Pay Centre for organising this event and also my thanks to the Institute of Directors for hosting us this morning.

I’ve been wanting to give this speech – certainly after 4 years as Shadow Business Secretary – even more so having been a leading Remain spokesperson for the last two years.

I make this speech as a friend of business. The huge added value in aggregate made by business is beyond doubt.

Everyone is talking about Carillion but it is in no way representative of business in general in our country. My comments today are focused on the UK’s bigger businesses, not your average business in my constituency.

I believe we need a new partnership with business for reform so I think this is a great venue to debate these issues.

Six years ago back in 2011 I helped to launch the High Pay Centre and shortly after I gave a speech at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 2012 setting out Labour’s position on the issue at that time.

I was the Shadow Secretary of State for Business and FTSE100 executive pay that year had risen by 27 per cent to an average of £4m.

In contrast, that year workers’ annual earnings had risen by just 1.4 per cent to £26,500, and this was only part of the story, because – as the Institute of Fiscal Studies – reported, pre-tax earnings had fallen by 7 percent.

So top executive pay had begun to accelerate upwards, while wages had been contracting since around 2007.

In 2008 tax payers were told they were bailing out the bankers who had not only caused the financial crash but had been richly rewarded in the process. And the rewards did not reflect economic performance or any entrepreneurial skill.

Over the previous decade the value of FTSE 350 companies had increased by 8 per cent while the average total earnings of executives in those companies had increased by 108 per cent. By 2012, the ratio between CEO pay and the average wages of employees had grown to 75:1.

For many, the ratio had become a social signal indicating the moral failure of our economic system.

Sir Roger Carr then chair of the CBI called on business to show it was a ‘force for good’.

Its former Director-General Sir Richard Lambert warned that executive pay was damaging the reputation and interests of British business.

And that year, Edelman’s Trust Barometer revealed the collapse of public trust in government and business across the western economies.

The public and my own party was angry about the growing inequality.

But business was defensive: Labour didn’t understand how markets worked; they said Ed Miliband sounded too left wing.

My job as shadow Business Secretary had been to try and build a relationship.

It was not always easy.

And then in 2014-15 there was a jump of 3.4 per cent growth in median real household disposable income. Labour lost the election, and complacency settled in. The pay ratio almost doubled to 130:1. The following year it rose to 148:1.

The complacency was a huge mistake.

Income growth has now once again slowed to a halt. True, the pay ratio has slipped back to 120:1, but inequality is set to increase at the fastest rate since the 1980s.

Incomes over the next few years are predicted to rise slowly at the top, stagnate in the middle, and fall at the bottom.

George Osborne and Philip Hammond’s £12bn of welfare cuts will reduce the incomes of the poorest third of families by an average of £715.

My speech back in 2012 was peppered with facts and figures.

They provide good evidence to back up an argument, but they tend to go in one ear and out the other and they quickly get forgotten.

In any case what counts in politics are not facts and figures, it’s what people feel.

And in the six years since, those numbers and percentages and the massive pay ratios have turned into a surge of popular anger at the unfairness of our economic system. This anger has crashed into the real world with a devastating impact.

The accelerating pay ratio was telling a story about what our country was becoming.

A tiny elite consuming far too much of everything.

An economy extracting wealth rather than making it.

A society in which the powerful put their rights before their obligations.

And the wider consequences:

our cities divided against our towns;

our rural areas poor and neglected;

the young angry at the older generations;

and millions abandoned to dead end jobs and low wages. They feel they have no stake in the future of the country.

In their view those who broke and bent the rules accumulated vast sums.

Those who played by the rules gained little or nothing.

The years of stagnating wages and growing inequalities were a social malignancy.

Our political class did not do nearly enough.

Our business class made excuses and did nothing.

The country lost trust in government.

It lost trust in big business.

And it began to lose belief in itself.

And so when government and business joined together to warn the country against the risks of leaving the EU, when we warned of economic disaster, 17 million people, many decent middle of the road voters, heard the call to take back control, took a step into the unknown and voted Leave.

None has better foretold what happens in these circumstances than George Orwell.

‘At any normal time’ he wrote, ‘ the ruling class will rob, mismanage, sabotage, lead us into the muck; but let popular opinion really make itself heard, let them get a tug from below that they cannot avoid feeling, and it is difficult for them not to respond.’

However much I opposed it – and I will keep on campaigning for a different course – one has to acknowledge that Brexit was that tug from below.

It was a warning to government and business to put their houses in order.

A demand for a country in which everyone has a part to play and each has a fair share of the rewards as well as the responsibilities.

The last time our country went through a period of profound change immediately after the war, a new settlement was put in place by the Attlee Government.

Out of this grew the welfare state and the NHS, our role in setting up the United Nations and NATO.

Achievements that belonged to a patriotic people who had faith in their parliamentary democracy.

They expected everyone to contribute to the common good and they believed that in return we should look after each other.

It became part of the British identity.

In the post-war years we built homes and New Towns.

We gave hundreds of thousands of working class children the education to rise into business and the professions.

We stood for modernisation and the white heat of a technological revolution.

The middle class professions expanded.

By the 1970s we had become a more equal society than at any time in our history.

I am not taking you on a trip down memory lane to lose ourselves in a make belief past.

It was not an idyllic time.

Many lived hard, difficult lives.

The class system held back millions.

To be a person of colour like me was a different experience altogether.

Racism was widespread.

And of course the economy was about to collapse in crisis.

But deep in our national culture was the belief that ordinary working people made our country great and that in return the role of government was to look after their interests.

It was a covenant of trust and reciprocity that had been built over generations by people’s sacrifice and struggle, and in the last three decades, government and business have neglected this covenant and broken it.

They failed to keep their side of the bargain.

So we have become a troubled, half-governed, leaderless country fallen into corrosive distrust.

At this moment in our history, as we negotiate leaving the EU, when we need leadership and a vision of the future, we have neither.

And so people look back to the past, to what Britain has been, not to lull ourselves into a false sense of wellbeing, but to remind ourselves about who we are, so that we can recover our self-esteem and overcome the adversity we face.

Back in the 1980s, not far from here in Jermyn Street, my father set up his office.

He was an entrepreneur, running an import/export business.

He worked hard and took risks and he did well.

He became a member of the IoD, one of the few to also worship Harold Wilson.

He taught my sister and I that nothing comes easily in life.

You have to work hard for it.

One of my great pleasures as an MP is to visit the schools in my Streatham constituency.

The young people I meet have an ambitious energy.

They are full of hope for the future.

They don’t expect to be given everything on a plate.

They know the world is an unpredictable and risky place.

But they are ready to give it their best shot, and it’s up to us to give them a helping hand.

Politics was not my first choice.

I had originally planned to go into my father’s business, but he died when I was a boy and I had to think again and so I trained to be a lawyer.

I worked in employment law before being elected to Parliament.

And so my heart is set in both business and politics, and when I ask the question,

What is business for?

I ask it of myself.

Few go into business just for the money.

The challenge is to create something, to support our children, and to contribute to society.

Sure it is about personal reward, but to succeed and to grow a business requires two ingredients.

Capital and Labour.

An enduring business model requires a productive partnership between the two.

But this partnership between capital and labour needs rebuilding.

And capital with nothing to restrain it has often become a bully.

Workers in retail warehouses monitored by the minute, denied breaks.

Sacked if ill.

Workers paid the lowest wage legally allowed and some paid lower.

Working for their poverty.

No job security.

No respect.

Nobody in this room would put up with these working conditions or survive a day under them.

There are businesses – household names – whose practices disgrace our country and give modern capitalism a bad name, and we should say so.

Some may think I exaggerate.

I can hear the warnings about the dangers of all powerful unions.

The images of bags of rubbish and the unburied dead bodies of the Winter of Discontent.

A country held to ransom by industrial militants.

But this is not Britain today.

We ostensibly live we in a capitalist system, but too few believe they benefit from or have capital

And there are the objections to over regulation and the dead hand of bureaucracy.

Markets should be free from state intrusion.

And so on.

We all know the arguments against economic reform that have defended the status quo.

My response to them is that the status quo was and is simply not delivering for enough people, and now there is no status quo to defend, and we are living in very uncertain times.

Big business is not trusted and it will not easily win back that trust.

I should know, I am a politician and trust in Westminster is even worse.

I believe in the entrepreneurial spirit.

It was a part of my family.

It has shaped our common culture and common law.

I believe it is one of Britain’s USPs.

But even the free marketeer, Adam Smith, who gave us The Wealth of Nations was emphatic that a commercial society can only survive if it is built on sympathy and fellow feeling.

Without a foundation in a strong society markets and the profit motive will rip apart the bonds of association that hold people together.

If we neglect, or exploit, or leave people behind, society starts to come apart, families break up, children suffer, growing numbers experience isolation and loneliness, neighbourhoods fall into disrepair and become hostile even dangerous places to live.

We need only look to America with Donald Trump to see where a country can end up.

Most people in Britain do not live like this, but far, far too many do and this poverty and blighting has changed the tone of our politics.

Today accusing critics of the banks of being anti-business will cut no ice.

Blaming politicians for not putting in the right rules on tax avoidance, just looks like bad faith.

Sure the laws might not be watertight and never can be, but people have obligations to the common good of their country.

And there is little mileage in defending competitive markets when business fails to call out crony capitalism and monopoly power.

Look at the power wielded by the new digital platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

It allows all kinds of bad practice to flourish.

To build a successful economy we have to address the power of capital and rebalance its relationship with the labour interest.

I believe that business must lead the debate for economic reform and not retreat from it.

Business has deep cultural roots in this country.

It has a vital contribution to play in our national renewal but to demonstrate trustworthiness and get a hearing you must take the initiative and lead on reform.

Business should be the enemy of injustice and monopoly power and the champion of competition and fair play.

The debate on executive pay is an example of where business itself must lead the charge on reform and the IoD is doing so.

It is a debate that has polarised.

Some believe the market not the state should set the rate.

Others that Government should set an arbitrary cap.

I believe the better course is to build a regulatory framework linking pay to the contribution made and what can be considered just and proportional in each individual case.

And we need a new economic model for sustainable growth in the long term.

Pay incentives to deliver quick results are part of our problem and hamper improvements in productivity which are the best way of increasing the pay of the UK’s workforce.

Back in 2012 we launched the High Pay Centre with twelve recommendations.

Less than half have been fully implemented.

Let’s implement them all.

And here are three more recommendations.

First. We need a regulatory framework to incentivise companies to adopt pay structures for senior executives based on long-term equity and debt holdings of at least 5 years.

Second. We should move towards a system of Swedish style nomination committees which are composed of the four or five biggest shareholders in the company along with the non-executive chair of the board. The same committee would also recommend the structure and amount of remuneration.

Third, last year the IoD recommended that if at least 30 per cent of shareholders oppose a company’s remuneration report at the annual general meeting, the company would have to reconsider their pay policy and give shareholders another vote. I endorse this suggestion.

But finally, we need a review into the ‘absentee’ shareholder. Much of UK company law relies on shareholders to exercise their rights to police the way in which their company is run. It is all very well empowering them to do so but we need them to active to have an impact. Government must explore how to encourage shareholders to actually exercise all these powers given almost a third of them fail to express an opinion on these matters.

I hope that we can build a dialogue about the future of business as a force for good.

For the health of our democracy I believe it is vital that we do.

Make money.

Success is good for us all.

Be excellent, be the best.

Pride is good for us all.

But also put something back.

The young people I meet in the schools I visit wish to follow in your footsteps.

Give them a hand as you would give to your own children.

Thank you.

The British advertising industry continues to be world leading, and a hub for creativity, talent and innovation.

Our setting is not lost on me. C. P. Scott, one of the founding editors of the The Guardian once said, “comment is free, but facts are sacred”.

During the EU referendum campaign there were a lot of hypothetical predictions for what would happen if we voted to leave or remain. Now, the negotiations are under way, we have more and more new facts.

I believe Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, was speaking for your sector when he said the biggest issues facing British business is uncertainty and Brexit has already damaged the UK’s “global brand”.

The head of the OBR is clear today: Brexit has harmed more than helped the economy and the cost of leaving the single market and customs union outweigh any benefit.

This is the elephant in the room Brexiteers want to hide, but facts which we cannot ignore.

Now, I’m going to put my cards on the table. As some of you may know already, I’m what Nigel Farage likes to call a Remainian, a Remoaner, a saboteur. I was a leading spokesperson in the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign. I chair Leave Watch a grassroots campaign to hold government ministers to account. And I’m also a spokesperson for Open Britain, which is campaigning for a close relationship with Europe after Brexit.

So I think you can tell where I’m coming from. I was perhaps a little surprised when I was asked to replace Liam Fox as they keynote speaker this morning – my comments will be slightly different to his.

I have three important messages for you all today.

First, it is becoming increasingly clear that Brexit – in the terms it was sold to the British people and British business – is not deliverable.

Second, Conservative ministers are deliberately deceiving the British people about the Brexit negotiations. This Government is not being honest with you.

So, third, I’m here with a call to action to the British advertising industry to make your voices heard in this Brexit process. Do speak up for your sector, your employees and your clients and spell out to government what you need in order to achieve growth beyond Brexit.

I am proud that Lambeth recorded the highest Remain vote in the country. In my constituency in Streatham – the centre of the universe as far as I’m concerned – almost 80% of Streatham residents voted to Remain in the EU.

Nationally many others took a different view and the referendum revealed deep divisions in our country, between nations and regions, generations, socio-economic classes, and ethnic groups.

The referendum did not stipulate how to leave, and what leave looked like. That’s important to understand.

Last week I visited the European Commission and the European Council in Brussels. I’ve also been meeting ambassadors from the 27 other member states of the European Union and have discussed Brexit with a number of senior British civil servants.

I have no problem with the Government being ambitious and wanting to get the best deal for Britain – we all share that goal. However, I do take issue with ministers deliberately deceiving people and sowing the seeds of fantasy when – as the reality of Brexit becomes clear – it is open to the people to take a different view on whether to press on with Brexit at the end of the talks.

Here lies the first great deception. Government ministers portray Brexit as a single linear road with one destination where we cannot slow down, stop or turn off. That is simply is not true. Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, and President Macron of France made clear last week that the British people are in charge of this process and there is no political or legal obstacle to Britons choosing to stay in the EU if they don’t like the Brexit deal we end up with.

The second great deception is to deny that the unsustainable negotiating red lines set out by the Prime Minister are severely restricting the ability of Britain to get a decent deal from this process. Our EU counterparts have put a number of options on the table. Theresa May is the one ruling them out.

For example, the single market provides tariff-free trade between countries and a common framework of rules including employment rights, competition policy, consumer and environment protections.

EU countries come together through the customs union and apply the same tariffs to goods from outside the union. Non-EU countries can participate in both bodies and doing so is the best way of retaining the benefits of EU membership while being outside the EU. You do not have to be in the EU to be a member of the single market and the customs union.

However, Theresa May took these options off of the negotiating table before negotiations even began, in order to appease the hard-right in the Tory Party and their dogmatic political interests.

This leads me on to the third great deception – that we can have the exact same economic benefits that we currently have if outside of the EU and its economic structures. Italy’s Secretary of State for EU Affairs, Sandro Gozi, told me on my LBC radio show on Saturday that we will not be able to enjoy the economic benefits that we currently enjoy if we are outside of the single market and the customs union.

Yet UK ministers keep insisting otherwise. You could view this simply as the EU adopting a tough negotiating position – but the reality is that if they give us special arrangements, other third countries with whom they have existing agreements will demand the same too.

Norway has already warned that giving into UK demands for a special trade deal which would cherry-pick UK sectors to participate in the single market would force Norway to rip up its own agreement with the EU and make similar demands. The EU are not going to risk tearing apart the single market, to give the UK a special deal – generally or in any particular sector be it advertising, financial services or anything else.

The Government is labouring under the misapprehension that we would be able to secure a free trade agreement outside of the single market that not only covers goods – like the FTA Canada has with the EU – but most services too. David Davis calls this Canada Plus Plus Plus.

Again, Macron and Gozi made clear last week: you can only have this if you remain in the single market. The simple message coming from our EU counterparts, in conversations that I have had with them, is that the UK cannot both have our cake and eat it – contrary to what the UK government is telling British business.

So, the reality is that while the European Commission is looking to strengthen the single market into digital and online services – something that would significantly benefit the UK’s advertising industry – Britain will be left on the sidelines as things currently stand.

And where are the public on all of this? A recent poll conducted by BMG showed that while 60 per cent of those surveyed wanted to stay in the single market after Brexit, just 16 per cent thought we should leave it; 57 per cent wanted to stay in the customs union while just 16 per cent disagreed. Why won’t the Government listen?

The last great deception is that the EU is preventing us from obtaining a bespoke agreement. There is a general acceptance that any agreement for a particular country is going to be “bespoke” because it would talk to the particular needs of that country. President Macron said as much on Sunday.

However, even though Theresa May and her ministers keep talking about the desire for a “deep and special partnership” and a “bespoke” UK deal, the Government have failed to set out what they think that looks like.

The cabinet only started to discuss what the governments desired end state would be after we had moved on from the first phase of negotiations with the EU – and they cannot agree on what it should be.

There is also an inescapable practical issue – because May prematurely triggered Article 50 without working out so many of these details, there is simply not sufficient time to agree a properly bespoke deal. This is an obstacle of Theresa May’s creation, not the EU’s.

Let me go back to where I started.

It seems clear to me, following conversations with our EU counterparts, that Brexit, in the terms that it was sold to the British people, is impossible to deliver.

You’ve got these second-hand car salesmen in Michael Gove and Boris Johnson who have sold you what you thought was going to be a shiny new Audi with not much mileage on the clock and all the added extras. You envisage getting from A to B very easily.

Now you’ve gone to look at the car, and it’s an old banger, god knows how many miles on the clock, and it’s going to break down. Their worry is that you’ll now want to abort your purchase.

I understand that business can be nervous about getting involved in political debates but the political is commercial in this case – that is unavoidable.

The UK’s advertising industry is renowned throughout the world for its excellence and creativity. Despite the global reputation of the London’s advertising industry, most people who work in the industry in the UK aren’t based in London. More than half work in the regions and cities outside the London.

So be confident. Speak up as an industry. Speak up for your sector, your employees and your clients.

Spell out to government, and parliament what you need us to do in order to achieve growth whatever happens.

The British advertising industry is too important not to be a loud voice in this debate.

Thank you very much.