This follows the disclosure that the Environment Secretary took cocaine several times when he was a journalist. The news came from a forthcoming book on Gove by the political editor of City AM, Owen Bennett, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail.

Sometimes stories like these can emerge from an unplanned, candid admission by the subject, which was the case when I admitted seven years ago to having smoked weed as a student (as I said at the time, it’s not something I’m proud of).  

However, usually it is not something the subject will voluntarily disclose. On this occasion, if you wish to identify the source some say you just ask the question: who benefits, politically speaking?

Often it’s just down to good old fashioned journalism, in which case the reporter who uncovered the revelation will not unreasonably earn plaudits and Bennett is a well-respected and popular. But, unless that journalist personally witnessed the offence, they will need to have obtained the information from someone who at least saw what happened or has the evidence to prove what happened. A story like this has to be well sourced to stand up and to avoid a potential libel claim by the politician concerned.

There is no doubt that the story has killed off Gove’s chances of succeeding May. Cocaine is a class A drug, the use and possession of which can carry a very heavy penalty. A YouGov poll published today by the Boris-Johnson-supporting Daily Telegraph shows that 56 per cent of the population believes it is not acceptable for someone who has ever taken cocaine to become an MP.

That rises to 66 per cent amongst Conservative voters – and the numbers disapproving are likely to be even higher when surveying Tory members.

As Andrew Marr said to Gove in an excruciating BBC interview yesterday, “the crime that you committed, the maximum sentence for that is seven years in prison and/or an unlimited fine and right now there are people who did what you did who are in prison.”  Marr did not stop there – he went on to say “there are lots of kids basically who supplied cocaine to people like yourself who have either been stabbed or are dead. Cressida Dick, who’s Head of the Met said that people like yourself who have used cocaine on social occasions, middle class parties have blood on their hands.”  

I am not sure how Gove can ever recover from this.

Johnson is already streets ahead of all the other candidates in the contest, who are now competing for the second spot in the pairing which will go before the Tory rank and file.

The finger is being pointed at former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab’s team by friends of Gove, when it comes to the source of the story. One of his Gove’s aides, who is now working for Raab, is accused of leaking the story, a claim which she denies. As of yesterday, Gove, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt and Raab are vying for second place with 27, 26 and 21 MP nominations respectively.  

As an original Brexiter, Raab can expect to pick up support from Gove’s supporters rather than Hunt, who voted to Remain in 2016 and has advocated holding a People’s Vote on the Brexit deal. One can see the logic and of course the Westminster bubble laps up the intrigue around all of this.

But, is the political soap opera really what we should be focussing on here? I think not.

Of course the environment secretary’s illegal drug use is a matter of public interest and should be reported on. However, the bigger issues are whether our drug laws are fit for purpose and why we are failing to get a grip on illegal drugs which cause so much misery for so many.

I have written and spoken about how the demand for illegal drugs from well-off, middle-class people is a major driver of serious youth violence, which Marr alluded to, and how young people and children from the London borough I represent are being used to traffic drugs to other parts of Britain. Behind much of the violence we see locally lies illegal drug markets with all the tragedy, death and destruction that brings.  

With Ministry of Justice figures showing a 23 per cent increase in the amount of drugs being found in jail, how are so many drugs getting into our prisons and why is drug rehabilitation so poor?  Is drug education in our schools sufficient? Many would argue it is not. And, the Home Office estimates that the illegal drugs market in the UK is worth more than £5bn but the majority of drugs profits end up in the financial system with money laundering by drug barons occurring on a grand scale. Why are they being allowed to get away with it? I could go on.  

Reporting on the Gove scandal is understandably sustained – this is now the third day of front pages dedicated to it. But perhaps attention and energy would be more usefully focused on seeking to solve and answer the fundamental issues around hard drugs which are blighting society.

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.

Of course, there is nothing inevitable about this Brexit process that should dictate we leave, which is why The Independent is campaigning for a vote on the final Brexit deal. No Brexit is better than the appalling, chaotic Brexit we are seeing and the people should be the final arbiters of what happens next – not elites in Westminster.

In this column last month I bemoaned the state of British politics after a torrid summer. Since July more information has arisen exposing Brexit for the disaster it is. Boris Johnson kicked off the next Tory leadership election – which is already underway, albeit unofficially – by offending Muslim women. Meanwhile institutional antisemitism continues to pervade the Labour Party, leaving it hamstrung when we should be destroying the Tories for the damage they are wrecking across the country.

I was attacked by Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, for pointing all this out, neatly illustrating that neither party’s establishment is prepared to acknowledge the need to fundamentally change their behaviours. Unless they do this, they cannot properly meet the huge challenges we face as a nation.

We were told Brexit would solve all of the country’s big challenges by Johnson and co. The big story coming out of the summer was that the many problems we have as a country – that led a majority to vote Leave in 2016 – simply will not be solved by Brexit. Here is a small selection of what we have learned during the parliamentary recess.

At the beginning of August, a group of international academics and scientists published research in the official journal of the US national academy of sciences telling us, such is the damage we have already done to the planet, even if countries now succeed in meeting their CO2 targets, human-induced global warming could put us on an “irreversible pathway” to “hothouse earth.”

This entails the climate settling at around 4-5C above pre-industrial age temperatures (its 1C above now), hotter than at any point for 1.2 million years. This would lead to seas up to 60 metres higher than now, melting ice caps and parts of the world becoming simply uninhabitable. When was the last time you can recall a leading UK politician providing any leadership on this issue on the world stage given the urgency of the situation?

This news was followed by Shelter’s release of research showing that since 2011, rent in England has increased 60 per cent faster than wages, with a declaration by the UK’s chartered surveyors that private sector rents could rise still further by 15 per cent by 2023. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said that government tax changes to buy-to-let investments are responsible and driving small landlords out of the market.

Whatever the reason, this country is still building woefully few homes to buy and there are not nearly enough homes to rent at affordable prices. The intervention by the new communities secretary, James Brokenshire, in the middle of August provided few substantial answers on any of this. Instead he received much derision for coming forward with insubstantial policy proposals devoid of any extra funding.

When surveying the UK economy and the need to change our economic model, Shelter’s research on housing was the starter to the main course dished up by the Office for National Statistics a few days later which, yet again, underlined the stagnation of wages since the global financial crash. As Ben Chu has pointed out, the ONS figures showed we are witnessing the curious case of an economy with a jobless rate that has sunk to four per cent – its lowest level in over 40 years – and yet wage growth continues to slow when you would expect the opposite to occur. Which of our country’s leaders galvanised the country into action on this during the warm summer months and provided a credible way forward?

And we will need the extra tax revenue to the exchequer that this increased employment, alongside rising wages, could bring, not least because of the growing costs of our ageing population. Last week the Lancet told us that the number of those aged 65 and over needing round the clock care is set to increase by a third between 2015 and 2035. How on earth are we going to pay for all of this? There is no consensus in Westminster on how we address the social care crisis now, never mind an ageing population in the future.

An overheating planet, a dysfunctional housing market, stagnant wages and a social care crisis are not an exhaustive list but just some of the policy areas where we have learned something new since the recess started but the Westminster establishment seems too impotent to respond to as the summer break closes.

To the extent there is any response, the populism of left and right – resurgent in both main parties – proffers simple, black and white, tweetable answers to all these problems, inferring that centre-left people like me should stop moaning and get with the programme. The truth is, the answers are not black and white; they are incredibly complex and need modern answers. But British politics has little bandwidth to address them given the huge distraction which is Brexit – a project which certainly provides no solutions and will actually make these problems harder to address.

That is why it is incredible that both main parties should end the summer continuing to sponsor this calamity. The go to excuse for doing so is the so called “will of the people”, as expressed two years ago. Yet, however people voted back then, they did not vote for this Brexit mess; what they did want was change and for the country’s big challenges to be tackled. So while we will all be convulsed by the drama, the ups and downs of the negotiations and the Brexit votes in the Commons these next few months, it is vital we do not take our eyes off the ball when it comes to tackling these big issues. It is clear, whatever the establishments in both main parties may say, that we need change at home and abroad. Whatever happens with Brexit, the status quo is not an option.

As we start 2017 and are now halfway through the negotiations, it is clear Brexit cannot be delivered in the form it was sold to the British people. This is not because people were lied to or brainwashed into voting a particular way by right-wing politicians and tabloids. Nor is it because of government incompetence, though undoubtedly incompetence reigns. But the 2016 referendum revolved around hypotheticals – neither side could say with certainty what would happen if the country voted Leave. Two years on, we now know for certain enough about what will happen, which no one could have predicted with certainty before.

There is no doubt that the people have a choice where Brexit is concerned, whatever ministers may claim. I have been told by senior members of EU institutions and senior members of other member state governments that, if necessary, an extension to the Article 50 process would be granted to allow “democratic engagement” (as Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell put it yesterday) to take place to determine whether to press on with Brexit or to remain in the EU and work within for reform.

The key Vote Leave pledge was, of course, the claim that if we voted to leave the EU, £350m extra per week would be directed to the NHS. Whatever the precise words on the side of Boris Johnson’s big red bus, the clear intended message was that if you voted to leave, billions of pounds more would go into the NHS. As many Labour MPs will tell you, this was of primary importance for many Labour voters. But the Government voted against my amendment to the Article 50 Act to ensure this NHS pledge was delivered. It will not materialise. That is because, as the IFS said last month, “Brexit has reduced rather than increased the funds available for the NHS and other public services”.

We were told before and after the referendum that we would be granted the exact same economic benefits of our current EU membership, which we enjoy through the EU’s single market and the customs union, if we leave, because of our EU partners’ keenness to sell us cars, food and more besides. Again, this is not going to happen. As Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, made clear at the start of negotiations, it is impossible given the Prime Minister has determined we must leave both entities.

We were also told by Vote Leave “we would immediately be able to start negotiating new trade deals with emerging economies and the world’s biggest economies” after the 2016 poll. Liam Fox’s Department for International Trade has already conceded this will not happen and there is little research to suggest these promised new deals will come close to matching the trading benefits we enjoy as a result of EU membership. Any new deals will also take years to finalise.

Finally, there is no denying that immigration was a massive part of the jigsaw in that 2016 vote. Many thought that a drastic reduction in immigration would ease housing and pressures on public services. There has already been a large fall in the numbers coming here from the EU, though not from the rest of the world. However, there has been no commensurate fall in housing pressures across the country because our housing crisis was created domestically, and with continued nursing shortages in the NHS – including in my part of south London – many now question whether we want to be encouraging EU citizens to leave in such numbers.

The main reason advanced for not holding another referendum is that it would “thwart the will of the people”. I fail to see how this can be the case if the people are the ones who get the final say – it is not as if there will be somebody standing behind every voter in the polling booth forcing them to vote whichever way.

If you voted to leave in 2016 and that is still your view, you can simply vote the same way again, but just as floating voters change their minds at every general election, voters may have a different view on this occasion. As the leading Brexiteer, now the Brexit Secretary, David Davis famously said: “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.” Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove before and after the 2016 referendum have all accepted another referendum may be needed and could be held on our EU membership.

The other reason people say we shouldn’t have another referendum is because it would be “divisive”. Here I do have concerns – but we are a country that is already divided on this issue. Ploughing on with Brexit in the way the Tory Government is doing at present – with the huge inevitable fallout to come – will exacerbate those divisions. It has already led to increasing demands for a new Scottish independence referendum and the suggestions of special post-Brexit economic arrangements for Northern Ireland – as the Government scrambles to find a solution to the Irish border issue – is also creating a new set of problems. It has set different parts of the UK against each other, as the other nations of the UK demand the same benefits the Government is considering for Northern Ireland.

The truth is the only the way to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement is for the whole of the UK to stay in the EU’s single market and customs union. Not only did the British people not vote to be poorer in 2016, they certainly did not want to jeopardise the settlement in Northern Ireland that brought peace after decades of bloodshed.

Some words of caution for those on my side of this argument. It is misleading to suggest that anyone can “#StopBrexit”. The only way Brexit will not happen is if a majority of people come to that view, and a majority of MPs in Parliament determine the people should get the final say later this year.

There is no majority in the House of Commons for the UK to leave the customs union and the single market. A majority of MPs are not currently publicly demanding that there be a referendum on the final deal, with many sitting in the “soft Brexit” space instead – but this is changing, with many privately now coming round to that view.

I want us to remain in the EU to reform the way in which our economy works, to ensure Britain can help shape the big global forces buffeting people around and secure the best future for future generations. If we successfully secure a referendum on the final deal, we cannot present remaining in the EU as a way of continuing with the status quo. We need change but not the kind of change Brexit will bring.

One told me that, given the nursing shortages, they were assigned eight elderly patients suffering from dementia with multiple medical needs on a ward in one of our local hospitals. Over a two-hour period, this nurse would have to administer various medications to his patients, often intravenously, spending a total of 15 minutes with each patient if he was to complete his round in time. He could just about ensure all patients had their medication in that timeframe. But if, say, they needed washing (many were incontinent) he was faced with a choice of ensuring they all had their medication in time or tending to those who needed help washing when necessary – an impossible situation.

As a local MP, I have regular catch-ups with the chairs of our local hospitals. One, Lord Bob Kerslake of King’s College Hospital Trust, a former head of the Civil Service, resigned just before Christmas. He did so in protest at underfunding.

King’s, which is one of the country’s busiest hospitals, has had severe financial problems not least because of rising demand and the increasing cost of medical supplies, yet it is having to tighten spending. In spite of this, the staff there do an incredible job. It has an international reputation in several areas, including neuroscience, and, as a major trauma centre, was involved in treating the victims of the Westminster and London Bridge terror attacks.

King’s isn’t an isolated case – other hospitals are struggling under the strain too. For example, Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust – the local hospital I was born in – has reported ambulance delays outside A&E of between 30 and 60 minutes for almost 20 per cent of ambulance arrivals these last few months. And, nationally, on the basis of the most recent quarterly figures, over half a million patients were waiting for more than four hours in A&E to be admitted, discharged or treated – an increase of nearly 600 per cent compared to the same period in 2010.

Undoubtedly, the policy decisions of Conservative ministers since they came to government in 2010 have helped foment this crisis. Their top-down reorganisation – something they promised never to do – alongside their infamous Health and Social Care Act was a lesson in how not to govern.

Nevertheless, whoever is in office, crisis or no crisis, as a country we face some big decisions if we are to ensure the sustainability of the NHS in a changing world. In short, we are asking the NHS to do very different things compared to when it was founded 70 years ago, but we are not making the radical changes in funding that will be required.

As the nurses who visited this week told me, an ageing population is putting huge extra demand on the system, with people living longer who have multiple needs. Medical advances mean that there is actually more the NHS could do, but we do not have infinite resources – so what do we want the NHS to do and not to do? It simply can’t do everything.

There is growing obesity, poor air quality and myriad other issues in our society, which mean people increasingly are seeking treatment in a way they did not before. The solutions to these problems will span governments of different persuasions, which is why I and 90 other MPs from different parties have called on the Prime Minister to set up a cross-party convention to look at the future of health and social care in England and come up with a plan. We have ducked these challenges partly for party political reasons – but the NHS is too important for this to continue.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility has carried out analysis of what it thinks future demand will be on the NHS and what the future funding requirements will be. Their projection is that NHS spending could rise at around 4.5 per cent a year in real terms driven by societal and other changes. If we were to increase funding at this rate, it would entail spending by over £30bn more on the NHS by 2022-23 than we do currently, simply to maintain current standards of care and meet the rising demand.

In advance of the 2017 general election, the Nuffield Trust assessed the manifestos of the three main national parties. One of the reasons I am Labour is because the 1945 Labour government, led by Clement Attlee, founded the NHS, one of our greatest achievements. However, although we pledged to spend more on the system than either the Tories or the Liberal Democrats, all of our offerings were found not to keep pace with projected growth, demand and cost increases.

Of course we need better integration of physical, mental and social care in Britain, better take-up of new technologies and prevention programmes ensuring people lead healthier lives, and the NHS must be more efficient. But we cannot ignore the basic fact that the NHS needs substantially more money.

For too long we have propagated the myth in the UK that we can have Scandinavian-style public services with American levels of taxation, and now that myth has been exposed as a lie. Increasing corporation tax, making the super-rich pay more and clamping down on tax avoidance are all necessary but will not plug the hole. In the end, we are going to have to contribute more if we want the NHS to continue doing what we expect of it.

I think most people would be prepared to pay more to fund the NHS, which is why for some time I have favoured a form of hypothecated taxation (or an increase in national insurance) specifically to fund the NHS.

Traditionally the Treasury has opposed it for various reasons and it is not without its challenges. But even the former permanent secretary of the Treasury, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, appears to have come round to this view, tweeting earlier this month that we need “a grown-up debate on long term funding of the NHS” and suggesting “a hypothecated tax to be renewed every five years”.  It need not be the only revenue stream for the NHS – if it were, the danger is the service would receive less revenue in a recession and more at times of growth – but it would certainly help bring the public round to paying more tax for something they treasure.

All of us have our own story to tell about how the NHS has affected our families. My Westminster office overlooks the maternity unit at St Thomas’s where I was born. Due to complications when my mother was pregnant with me, I was born several weeks prematurely. Had it not been for the care we received, neither my mother nor I would have survived.

Unless we stop sticking our heads in the sand and confront these issues on how we sustain the NHS, the risk is it will not be able to continue saving lives as it does every day.

We have been living through some extraordinary times in politics. What is inconceivable today is the norm by tomorrow. The Brexit vote, Donald Trump, the rise of the hard right and ethnic nationalism, Marine le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Catalonia, Korea with its nuclear threats, and a well-armed Russia. It’s hard to know where to find stability.

Here at home the Brexit vote has turned our politics upside down. The comments of the Brexit secretary yesterday show a government pursuing an extreme Brexit at all costs.

The Prime Minister, held hostage by the Brexiteers who shout loudest in her Party, has gone back on a guarantee to give Parliament a meaningful vote on the terms of our withdrawal before the date of our departure. With this single act the government undermines the very parliamentary sovereignty the Brexit secretary claimed he was a champion of for so many years.

The centre ground has broken, and the extremes of our politics are making the loudest and most illiberal noises. Neither has built a consensus. One wants the domination of the state, the other the domination of the market. Political extremes offer Britain little but retreat, isolationism and a fall in living standards. This is a symptom of our failing democracy.

Our country is leaderless and the political class, has lost its way. The foreign policy catastrophe of Iraq and the financial crisis of 2008 have broken people’s trust in government and we are drifting in an unpredictable world. David Cameron failed to set the agenda and Theresa May is following one set by her Party’s hard-right. This government has no leadership, no energy and no strategy.

So how do we remake our role in the world after the Brexit vote? It is not the time to retreat, and I am convinced there is no appetite amongst the British to raise the drawbridge.

Our national interests are not just European, they are global. And so as the government negotiates to leave the EU, we need to look ahead and develop a proper national strategy on the basis of a clear understanding of what our interests are. We must act and decide on our future, because if we do not, if through fear and timidity we dither and do nothing, there are consequences of inaction.

I believe Britain is at a crossroads. The Brexit vote confronts us with some fundamental questions. I’ll start here with the simplest – who we are as a country?

We are a small island located between the Old World and the New. To our west is the Atlantic Ocean, to the East, the Euro-Asian landmass – these are our strategic frontiers. They have always been far away, which is why Britain has always been a global island. For centuries we have been a commercial power at the centre of our international trading routes. Our empire, our commerce and our expansion overseas depended upon our active role maintaining a balance of power in Europe. It was in our national interest to make sure no one country achieved domination of the continent.

In or out of the EU we are a major European power.

Our parliamentary democracy, our English language, our history of individual liberty and the rule of law have made Britain a powerful symbol of democracy.

OPPORTUNITY NOT DECLINE

The Brexit vote has exposed the troubled state we are in. The last time we were exposed in such a way was in 1956, when Abdul Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. In response, Britain led an Anglo-French expedition to retake it. America objected and then a speculative attack on sterling threatened to bankrupt us as a country. As a result, we were forced to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund, and the price of the loan was the surrender of our imperial ambitions – the empire had gone. Many believed Britain was on the road to irrelevance and the role of government would be to manage our steady decline.

And yet when my late father landed in Liverpool in 1964, with one suitcase and no money, he didn’t see a Britain in decline but a promised land of opportunity and freedom.

He came over from Nigeria, just four years after independence. His father was a teacher and the principal chief of our village Ogbunka in Anambra State. My mother is half English and her own father’s country was Ireland. He come to England for his education, met my grandmother and settled here. My parents met at a party and they made their home in Streatham in South London where I grew up, and the constituency I now represent in Parliament.

From my parents, I inherited an England that was struggling to emerge from the legacy of empire. Yet my father was a great example of England’s contradictions. He was a successful businessman and yet he was also a passionate Labour supporter – his great political hero was Harold Wilson. He was a chief of his village in Nigeria and a proud upholder of Igbo traditions, yet at the same time he became part of what was a very English family. And, like many black men, he was a victim of police brutality and racism, but despite this he still deeply believed in British democracy and fairness. He saw the ugly side of the empire, but he never gave up on the idea that Britain was also a force for good. So my family was part of a new national story, and this experience brought me to the Labour party.

LABOUR IS THE PARTY OF NATIONAL RENEWAL

It was in 1940, just 40 years after the founding of the Labour party, that Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Arthur Greenwood had joined William Churchill’s War Cabinet.

When Tory grandees wavered and sought to appease Hitler, it was the Labour Cabinet members who gave Churchill the backing he needed. They understood that failing to act can have grave consequences.

They helped to shape the Atlantic Charter of 1941 which set out the aims and values of the post-war order. All countries would have the right to self-determination, and all people the right to freedom of speech, expression, religion, and freedom from want and fear. Here they struck a chord with Roosevelts ‘New Deal’, where nations would collaborate to ‘improve labour standards, economic advancement, and social security’ for all.

The Charter led to the institutions which still govern us today – the United Nations, which had its first meeting here in London in 1946; the General Agreement in Trade and Tariffs that became the World Trade Organisation; the Bretton Woods conference that founded the IMF and what became the World Bank; and Nato to defend our democracies.

Labour understood that the war could only be won if the peace was worth fighting for. A new post-war international order could only be built with the consensus of the people at home and that meant creating a fairer and more equal society. So in 1945, Labour founded a new social contract and began to build a post-empire role for Britain. People in my party forget that foreign secretary Bevin was the driving force behind Nato. In 1948, he set out a British foreign policy which would appeal to the “broad masses of workers”. He based it on Churchill’s description of three overlapping majestic circles among the free nations – the English speaking world and the United States, a united Europe, and the Empire and Commonwealth.

Britain was at the juncture of all three and our leadership would combine European values and American power to link these circles together into a powerful democratic alliance. With the memory of fascism and the front of minds, and the presented with the threat of communism, collective security was paramount. But it needed to be more than just an elegant phrase. So Labour made Britain a nuclear power and sent troops to Korea despite deep misgivings over American foreign policy.

Bevin and Attlee gave Labour a creed of progressive patriotism. It was a belief in a robust national defence married to a passionate commitment to social justice. At home, the interest of working people was the national interest, and it stood for a balance of power between capital and labour. Abroad, Labour sought co-operation amongst the democratic nations, free trade unions and national self-determination for Britain’s former colonies. This is the creed that established Nato to defend our democracy against the Soviet Union and other threats. Our history dictates that we are not a party of inaction on the world stage. The creed of Attlee and Bevin informs Labour’s values and we will use it to remake Britain’s role in the world once again.

Labour lost the election in 1951, and Churchill, once again Prime Minister, turned the clock back to the days of empire. And so in 1955 Britain shunned the Messina conference. We turned our backs on the Treaty of Rome that founded the EU. A year later, the “gun boat diplomacy” of Suez lost Britain our power and credibility in the Middle East. As a result, we lost a partnership with France and we lost the trust of the Commonwealth. Our role of co-leadership with the United States was exposed as the pretence it was. We had championed the UN and then we flouted it. The three majestic circles fell apart and the European Economic Community looked our best prospect.

A CHANGING WORLD

The international order came to symbolise the power of the West. America was its ambivalent enforcer and the EU, with its member states pooling their sovereignty, became its emblem. But today its rules-based order is in retreat and as a result the world is becoming a more dangerous place.

Under Barack Obama, America loosened its ties to Europe and turned to face the growing power of Asia. With Trump now in power, America will expect Europe to step up in defending itself.

Europe is surrounded by many weak and failing states. On its southern borders lies the Mahgreb and the threats of Islamist terrorism, Syria, and continuing movement of refugees. To the East are the volatile borderlands of Belarus, the Ukraine, and the Baltic states. Beyond them lies Russia where, despite a weak and declining economy, it is spending 15 per cent of its state budget modernising its nuclear arsenal and military capability. Defensive, brittle and threatening, it takes an offensive stance while claiming to act defensively.

Conflict is no longer just nation states facing one another across the plains of Europe or Asia. The terrorism of non-state actors and hybrid warfare is now the norm. Economic and infrastructure based cyber-attacks are backed up by the threat of conventional and irregular warfare. We know that Russia and North Korea are using this kind of conflict to interfere with democratic processes.

In countries like Turkey, the Philippines, and India, there are long bubbling nationalist and religious revolts against their political elites. Populist leaders have emerged who are willing to flout international rules. And non-Western countries with different values are now becoming global actors. They too are willing to challenge Western foreign policy and legal structures.

New institutions such as Brics, the African Union, the New Development Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank offer an alternative global order. China’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and its Belt and Road Initiative are a bid for global power that may transform international trade and integrate markets across Asia.

We have a choice. We can either surrender to our fatalism and allow ourselves to sink into decline, or we can act to uphold our values of democracy and liberty with a readiness to argue for them and defend them. Without resolve, the rules based international order will be more easily flouted and tyranny will grow.

Britain and Europe face many threats but the biggest is now coming from the broken social contract within our own societies. The invasion of Iraq, failure in Afghanistan and Libya, and indecision over intervening in Syria, have left millions questioning our motives, and doubting ourselves. Globalisation has broken down the borders of the nation state. Factories have been shut down, jobs replaced by automation, and industries have been moved overseas. Wages have stagnated. There is widespread anger over high levels of immigration. Economic inequality and cultural disruption have created a populist revolt. Across Europe the political classes are accused of favouring middle class metropolitan concerns at the expense of the bread and butter interests of working people.

Theresa May has reacted by promising to govern in the interests of working people. So far this has come to nothing. She has described Britain’s role in the world as being the most forceful advocate for business, free markets and free trade anywhere around the globe. But the solution to political discontent cannot simply be more of the same free market principles that have helped to create it.

Without consensus at home, the rules based international order will become weaker. I believe in the values of this order, but it has lost the moral energy of its birth in the Second World War. It has become a feeble version of the original and it now belongs to Davos Man with his sense of privilege and entitlement. The idealism of the West has been tarnished.

We need leadership to renew our country and an international activism to rebuild an international order based on social justice and democracy. Some doubt Britain can play an active role. I don’t share their defeatism and I do not believe we are a country in decline.

A ROLE FOR BRITAIN IN THE WORLD

In 1947, George Marshall, the US secretary of state surveyed the destruction of Europe. It was the aftermath of the most destructive war in history. The problems he said which bear directly on the failure of our civilisation do not need general talk and vague formulae. They require concrete solutions.

Bevin understood Marshall, and I believe that the three majestic circles are still our best guide. They require Britain to first of all prioritise security in Europe to safeguard the continent, second to sustain our bond across the Atlantic with the United States, and third to renew our global role. Within each circle we must concentrate our national resources and capability, particularly where they overlap.

Britain still retains considerable global influence. We are a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the G7. The G20 gives us a relationship with emerging powers. We have influential roles to play in the European Security Council, in Nato, and in rule making bodies such as the Basel Committee on Banking Regulation. We are also the second largest bilateral donor in the world, with a strong track record on development issues like universal education and health care.

So let me outline the three overlapping circles which define Britain’s role in the world. First of all, we need to strengthen our commitment to the security and defence of Europe. Alongside France, we are the most capable military power. Our intelligence gathering capacity remains indispensable and our membership of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership makes us a global leader in the fight against terrorism.

In Nato, Britain holds the position of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander. We need to increase Nato’s conventional deterrent and help develop the application of artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity is 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. We must provide credible deterrents that convince Russia Nato is committed to Europe’s collective defence. And by increasing our commitment to Nato, we are more likely to keep the United States engaged in Europe.

Britain led EU expansion. We have a long history of involvement with Estonia. We went to war for Poland and have a close relationship with their people through migration. Ukraine wants our support in helping to build its democracy. These countries have looked to us to provide a more balanced Europe and we have a special responsibility for creating alliances with them.

We need a longterm strategic response to Islamist terrorism, not piecemeal reactions. This must include standing by our global commitment to the UN’s “responsibility to protect” and supporting the development of the weak states to the East and to the South. Our failure – and Syria’s refugee crisis is a warning – will only lead to Russia’s continuing destabilisation of the borderlands, more Islamist terrorism and increasing flows of refugees across the Mediterranean.

Secondly, the United States is our ally and the Atlantic remains our strategic frontier. Labour has swung from uncritical support for US foreign policy with disastrous consequences to our current anti-Trump hostility. Neither approach benefits our national interest over the long term. Our historic relationship with the United States is neither special nor is it just sentimental. But it is based on hardheaded 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 is designed to fight alongside the US in a supporting role. The relationship gives us security, and it amplifies our capabilities.

But Britain cannot settle for just being a useful component of US military and security strategy. It undermines our sovereignty and leaves us over reliant on American knowledge and resources – with President Trump, America is unpredictable. 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.” Wilson demonstrated this during the Vietnam War when he resisted the intense American pressure for British support. “Lyndon Johnson is begging me even to send a bagpipe band to Vietnam,” he told his Cabinet in December 1964.

Thirdly, Britain’s unique history requires us to remain a global power. London is the historic commercial centre of the shipping industry and we have obligations to keep open the worlds shipping lanes. Our naval base in Bahrain has been revived, recognizing that East of Suez is once again of strategic global importance. We are a signatory of the Five Power Defence Arrangements along with Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia which has a focus on counter terrorism and maritime security. France has expressed an interest in joining this arrangement and this provides us with an opportunity to strengthen our military and security commitments with the French.

We should consider renewing attempts to expand the UN Security Council to include India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, and to promote the idea of a rapid reaction force under its control, however difficult this might prove to be. Our two new aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales along with the French carrier in production could play a leading role in a naval version.

Britain must reinvent this circle of influence by combining our hard power with a role as a democratic leader, a social connector, and an ideas maker. A priority is tackling climate change and its impact on water and food security. The drought and falling crop yields in Kenya and the storms in the Caribbean and North American show why we need a global and cooperative response.

Amongst our greatest assets are our language, our culture and our history. The strongest relationships a country can make comes through cultural association. We must nurture our global pre-eminence in soft power, but we must be wary of not using it to avoid tough decisions or disguise a lack of will.

The international system is changing. A new order is taking shape amongst the world’s major powers. Britain has a role to play, but only if we have the political will. Our world class diplomatic corps is a major force for British strategic power and influence, but it is underfunded.

Our defence spending on current projections of the 2015 accounting model could drop to 1.7 per cent of GDP by 2020. Cultural influence and social exchange is now as necessary to projecting national influence as is the willingness to use military force, and yet we are cutting back here as well, reducing the budgets of the British Council and BBC World Service. This government is not spending enough to meet the risks, threats, nor the opportunities identified in its own National Defence and Security Strategy.

We are a big country but sometimes we can act and behave as if we are small. One of the priorities for a Labour government must be a strategic defence and security review to give the electorate, our allies and our potential enemies a clear message of our intent and purpose. Our spending commitment should rise above Nato’s 2 per cent of GDP, lifting it incrementally to 2.5 per cent over a five year period. This will allow us to maintain our conventional forces at an adequate level. Being clear about our commitment to our independent nuclear deterrent is also important. Developing the role of the National Security Council will be crucial to coordinate and implement the national strategy across Government.

A NEW WORLD ORDER – A NEW DEMOCRATIC DOCTRINE

Let me return to where I began. In 1991, my father returned to Nigeria and stood for election as the Governor of Anambra State on an anti-corruption ticket. He was exasperated with a country riddled with corruption from top to bottom, but he could not overcome a rigged system, and so he lost. He taught me that there is a world out there yearning for freedom and prosperity.

We do not know the outcome of Brexit. I’ve been very clear about where I stand on it and this is not a time for Britain to retreat from the world. We need to renew our own country and play our part in rebuilding a global order based on democracy and the rule of law. If we fail to act, if we leave Britain broken and divided, if we allow tyranny and illiberalism in the world to grow. There will be consequences and they will hurt us.

We are a great country. The envy of people throughout the world. The world is changing and we must change too.

That is why it is so maddening that this pledge has turned out to be a simple lie. Yesterday, the official Treasury figures for UK contributions to the EU budget came out. In 2016/17, it showed, the UK contribution to the budget was just £156m a week – less than half of what Vote Leave promised. The entire Vote Leave campaign was built on 200 million little lies.

This, of course, was perfectly apparent during the referendum campaign. Andrew Dilnot, the head of the impeccably impartial UK Statistics Authority, called the £350m figure “potentially misleading”. The figure was savaged by the then chair of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie. A Conservative MP himself, he called it a “false prospectus” that amounted to “nonsense politics” and “a form of electoral bribery.” But seeing the lie busted in black and white on a balance sheet proves conclusively how utterly misleading it was.

The tragic truth is that Brexit, and especially the hard Brexit course this Government is charting, will mean less money for our NHS rather than more. The government’s own forecasters, the Office for Budget Responsibility, have forecast that Brexit will be directly responsible for a £58bn black hole in the public finances. This can only be filled by raising taxes or cutting spending – for example, on the NHS. I think we all know what choice this Tory government would make in that scenario. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has likewise concluded that the government’s decision to leave the single market alone will weaken the public finances by £8bn in 2019-20. To minimise the damage of Brexit to our NHS, the government should be negotiating to keep Britain in the single market, as the Open Britain group is campaigning for.

Brexit is having another dire impact on our NHS – staff shortages. Our health and social care system is dependent on workers from the EU, with more than 60,000 of them working in our NHS alone. Since the referendum, there has been a shocking 96 per cent fall in the number of EU nurses applying to work in the National Health Service – and this is before we even leave the EU and the government institutes a more draconian immigration system. The Tories’ target of cutting annual net migration to the “tens of thousands” will clearly damage our NHS; even their leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson, is now calling on them to scrap it.

The cynical right-wingers who ran Vote Leave won partly by misleading the British people on the consequences of Brexit for our NHS. They are already being found out. Given that those who voted for Brexit did so in part to boost health funding, ministers have an absolute responsibility to ensure that Brexit does not damage our NHS. They should start by welcoming rather than repelling EU nationals seeking to work here, and by negotiating to retain our place in the single market.

A look at the past statements of pro-Leave Tories – especially those in the current cabinet – who are driving May’s agenda lifts the lid off a Pandora’s Box of unpleasant right-wing policies that would represent nothing less than a raid on the least fortunate, both in Britain and abroad.

May peddles bromides about “building on” workers’ rights after we leave the EU, and standing up for those who are “just about managing”. But her record suggests otherwise, with her long history of voting against life-changing legislation such as the national minimum wage, the 2010 Equality Act, and the repeal of Section 28. With her Government intent on taking Britain out of the structure of employment regulations guaranteed by the single market and European Court of Justice (ECJ), workers’ rights are up for grabs, including directives on working hours, equal treatment for agency workers, and ECJ judgments on holiday pay. Priti Patel has spoken of “halving” the “burden” of this regulation. Liam Fox called workplace rights “intellectually unsustainable”, while Boris Johnson demanded they “scrap the social chapter”.

Combined with this Government’s history of reducing taxes for the rich and big corporations, while cutting the benefits that working people rely on, it is clear that a Tory Government with an increased majority will be heavily tempted to slash rights at work. This is the basis of the “alternative economic model” Philip Hammond has spoken of if we leave the European Union with no deal at all.

The extreme Tory Brexiteers likewise pose a threat to our National Health Service. Leave campaigners now in the Cabinet promised that Brexit would be the saving of our NHS, plastering their £350m-a-week promise down the side of that infamous red bus. But earlier this year, each and every one of these Tories lined up to vote against my amendment to the Article 50 Bill which would have delivered this money. After seven years of callous Tory Government, it is clear we cannot trust them on the NHS – especially when Johnson, Fox and David Davis have a history of calling for charges, cuts and privatisations in our health service. The Government’s own forecasters predict a £58bn black hole in the budget as a direct consequence of Brexit. This will mean less money, not more, for an NHS already starved of funds.

It is not just British people who will suffer as a result of a hard Tory Brexit, but the very poorest around the world. Having an International Development Secretary who previously called for the abolition of that very department might seem like a rejected plotline from The Thick Of It, but in the case of Patel it is all too true. Fox and Davis have both called for the scrapping of the target to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid – a target that has directed billions into vital programmes to reduce extreme poverty and educate women and girls. When that £58bn black hole begins to grow, Tory backbenchers will undoubtedly demand that this symbol of Britain’s commitment to the poorest of the world be junked.

Climate change, which has a greater impact on the developing world than anywhere else, is another target on the hard right’s hit list. Lord Lawson, one of the intellectual godfathers of the pro-Brexit movement, chairs the Global Warming Policy Foundation which denies the scientific consensus on climate change. Johnson and Davis have aired doubts about man-made climate change, while our current Environment Secretary admitted upon being appointed that she had to ask “is climate change real?”. When we lose the protection of EU emissions targets and environmental protections, there will be no guarantee that such protections will be continued.

This is not an impossible scenario. The extreme right of the Conservative Party is in the intellectual driving seat of their Government. For them, Brexit is about much more than our future relationship with the European Union; it is a means to an end – a harsh, libertarian society that works for the wealthy and pulls the rug out from underneath the most vulnerable. They destroyed David Cameron, and May’s entire political strategy is based on giving them red meat so they do not do the same to her. Furthermore, in our desperation for trade deals with the likes of Donald Trump’s America, it is quite possible that environmental and worker protections will be given up at the behest of foreign corporations. At this election, it is vital that the Tories are not only prevented from pursuing an extreme hard Brexit, but stopped from changing Britain into a nasty, uncaring country.

It could be fiction, but this is cold hard fact. Vote Leave Watch revealed yesterday that in 2011, a book co-edited by David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, called precisely for this. Co-edited with fellow MPs John Baron and Brian Binley, the book, ‘The Future of Conservatism: Values Revisited’, was published in 2011, and included a chapter by a former Tory candidate setting out this nightmare vision for our NHS.

The title of the book was apt, because these are the real Tory values – NHS cuts, NHS charges, NHS privatisations. Brexiteers spent the referendum campaign last year pretending that Brexit would be the saving of the NHS. But instead, we have a hard Brexit Cabinet, whose members behind closed doors are opposed to the core values and purpose of the NHS.

During the referendum, the most visible Leave promise of all was the pledge to spend £350million extra per week on the NHS after Brexit. It was emblazoned down the side of the big red bus they drove round the country, featuring in photo ops with Boris Johnson and other ministers now in the current cabinet. The message to millions of voters was clear – vote for Brexit and the NHS will be protected and its funding enhanced. They even handed out ‘Vote Leave to save our NHS’ leaflets in hospital wards, and claimed that “being a member of the EU harms the NHS.” They specifically proposed hiking the pay offer put to junior doctors off the back of this promise.

But since the campaign their pledges on the NHS have turned to dust. Last year, the Prime Minister who says “Brexit means Brexit” and has swallowed most of the Leave campaign’s lines refused to commit to the pledge. When the Article 50 Bill was going through the House of Commons, Tory MPs – including those who voted to leave the EU – defeated my amendment, supported by Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, which would have called on the Government to deliver that £350million extra per week for the NHS. So the Leave Tories are clear they do not want to deliver on the promise they made. And frankly, with the Government’s own forecasters expecting Government borrowing to rise by £58bn as a direct result of the Brexit vote, it is unlikely the money will be there even if they wanted to.

So, more than 10 months after the referendum, it is clear the promise of Tory Leavers to boost NHS funding has evaporated. All we are left with is their record. David Davis backing job cuts and an end to vital free operations. Liam Fox calling for an end to the ring-fencing of NHS spending, meaning brutal cuts that would hit patients. Boris Johnson saying that people should have to pay a fee just to see their GP.

At this election, it is vital that these hard Brexit Tories are held accountable, for their lies and their impossible promises. Above all, we must remind voters of this Tory betrayal every day between now and polling day.