For all the worry about splitting the Remain vote, aggregate vote share is what matters. Of course there are several Leave vote options too, namely the Brexit Party, Ukip, the Conservative Party and, some might say, the Labour Party – there is no cohesion on the other side of the fence.

However, what has really spooked so many Remainers is all the hype in the media around Nigel Farage who poses as a man of the people and yet is anything but. Instead of challenging the hype or looking at the motivations of those pumping him up, too many people are swallowing this hype. A reset is needed and there are a few things to bear in mind with regard to what is actually going on.

Farage is a formidable, professional politician of three decades standing. So in no way am I suggesting he should be dismissed or that anyone should underestimate the threat he poses to progressive British values in these elections.

He is, after all, one of the architects of the Brexit mess in which the country is mired and managed to curate this disaster from outside of the House of Commons. So why is the media narrative around him “hype”?

In the last European elections, held in 2014, Farage and his then Ukip party got 26.6 per cent of the vote. They then received 12.6 per cent of the vote in the 2015 general election, though the Tories admittedly stood on an anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic manifesto too, getting 36.9 per cent of the vote – so call it 49.5 per cent for the Farage agenda.

In 2016, Leave – of which Farage is the symbolic head – received 52 per cent of the vote. In 2017, Theresa May adopted much of Farage’s agenda on Brexit and received 42.4 per cent of the vote, losing her majority. Farage’s Brexit Party is currently polling back around the result he achieved in 2014.

Looked at in this context, we are not seeing a resurgence for Farage’s hard Brexit, but the media headlines would have you believe the opposite.

I asked a long-standing member of the Westminster lobby (the political journalists of the main national newspapers and current affairs magazines), who is the political editor of a well-known newspaper, whether it was fair to describe the media noise around Farage as “hype”.

He thought it fair and explained it like this: most of the national newspapers heavily backed Brexit (the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, The Sun, the Daily Express, the Sunday Times etc) but do not want to back the Tories in these European elections because they have made such a mess of it and Theresa May has no credibility.

They have therefore selected Farage as their man in these elections. And yet, too many Remainers read the commentary dressed up as reportage on Farage in pro-Brexit media, buy it and panic. These media outlets are hardly going to be trumpeting the success of the anti-Brexit movement – they are going to dump on the anti-Brexit, people’s vote movement every day between now and 23 May.

Farage is not interested in anything other than using Brexit to promote his nasty brand of hard right, xenophobic nationalism, which is why his party is called the Brexit Party. Cue the calls for Change UK and others to call ourselves “The Remain Party”. No. Because we stand for more than being anti-Brexit.  

We are not cynical short-term opportunists and, unlike Farage, we actually want to change our country. Farage seeks to avoid all responsibility and accountability, in spite of the fact he bears a huge part of the blame for the mess we are in. If we simply imitate his short-term opportunism then we might as well pack up and go home.

Finally, I thought long and hard about whether to write this column on Farage at all because some might say it serves to give further oxygen to the man. The target must be less the man and more what he stands for. We should be unapologetic in exposing his agenda relentlessly.

He has changed the name and colour of his party but it’s the same old, nasty politics. As he said last month – there is “no difference between the Brexit party and Ukip in terms of policy”.

And the culture is the same too. The founder of his new party, Ukip’s former economics spokesperson, recently resigned after Hope Not Hate uncovered Islamophobic material she had posted on social media and her extensive retweeting of racist far-right figures.  

This is not surprising. At the heart of Ukip and the Brexit Party’s argument is that the EU and, in particular, immigrants are the cause of all of Britain’s problems.  

Farage is a peddler of hate like the founder of his new party. In May 2014, in an interview with James O’Brien on LBC Radio, Farage was asked what the difference was between having a group of Romanian men and German children (he has part German children) as neighbours. “You know what the difference is,” Farage replied.

He added: “I was asked, if a group of Romanian men moved in next to you, would you be concerned? And if you lived in London, I think you would be.” He had argued that Romanian immigrants had triggered a crime wave in London.

Later that year, in December, he blamed immigrants for a traffic jam on the M4 that led to him turning up late to an event. He sought to whip up hatred again in 2015 during the general election that year with his claim, in one of the leaders’ TV debates, that foreign patients with HIV were costing the NHS huge sums.

This is not a mainstream politician or political agenda. It’s extreme stuff and people should be reminded that this is what lies behind the Brexit Party razzmatazz he is offering up. Far better to put energy into challenging and exposing the ugly politics of Farage than to feed the hype around it. Better still, to put forward a hopeful, optimistic vision of a country open to new ideas and people – that’s what we’ll be doing between now and polling day.

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.

In spite of this Labour MPs were whipped by our leadership to abstain on this issue, whereas the government whipped their MPs to vote against. Seventy-six Labour MPs (more than half of our backbenchers) defied the whip – myself included – to vote for the UK to stay in the EEA. We were joined by the Conservatives Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke, with another 11 Tory MPs signalling their support for the EEA by abstaining on the issue instead of following the whip’s instructions to vote against.

However, 15 Labour MPs actually voted against the UK remaining in the EEA. This is a small minority – less than 6 per cent of our MPs – but their views cannot and should not be dismissed.

A few commentators suggested the division on the Labour side fell along geographical lines, with London MPs in favour of staying in the EEA and non-London MPs against. But this is not supported by the numbers. Fifty-three of the 76 Labour MPs voting for the EEA actually represent seats outside of London, and a majority of those 76 represent seats in Leave-voting regions.

A number of objections are raised against the EEA in Commons debates by MPs in both main parties. Some say that if we stay in the EEA, we will somehow have blocked “the will of the people” – even though nothing like that was put on the Brexit referendum ballot paper. It seems that some commentators are determined to tell us all Brexit voters specifically wanted to come out of the single market and the customs union. In reality, we have absolutely no idea where they stand on these issues apart from the fact that they did think leaving the institution of the EU was a good idea – and that could have been for a number of very different reasons.

Yet none of the objections I’ve heard have gone to the heart of where most concern lies about the EEA: immigration and the continuation of some form of free movement, a requirement of participating in the EEA.

I am the son of an immigrant and represent a constituency where the majority of families are of immigrant stock. But many of the communities Labour represents are the opposite, which is why more than half the seats we hold voted to leave the EU. That doesn’t mean that people are xenophobic or racist, but there is concern about the levels of immigration to certain places and, as I’ve said before, we cannot duck or ignore it. Honesty is required: views are just as strong, if not stronger, in relation to non-EU immigration as they are in relation to EU immigration.

There are parallels between the discontent in some traditional Labour-voting areas about EU immigration and the same discontent regarding Commonwealth countries in the 1960s. There was, after all, a form of free movement from the Commonwealth until 1971 – my own father took advantage of that.

I have never denied that immigration can pose both economic and cultural challenges to communities, but it need not be this way if we deal with it in the right way. A reform package of policies to better manage migration from the EU could include things like action to prevent the undercutting of wages by immigrants, removing newcomers after nine months if they fail to find a job, and putting in place a bigger infrastructure fund to help mitigate the impact of migration on local communities.

I would add that we need to do far more to help integrate immigrants into local communities, as the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration, which I chair, argues in our report Integration not demonisation. My father was so successful in this regard that he married an English woman and had mixed heritage children.

We can do all of these things now while we are still in the EEA because of our EU membership.

But what are the real underlying causes of concern about immigration? Not enough decent, affordable housing. A shortage of school places. An NHS in crisis. Not enough well-paid and decent jobs. These problems will not disappear or be mitigated if we leave the EEA. They will get worse because there will be less revenue going to the Exchequer to pay for these things.

The underlying problems we have are no more the fault of European immigrants now than they were the fault of Commonwealth citizens back in the 1960s. And make no mistake: people were saying exactly the same things in traditional Labour-voting areas about the Windrush generation, South Asian immigration and the likes of my father being the cause of those problems way back then. Ending Commonwealth free movement then and ending EU free movement now did not and will not solve these problems, and deep down we know it.

In the Commons debate on the 1971 Immigration Act which restricted Commonwealth immigration, Labour’s then shadow home secretary Jim Callaghan said, “Decent housing, decent schooling, good amenities in the areas where they are most needed… in my view, this is the way, rather than by a bill like this in which we should deal with the problem of the immigrant, if indeed it is a problem of the immigrant.”

That is why Labour governments, including that of Callaghan when he became prime minister, have always principally addressed these problems by properly funding the NHS, by building more affordable homes, investing in our schools, introducing a minimum wage and so on.

By acquiescing in the fiction that immigrants are ultimately the problem and that these underlying issues will be resolved if EU free movement ends, all we do is put British jobs at risk – which would be rather odd for a party that claims to represent the interests of “labour”.

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.

I’d like to thank my colleagues on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration for all their hard work and also The Challenge for their invaluable support as our secretariat.

They do the work I want to talk about this morning – building relationships, connecting people, creating trust.

Immigration and globalisation

Immigration has been a defining issue in our national politics.

We have experienced demographic change on an extraordinary level very quickly.

Over the next fifty years our country will continue to change profoundly.

We have seen nothing like it in our history.

For many it has felt like a whirlwind over which they have little control

It has undermined their way of life and they worry it threatens their culture and identity.

And all our main political parties have been far too slow to respond and so we have witnessed the rise of a populist right which claims to speak for ‘our people’ to the exclusion of others.

Globalisation – by which I mean the amalgamation of international economies, the flow of people, capital, information, and services across borders, and new technologies of media and communication

– has brought wealth to many but it has also brought instability and extremes of inequality too.

People’s jobs have been lost as those technologies have transformed work, and factories have shut down and moved overseas.

The organisations created by workers to protect themselves and their families from the power of capital have either disappeared or been weakened.

Wages have been stagnant and millions struggle to maintain their standard of living.

Our country has become more divided as a result.

Rich versus poor

Our cities against our towns and country

The 52 per cent versus the 48 per cent

North versus South

Old against young

Inequalities of wealth and power that give one part of the country or some groups in society opportunity while robbing others of hope.

And these divisions in our economy and national culture were laid bare for us all to see by the EU referendum.  The vote to leave was symptom not cause.

Lord Peter Hennessy, the historian, has described the  referendum as a ‘lightening flash that illuminated a landscape that has long been changing.’

Our country has been fragmenting.

Our union of nations pulling apart.

People are losing trust in the political system but also in each other.

The ties that bind us together into society are frayed and in places they are broken.

Our mission must be to rebuild this country.

Society

In this changing landscape politicians, of all parties have spent our time talking about the market and the state.

These two institutions have dominated our politics for over thirty years.

For those on the Right it is more of the market and less of the state, for those on the Left it is less of the market and more of the state.

In this tit for tat we have neglected society.

We have ignored the experience of individuals living and working together.

Having families.

Making friends

Creating communities

Sharing the good times and leaning on one another during the bad

And so Westminster has become a distant elite.

It is the wish of myself and my colleagues on this APPG – of all parties –  that we contribute to reversing this trend, putting society first and revitalising our democracy.

It is a desire familiar to the best traditions of the Socialism to which I subscribe, but of parts of Liberal and Conservative thought too.

A politics that builds on what people hold in common, not on what divides them.

Our mutual obligations to one another.

A love of family

A commitment to work and to making a contribution

The need for a sense of belonging.

A love of country

A willingness to live and let live

To stand for decency and to play fair

These values are deeply rooted in the traditions and institutions of our country.

It is these values that will shape our future.

The age of globalisation can threaten what is familiar and enduring in our national life but it need not be this way.

Our task is to strengthen our common life embracing the best of our past, present and what the future can bring.

Our time demands we confront inequalities of power, wealth and opportunity.

Our challenge is not to ignore conflict, nor pretend differences between people don’t exist, nor avoid the clash of competing interests but to resolve them.

To defeat political extremism and restore trust in our system, our politics must be more democratic and must stand for the common good.

A politics of national renewal that builds a country secure in its borders and in its place in the world, a Parliament more responsive to all its people and a nation prosperous for all its citizens.

Renewing our union by recognising people’s desire to have more control over their lives in a fast changing world.

The report

This democratic politics of the common good begins with a full, frank and challenging conversation about the issues which lie at the heart of our national disunity.

How will we build a more integrated and united Britain?

First we need better controlled immigration

Second we need to improve social integration.

Our national conversation on immigration has been polarised.

Some believe the country is full.

Others want an open door.

But a consensus is there to be made.

The majority of people – whether they voted Leave or Remain last year – want immigration to be managed democratically by the government they elect.

It isn’t as much about numbers as it is about control.

This view is shared by my constituents in Streatham which voted overwhelmingly to remain and by towns like Boston or Halifax where big majorities voted to leave.

What the decision to leave the EU gives us is the opportunity to design a new immigration system.

So our report recommends an independent commission to explore how a devolved, regionally-led immigration system might give people a greater sense of democratic control over immigration and change in their area.

Shaping immigration criteria to address national or regional needs will instill greater confidence that the system works for every area.

But Dame Louise Casey’s report on opportunity and integration recognises that controlling immigration is not enough.

Communities living separately, with few interactions between people from different backgrounds, allows mistrust and prejudice to grow, and leaves a vacuum for those on the extremes on all sides to exploit.

Last August I visited Boston and Halifax to meet and talk to people about their experience of immigration. (We will be visiting Dagenham, Bethnal Green & Bow and Redcar in the coming months too.)

The pace of change in these towns has created anger and insecurity.

In Halifax settled immigrant communities and the majority population lead parallel lives.

They do not meet or mix much.

Trust is at a low ebb and it increases anxiety, prejudice and the fear of crime.

In Boston, a woman told me that she wanted to build a friendship with the Polish woman next door but she had to wait for that neighbours’ child to come home from school to translate.

Other Bostonians told how they felt uneasy about the young Eastern European men who drank out on the street at night.

But many of these men lived in properties without communal space and to which they were only allowed access at certain times of the day.  They had nowhere else to go.

We can and we must act

Social integration will grow from the bottom up.

Members of the settled population and newcomers alike will shape and strengthen the ties that bind.

The job of government – national and local – is to support them to do this.

Our report calls on the government to develop a comprehensive national strategy for the economic, civic and social integration of immigrants.

Joining up departments and policy making to put integration at the heart of the process of migrating and settling in our country.

Enrolling those immigrants who don’t speak English in compulsory classes upon arrival in the UK.

Investigating whether new immigrants could be automatically placed on opt-out pathways to citizenship.

On the role of local government, we say local authorities should have a new statutory duty to promote integration but they must be given the resources to respond to local needs.

A new Integration Impact Fund can compliment the additional investment in public services in immigration hotspots established by the last Labour Government, scrapped and now promised to be reinstated by the current government.

This new fund should be used to build institutions and community spaces which bring together immigrants and members of the settled population to meet, to resolve differences, to work together and to find what they hold in common.

Our sense of belonging is formed through the inheritance of our culture and the everyday common experiences through which we recognise something of ourselves in one another.

We all share a desire to live together.

Our deeply felt need for community animates our attitudes toward change.

But reaching out to people from different backgrounds is not straightforward but can be done.

Government has a role to play in supporting integration and the process of creating shared cultures and identities.

Earning and Belonging

I want to finish by returning to Brexit which hangs heavy over this policy area

Brexit is a profound moment for our country.

There are many in my own party who believe it is a reactionary one.

A consequence of xenophobia.

A desire to retreat from the world.

There is a minority motivated by xenophobia, racism and prejudice.

They were responsible for the appalling increase in hate crime recorded in the wake of the vote – we must give no quarter to their prejudice.

But this was not what inspired the majority of people who voted to leave.

There is no mood in the country for protectionism

England has no history of mass movements of fascism and antisemitism as there have been on the continent.

England and Britain more widely is a moderate country with institutions that have evolved over generations to promote the rule of law, religious tolerance and the common good

What I believe Brexit represents is a democratic moment.

I say this as someone who passionately campaigned to stay in Europe.

But this is my country.

I have no fear of it.

I trust its people.

I trust those who voted to leave because they want more control over their lives.

I trust those who voted to remain.

They voted differently, but they want the same thing – they believed that staying in the EU was best for the country.

No one has a monopoly on patriotism

So there is no need for us to be divided.

We have a difficult time ahead.

But our country has chosen its course.

And so it is ours for the making, as we forge a common life and meet these shared challenges together…

unfolding where we work, in our schools, streets, pubs and places of worship in the places where people from different walks of life come together

Lets build a country which all citizens can call their own.  That is what our APPG is all about.

Thank you.

The country voted to leave the European Union on 23rd June, exposing deep divisions in our country.  48% voted to remain; 52% voted to leave; London, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain; the rest of England and Wales voted to leave.  An overwhelming majority of the young voted to stay; older voters opted to go.  Socio-economic classes and ethnic groups voted in different ways too.

But in spite of the multifaceted nature of the result, the Prime Minister has extrapolated one message.  In her Conservative Party conference speech she said a quiet revolution had taken place. She juxtaposed the 17 million who voted to leave – saying they stood up and were not prepared to be ignored – against a liberal elite who wanted to remain.  In so doing – in one speech – she dismissed 16 million of our citizens who voted to remain, people who are profoundly worried about the consequences of the vote, who have watched aghast at the rise in hate crime the campaign and the result unleashed, and who are not be ignored either.

She went on to claim the vote was about a deep sense of profound and often justified sense that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them.  That may be true but, let me tell you, my borough recorded the highest remain vote in the country.  Yet, we are amongst the most deprived local authority areas in England; child poverty in inner London boroughs is at 40%; we have higher rates of unemployment.  So my constituents share the same sense of grievance but didn’t believe leaving the EU was the way to deal with it. No one side of the EU referendum debate has a monopoly on grievance at the uneven distribution of the fruits of globalisation.

She even talked of this being a once-in-a-generation chance to change the direction of our nation for good.  If you really believed that Prime Minister, why on earth did you vote to remain?  This isn’t leadership we are seeing from Theresa May, it is opportunism, pure and simple and it is deeply disappointing.

Instead of seeking to unite a divided country – to bring together the 48% and 52% in common cause – she has sought to ride the wave and, in so doing, further divides our country.  The challenge for those of us on the Centre Left of British politics is how to campaign for and put pressure on the Government to achieve the most progressive Brexit deal possible, and heal these divisions. That is what I want to talk about today.

Respecting the result

I was immensely proud to lead the Labour In For Britain campaign in Greater London and to play a leading role in the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign nationally.  I still believe that Britain would be stronger, better off and safer in the EU. I still believe that by the strength of our common endeavour not only do we achieve more as individuals working with together than we do alone, but we amplify British influence and achieve more as nation states working together than we do alone.

However, I accept the result.  Before the vote we accepted the rules under which the referendum was fought which dictated that if more than 50% voted one way or another, that was sufficient to carry.  I do not think that, having had a referendum conducted under those rules, we can now reject them because we do not like the outcome.  That would simply lend weight to the idea of some liberal, metropolitan elite or establishment refusing to listen which, as I have said, is a characterisation I reject.

Some argue that our fellow citizens who voted to leave were simply brainwashed by the likes of the Daily Mail and others; that they were told a barrage of lies and mistruths which they naively bought.  Many overblown claims and myths were peddled.  Vote Leave Watch which I founded and now chair aims to hold those who made those overblown claims to account.  But to say those who voted to leave were somehow unable to distinguish fact from fiction and were somehow naive I think is patronising and divisive.  It was not unreasonable for people to take the Vote Leave campaigners at their word when, for example, they promised that £350 million extra per week for the NHS.

But whilst the result gives the Government a mandate to withdraw the UK from the European Union, it has no mandate to speak of regarding the terms of our leaving.  It is simply not acceptable for the Government to seek to take the far reaching policy decisions that will arise during that process without proper parliamentary consultation and scrutiny.  As the House of Lords EU committee has argued – the Government should recognise there is a middle ground between the extremes of micromanagement they cite as obstacles to parliamentary scrutiny and mere accountability after the fact.  Those who campaigned to leave claimed their primary concern was to ensure Parliament is sovereign – it is somewhat hypocritical for them to deny Parliament its proper role in the forthcoming negotiation.

They appear to be relenting with indications being given that there will be a vote on the final package but that is tantamount to holding a gun to the head of Parliament.  Daring Parliament to vote down a deal which, if not accepted, will lead to the UK trading on WTO terms which would be a disaster.  So any vote must happen long before the date of departure so adjustments to any prospective deal can be made.

The most contentious part of any deal will be our future relationship with the EU Single Market and the future of EU free movement of people in the UK after Brexit.  I am clear: we should demand the goal be Single Market Membership and a different kind of arrangement on EU immigration.

Labour’s position

We know from the many surveys which have been carried out that many, particularly in Labour constituencies, voted to leave because of concern around the desire for greater control, particularly around the operation of free movement in the EU.  Many of these communities are former industrial communities that have undergone a huge amount of change with a strong – and, I may say, justified – view that globalisation has left too many of our communities behind, changing both their local economies and the character of their areas.

Conversely, many sprawling urban areas, with a history of immigration and diversity, like my own, voted to stay, not because globalisation works for all in our patch – it certainly does not – but because they did not believe leaving the EU would solve the challenges that it poses, not least because more people come to our shores from outside the EU than from within.

These differences in view pose a particular challenge for the Labour Party because both sets of voters are important parts of the coalition of support that has historically delivered Labour governments.  This has precipitated a debate in our party around immigration and, in particular, free movement to which a number of colleagues – including Stephen Kinnock, Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds and Jonathan Reynolds – have all made important contributions.

These issues are difficult and sometimes emotive but we cannot afford to shut down this debate.  I say this not out of some crude electoral imperative but because it is our historic mission to build a consensus to meet the challenges we face as a country; not to leave everyone to divide amongst themselves, veering to the extremes of left or right.  Far from validating the arguments of many Leave campaigners that all the country’s ills can be laid at the door of immigration, we must address these concerns in order to sustain continued support for managed migration and to defeat the forces of hate.

Free movement

My starting point is that free movement of people between the UK and other EU nation states has brought many benefits. British citizens can freely holiday, work and live in other EU countries, as almost two million Brits already do today. Tens of thousands of EU citizens help power our public services, in particular our NHS. 1.5 million British people are employed in EU citizen owned business in the UK.  And, just look at the rich cultural diversity which has flourished as a result.

When Jeremy Hunt talked about foreign doctors working in the NHS, he didn’t mention that you are more likely to have an EU citizen treating you, than to meet them in the queue.  When Amber Rudd talked of forcing companies to publish the ratio of their workers from abroad, she didn’t mention the many EU companies based here whose workforces are overwhelmingly made up of British workers.

But whilst free movement has brought many benefits it has posed challenges to local labour markets and community cohesion in many, though certainly not all, communities.  To acknowledge this is not to fuel anti-immigration sentiment but it is a simple statement of fact. Take perhaps one of the more extreme examples, Boston in Lincolnshire, which I visited over the summer.  It scored the highest Leave vote and I spent some time there for this reason.  In the last 12 years the immigrant population there has increased by 460%, coming principally from Eastern Europe.  The rapid increase in labour has impacted on wages locally.  It has led to higher demand for properties, rising rents and exploitation in the private rental sector.  And social integration of newcomers to the community is poor.

Now, it is no use sitting in a university or a thinktank waving graphs at the people of Boston – or other communities undergoing this kind of rapid change – telling them to pipe down and read the national data showing the impact of EU immigrants is negligible overall.  If we cannot see the benefits and acknowledge the challenges which free movement has posed – a prerequisite to healing divisions – then I do not think we have any hope of forging that national consensus for managed migration in the future.  The point is this: immigration can impact on local labour markets and can have an impact on community cohesion, but it does not have to be that way if the right policies are adopted.

There are obvious things we can do domestically to mitigate these challenges such as reinstituting the Migration Impact Fund which we introduced in 2010 and was abolished by the Coalition government.  Ensuring the resources given to local authorities keep pace, in real time, with local population change.  Doing more to stop undercutting in the labour market by raising the minimum wage and properly enforcing it, not just through HMRC but by giving local authorities a role in enforcement too.  All of this was Labour policy before the last election.  The All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration that I chair is currently doing an inquiry into immigration looking at how we better integrate newcomers to our country.

Fair movement

But, clearly, there is a desire to end free movement as we know it and replace it with an alternative which gives us more control over who and how many come to the UK from the EU, whilst retaining preferential access for UK and EU citizens to each others countries.  I do not believe it is an issue of being anti-immigrant for majority of people, though for a minority it will be; it is more an issue of control.  Why else, as research by British Future has shown, is it the overwhelming view of both those voting to Remain and to Leave is that EU citizens resident here at the time of the referendum should be guaranteed the right to stay.

Now I provoked some alarm when I remarked to The Huffington Post that free movement as we know it would have to change in response to the Brexit vote.  Perhaps this is unsurprising, given its symbolism for many pro Europeans.  Free movement is often cited as one of the indivisible, inviolable principles of the EU.   Yet, the truth is free movement of people in its purest form has not operated vis-a-vis the UK and the EU for some time – our EU partners have already accepted restrictions to how it operates.  We are not part of the passport free Schengen zone area and EU citizens who arrive without a job looking for work are subject to the habitual residence test and cannot receive means-tested benefit within the first 3 months, after which they can be required to return to their country of origin.  The other 27 members agreed in the renegotiation to an Emergency Brake applying in the event the UK voted to Remain, where EU migrants could not claim tax credits and child benefit until they had to lived and contributed to our country for a minimum of four years.

So the arguments that Labour colleagues have made for an end to free movement must therefore be viewed in this context – free movement is already subject to restrictions.  I think the primary reason our comments in aggregate provoked alarm and people worry that we are giving way to the arguments of UKIP and others, is that we have yet to spell out what an alternative to free movement as we know it would look like.  Preferably, it would be something our EU partners would at the very least be prepared to start a discussion around entertaining at the same time as our continued membership of the Single Market in these Brexit negotiations.  So let me attempt to start to spell out an alternative to free movement as we know it here.

The alternative would involve moving away from the notion of “free movement” to “fair movement.”  I claim no authorship of this label given that it has been floated by Labour figures – immigration and Shadow Immigration ministers – since the mid noughties.  It is a concept whose time has come given how discredited free movement has become in the eyes of the public.  The public has been led to believe free movement allows some free for all with no control of our borders.  So we need something new which can clearly illustrate we have control, meets the needs of our economy and which can command widespread support.  Personally, I am less concerned with the labels and more concerned that whatever we move to maintains the principle of allowing preferential access for UK and EU citizens to each others countries, whilst giving the UK more control over its borders.

We should make this argument not only in the domestic context but as part of an EU wide debate on how the union reforms itself and operates fairly.  I am Vice Chair of the Open Britain APPG and a strong supporter of it.  At Open Britain we believe there is an appetite for this debate within many European capitals who are all struggling against populist undercurrents of the extreme left and right – new thinking and a willingness to change is now essential to reconcile the European public with the Single Market.

In the end, it is not just in our interests to see such reform to free movement. It is in the interests of our European partners too.

One way of adopting ‘fair movement’ would be to allow travel as we have at present for short stays and holidays only but, in so far as settling and working are concerned, restrict free movement to the movement of labour and offers of employment.  This is in line with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which explicitly states its intention to balance supply and demand within the labour market: ‘to avoid serious threats to the standard of living and level of employment in the various regions and industries.’  Another option would be to restrict low wage immigration in some way, with a more relaxed approach to high skilled immigration from the EU according to the needs of the economy.

In addition to this, within the terms of EEA agreements, countries have been allowed to take unilateral ‘safeguard measures’ to address ‘economic, societal or environmental difficulties’ caused by being in the EEA.  So, Liechtenstein has an agreed number of residence permits for EU citizens.  Switzerland’s free movement deal allowed for an emergency brake for up to a year and, while overall quotas have been rejected, discussions continue over proposed sector-specific quotas.  It has been reported that the EU are considering an emergency brake of up to seven years for the UK.  Proposals like this will no doubt throw up other options that could be put on the table.  We should push for something similar.

Whatever “fair movement” model is adopted, the goal must be to ensure it does not promote a race to the bottom in any local labour market, it must be accompanied by measures to promote integration and should in no way detract from our country meeting our international obligations to refugees.

I believe this Labour concept of “fair movement” could unite both Leavers and Remainers – it is something we can all live with – which instead of further dividing our nation could help unite us.

Single Market membership and fair movement – possible?

Some argue that we simply will not be able to obtain such an arrangement – fair movement –  and membership of the Single Market.

Membership not just access to the Single Market is important.  Membership of the Single Market not only removes tariffs, customs duties and quotas on all goods traded within the EU; it provides employment protections, sets minimum consumer and environmental standards and more.  The Single Market also provides a guaranteed right to deliver services within the EU without national impediments offering the best deal for Britain for services and manufacturing alike.  The importance of the Single Market membership is underlined by the commitments all the main parties gave to remaining within it at the last General Election.

If a hard Brexit model were adopted, out of the Single Market, it could mean trading with the EU under WTO rules which would lead to tariffs in the order of 12% on exports of British meat, 10% on exports of British cars and so on leading to much higher costs for consumers here and challenges for our companies seeking to export into the EU Single Market.

But would we be able to secure this trading arrangement – preferably Single Market membership – and fair movement?

It is generally acknowledged that the UK is in a different position to other countries given it has the fifth largest economy in the world.  One cannot say what can be achieved with certainty given the negotiations have not started yet and our EU partners do not have fixed positions. It is not for us to make the arguments as to why they should refuse to give us what we want.  The challenge for us is to put enough of a big offer on the table – that goes beyond immigration and the economy – from which they would benefit, to secure the bespoke deal we seek.  To deny it is possible to achieve any compromise is in essence to basically to make the case for hard Brexit which makes no sense at all if you are Pro-European and progressive.  We must be realistic but also ambitious for what can be achieved.

Of course, a progressive Brexit deal is about more than fair movement and the Single Market. It is about security and intelligence, co-operation on education and research, the environment, and our general influence around the world. I will touch more on these topics in future interventions in this debate.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by making an observation.  Our politics is caught between two stalls at present.  A populism which refuses to acknowledge the challenges free movement can pose to local economies and community cohesion, and too willingly puts anyone who does so into the same bracket as bigots and racists; and a populism that wants to pull up the drawbridge altogether, places the blame for all the country’s problems at the feet of immigrants and wishes to turn post Brexit Britain into some off shore tax haven with poor citizen protections.  Rejecting both positions may not be fashionable but is the right thing to do.  The alternative that I have set out today is I believe a sensible position, true to our values, around which the country can unite.  Fulfilling our progressive mission.

Thank you.

The Prime Minister Theresa May says “Brexit means Brexit ” but no one is any the wiser what that means.

The referendum divided the country in new ways, and exposed deep rifts in our nation’s social fabric.

People from different generations, ethnicities and regions expressed very different views about our country’s future.

We must now address those divides because failing to do so risks compromising the social and political fabric of our nation in the years ahead, for our children and grandchildren.

The community I represent in Streatham, South London, is one of the most diverse places in the UK – it’s where I, the child of a Nigerian father and English/Irish mother, grew up.

I’m proud of my heritage and background. Yet I worry that, as we’ve become more diverse as a nation, we’re coming to know each another less – and the referendum result has only reaffirmed my view.

That’s why, as an MP who represents the area that voted most strongly to remain in the EU , I wanted to visit the area which voted in the greatest numbers to leave – Boston in Lincolnshire.

I went with no preconceptions, but an open mind and desire to listen, talk and learn from the community there.

As I said during the EU referendum campaign, immigration does pose challenges to our communities including my own.

But, we’ve seen our national conversation on immigration become hopelessly polarized: a shouting match between one group of voices claiming Britain is full and it’s time to pull up the drawbridge and shut our borders; and another insisting there’s no problem at all, and immigration has purely been a positive force for good.

There’s no doubt the desire to reaffirm our nation’s sovereignty played a role in the referendum, but Bostonians cast their ballots in response to the rapid, high level of immigration which has transformed their town – in some ways for the better and others not.

Between 2004 and 2014 the immigrant population increased by 460%, coming principally from Eastern Europe.

One person said to me it was nice to see so many shops open for business on the high street, with new Eastern European delis and supermarkets where there were formerly just empty shop units.

However, in the same conversation someone said their new neighbour couldn’t speak English and so they had to wait for that neighbour’s children to come home from school to translate.

Another person said the rapid increase in labour has depressed wages and led to undercutting in the job market – median weekly earnings for full-time employees living in Boston local authority were £410 in April 2015, compared to £470 for Lincolnshire as a whole, and £530 for the UK.

The population growth has led to higher demand for properties, rising rents and exploitation in the private rental sector.

Extreme cases of this have seen immigrant workers only able to access their homes for a set number of hours each day, almost living on a shift basis with someone else sleeping in the same bed while they are away.

My overall impression was that Boston, and many other towns across the country, have been expected to deal with too much demographic and cultural change in too short a space of time without proper support.

I do not believe these issues are the fault of the immigrants living here. It is the fault of governments for not providing the right resources and failing to sufficiently think about how we integrate new arrivals.

So we need an integration strategy which will work for both Boston and Streatham, fostering community ties, bonds of trust and relationships in diverse communities.

These are particularly tough questions for us in the Labour Party. It’s striking that many of the people in communities like Boston would once have been Labour voters (we came within a whisker of winning Boston & Skegness in 1997 and 2001).

But the leadership of the Labour Party at the moment is comprehensively failing to engage with this issue – an issue which drove so many Labour voters to opt to leave the EU, taking the opposite view to the party on the one issue it has been fairly united on.

All of us agree zero-hours contracts need to be abolished, the railways need to be brought back into public ownership, and that we reject Tory austerity.

But, we need to work out how to deal with more tricky wider issues which people are concerned about.

We need to invest more in communities like Boston. In housing, in skills and English language programmes.

We must recognise immigration has changed how people feel about their communities.

It is not just an economic issue. Many of the people I spoke to in Boston expressed feelings of loss about the erosion of neighbourhood ties and a sense that they weren’t sure if they belonged in their communities anymore.

Finally, in the wake of Brexit, we need to design an immigration system with integration at its heart which manages migration flows to protect the cohesion of our communities.

It’s not good enough for us, as politicians, to ignore these issues as too hard or toxic.

It is only through open discussion like this that we can hope to detoxify them.

The alternative is an increasingly divided country, where resentment and misunderstanding is exploited by the likes of likes of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, who are willing to use fear and hate for their own agenda.

Later today I will be in Boston, Lincolnshire, to talk about this with local residents, community groups and faith leaders in the place where the Brexit vote was largest – more than three quarters of voters in Boston opted to leave the EU. I’ll be there as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration, beginning an inquiry into immigration and integration. We will produce the first stage of our report later this year that will make recommendations on the design of a post-Brexit immigration system.

For many, the referendum amplified the very worst elements of the immigration debate. Too often the loudest, most divisive voices dominated. Some of the rhetoric about people from Poland and Romania was all too similar to that used against Black and Asian people in the 60s and 70s, and we may be seeing the consequences with incidents of racism increasing dramatically. Complaints filed to police online hate-crime reporting site True Vision increased fivefold in the days following the EU referendum and there have been reports of European and British-born ethnic minority people being told to “go home”, and that the UK has voted for them all to “leave”. Racially derogatory terms that we thought had long ago become socially unacceptable are appearing again.

We simply cannot allow Britain to slip back into the bad old days where such terms of abuse were acceptable and it was ok to say we should “send them all home”. A vote to Leave does not mean a vote to pull apart Britain’s well-earned reputation for openness, equality and respect.

We must reassure those who have made Britain their home that they are welcome, but also ensure that they are integrated into our communities as we build a new immigration system. Politicians on all sides need to understand how estranged many people feel and we must also stop falling back on the ideological assumption that immigration is inherently good, and therefore anyone who thinks otherwise is closed-minded, bigoted or prejudiced. I argued strongly for a Remain vote – and my area recorded the largest Remain vote in the country – but this was a point I made during the campaign.

I believe EU migration has been fantastic for our cultural life and economy but, in too many communities, it has also put pressure on public services, and threatened people’s sense of security, identity and belonging. Leaving the EU is not going to make all that go away, and immigration into the UK will continue – the Vote Leave campaign misled people when it suggested otherwise. But now it is time for mainstream political leaders, on both sides, to show leadership.

For a roadmap, we could look to Canada, which has developed an immigration policy based on understanding that where settled populations and migrant groups are encouraged to meet, mix and lead interconnected lives, trust grows and communities prosper.

The Tory manifesto at the last general election promised a fund to support those communities which bear the brunt of immigration to the UK – where pressure has been put on schools, GP surgeries and housing levels. This new government, led by Theresa May, must now act to fulfil their election pledge. I believe these funds should also be used to support social entrepreneurs to launch more grassroots initiatives facilitating meaningful engagement between migrant groups and existing communities.

A post-Brexit Britain may be different to the UK of the last 40 years, but the problems around integration won’t disappear. At times, it seems that we politicians argue endlessly about who we should let into our country and why, but, though the issue of numbers is important, we haven’t spent enough time thinking and talking about what happens when migrants settle in Birmingham, Belfast or Boston. That task is now more urgent than ever.

There will be those who will dismiss it as a sound bite, or worse, an offensive label for the right-wing agenda the former welfare secretary has been pursuing since 2010.

But there is a reason why it is a mantle both Labour and the Conservatives have sough to own and rightly so.

That is because it is how we like to see our country. It is the expression that sums up the national unity we saw at moments such as the Olympics.

However if we’re honest, it’s an aspiration and not a reality in Britain today, which is why I want to talk about why we need a new focus on social integration.

1. The promise of Olympic Britain

Cast your mind back to 2012 and London’s fantastic Olympic and Paralympic Games.

That summer brought out the best in Britain.

Through Danny Boyle’s brilliant opening ceremony, we paid tribute to the NHS — an institution which binds us together as a society.

We celebrated the arrival of the Windrush, the ship which in 1948 carried some 500 immigrants from the West Indies to the Tilbury docks — many settled in my borough of Lambeth.

This heralded a new generation of immigrants who would profoundly change the demographic and cultural landscape of the UK.
Throughout the Games our country was united in support of a team which seemed to truly reflect twenty-first century Britain.
The spirit and buzz of the occasion was unforgettable.

On one particularly memorable Saturday — Super Saturday (I was lucky enough to be there) — we cheered on the gold medal-winning performances of a mixed-race woman from Sheffield, a one-time Somalian refugee from London and a red headed guy from Milton Keynes.

For a moment in time, we seemed and felt wholly comfortable in our skin.

We presented ourselves as a country at peace with the mixed, modern nation we had become.

A society which was no longer particularly bothered about a person’s social background or ethnicity.

A diverse, integrated, confident Britain — ready for the challenges of a new century.

Yet, as I reflect on the 2012 Olympics in 2016, I can’t help but feel the unifying spirit which energised communities across the UK that summer reflected our ideals and aspirations as a society.

But not the reality of life in our country.

2. Diverse but divided

The day before the Games began, the Prime Minister said there is no more diverse, more open or more tolerant city in the world than London.

I am not a fan of the notion that we “tolerate” each other; I’d much rather embrace others and their cultures. But I agree with the PM’s sentiment.

However, being open and diverse isn’t the same as knowing and trusting each other.

Take London. New research released by The Challenge today shows that there is a growing gap between the experiences of people from different socio-economic groups in our nation’s Capital, a place thought to be a bastion of integration.

Whilst the majority of poor Londoners say they don’t feel at home in their city and feel excluded from the life of their community, those with wealth report feeling a sense of belonging and safety in their neighbourhoods.

Even in our Olympic city, our society is becoming increasingly divided.

Throughout the lifetime of the baby boomer generation, Britain has become brilliantly diverse and our lives have become less uniform in a number of ways.

We have gone from being an overwhelmingly white nation to one where 14% of the population is made up of ethnic minority Britons. Many of our cities, towns and villages are now home to people of every colour and creed

By 2050, the proportion of British residents who are of an ethnic minority group will double.

Over the last half century, the middle class has exploded in size — creating new opportunities for people to chart their own path in life.

And scientific and social advances mean that more of us are having children later in life and living into old age, fundamentally changing the way in which different generations relate to one another in the UK.

By 2040, the number of people aged 75 and over will rise by 89 per cent, and fewer older people will be living in the same towns as their children and grandchildren.

But last year’s report by the Social Integration Commission shows that levels of integration haven’t kept pace with our growing diversity.

Too often, people from different ethnic, class and age groups are living side-by-side but aren’t actually mixing with one another or leading interconnected lives. And there are worrying signs that the income and lifestyle gap between the rich and poor in our society may continue to widen.

As long as our country is diverse but divided in this way, we can’t honestly claim to be that beacon of unity and successful multiculturalism which seemed to shine so brightly when we were Olympic Britain.

I don’t think this is necessarily conscious or deliberate, but the divisions arise from a range of factors.

The winds of change blowing through our country are picking up speed.

Some of the biggest changes to the ways in which different groups relate to one another in our society may spring from trends which can’t be plotted easily on a chart, and are challenges which we’re only just waking up to.

Conflict abroad and the terrible consequences of climate change may drive more refugees to our shores than ever before.

Increased competition from emerging economies and dramatic technological advances could make work more insecure for more and more British workers.

And the automation of more of the jobs that computers can’t do at the minute may transform our economy and lead us to rethink how we organise ourselves as a society.

3. The Trumpification of British politics

I believe that we are at a crossroads.

If we don’t take action now to bridge the divides in our communities, I fear they will grow into gulfs —

And there is a real risk the British people could respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century not by asking ‘how can we solve this problem together?’ but by asking ‘who can we blame?’

That is precisely what is happening in the United States right now. Populist parties which typify this are already in national and/or regional governments across Europe, like the Front National in France. Some say it wouldn’t fly in modern Britain.

That people here could never stomach a Prime Minister in the mould of Donald Trump.

A major party leader who would slander and stigmatise a whole faith group and advocate building a wall to keep immigrants out of our country.

Who would say anything to get elected and bully and shout down anyone who spoke up against them.

But we are already on that slippery slope.

Last year’s General Election, and the European elections the year before, should have been a wake-up call to the growing and pernicious divides in our national politics.

Nearly four million of our fellow citizens voted for a party whose leader got stuck in a traffic jam and blamed the traffic on immigrants.

A leader who brought up the idea of stopping immigrants with life-threatening illnesses from entering the country during the first leaders’ TV debate.

It was an election which more than ever before seemed to be fought on a region-by-region and group-by-group basis

Where the political and cultural divides between the North and South of England as well as Scotland and England became yet more stark

Where the class divides which have always been a part of Britain’s history, gained renewed and far greater prominence

And where the difference between the urban and the rural seemed bigger than ever before.

If we continue down this path, we could face nothing less than the Trumpification of British democracy.

In the run up to the General Election, as I travelled around the country, I was confronted time and time again with the reality that here — just like in the States — people are losing faith in the idea that politics can make a difference to their lives.

It’s exactly that sort of despondency that drives people to turn to the populist politics — of the left and the right — of blame, division and recrimination.

In towns and cities from Brighton to Sunderland, I met people who are afraid and people who are angry.

Afraid because the world is changing in ways which they feel are beyond their control.

Angry because what it means to be British — or, more specifically, English — seems to have shifted around them. Their sense of identity and belonging seem under threat.

And look — in an era of globalisation and a rapidly changing world, there are some things that we just can’t stop but we can help people to come together as communities and to collectively take steps to shape the future.

To achieve this we cannot duck having an open and honest conversation about why we’ve stopped trusting each other as citizens and neighbours.

There is no point simply complaining about this: it is beholden on all of us to better understand what is going on so we can build those bonds of trust and the strong social ties our communities will need to flourish in the future.

4. Trust matters

I had the pleasure of meeting the Harvard-based sociologist Robert Putnam at the end of last year. Through his research, he has shown that, where people from different ethnicities live side-by-side but don’t mix in meaningful ways, trust is eroded.

In their ground-breaking book, The Spirit Level, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have proven that areas with high levels of class inequality also suffer from low levels of trust.

And we know that a lack of contact between the old and young increases fear of crime amongst older people, and creates a situation where too many are automatically and unfairly labelled as troublemakers for committing the crime of being young.
So our diverse but socially segregated state is sapping our communities of trust, It’s undermining our ability to count on one another. And trust matters.

You see, in an uncertain and changing world, it’s all too easy to imagine that our problems are the fault of those who are different from us.

As we’ve become less familiar with one another, it’s become harder for us to understand where people who come from a different background are coming from on the big issues.

And the disharmony of our political debate has stopped us from taking action together to address the discord which exists in our communities.

We need to get a grip of the fact that, as we’ve changed as a country, we’ve come to know and understand one another less and less.

5. Detoxifying immigration

Take the issue of immigration.

Throughout the last forty years, the debate on immigration has become increasingly polarised to the point that it’s now dominated by two hopelessly opposed views.

By one group of voices claiming that Britain is full and that it’s time to shut our borders.

And another insisting that there’s no problem — who say that immigrants and the vast majority of Britons rub along together alright and it’s only a fundamentally backwards and prejudiced minority who have an issue.

Let me be clear. I am the son of an immigrant. I only have to visit Streatham High Road in my own constituency to see first-hand the vibrancy and dynamism which immigration has infused into our communities, and what a fantastic force it’s been for the cultural life of our country.

And, when I have witnessed a stream of prejudice uttered by elected politicians and candidates for elected office — including in my own party — I have been unafraid of calling them out.

But those of us who champion the benefits of immigration and diversity also need to recognise that rapid demographic change can put enormous pressure on local public services and threaten people’s sense of security and belonging

My own party has too often shut its ears to these concerns.

Labour has rightly argued that immigration has brought real economic benefits, but this is an accountant’s answer to a question which goes to the heart of how people feel about modern Britain.

Our failure to confront head on the fact that our country hasn’t lived up to the Olympic ideal has, at times, caused us to unfairly dismiss reasonable concerns about the impact of immigration on our communities.

Of course we need to be wary of the threat posed by petty nationalism.

We won’t solve the challenges through resorting to the sort of scapegoating which the UK has such a proud history of fighting against.

And, yes, I do worry that some of the interventions we’ve heard in the EU referendum debate have been purposefully designed to stoke prejudice.

Some of the rhetoric which we’ve heard about people from Poland and Romania frankly isn’t so dissimilar to that which was deployed against black and Asian people in decades past.

But we must not lump all those who voice concerns about the consequences of immigration into the same basket.
It’s not racist to want to be able to speak the same language as your next door neighbour or the other parents at the school gate.
It’s not unreasonable or prejudiced to worry about your community changing around you.

Our inability to have a grown-up conversation about the way immigration is changing our country, and the fact that we can’t seem to get our heads around one another’s points of view, has led to extreme views developing on both sides of the argument —
We argue endlessly about who we should let into our country and why, but we haven’t spent nearly enough time thinking and talking about what happens when immigrants enter our country and settle in, say, Middlesbrough, Newham, Glasgow or wherever it may be.

In order to detoxify this debate, we need to own up the fact that immigration can undermine community cohesion but that it doesn’t have to, and recognise that there’s a middle way between shutting our borders and shutting our ears to people’s concerns.

We need a concerted drive to break down barriers to integration and provide much better support to help immigrants not only learn English and understand British values, but also meet and mix and build relationships with Britons from all backgrounds — integration, afterall, is a two way street.

Because we know that it’s when people with different experiences of life get to know one another and lead interconnected lives that trust grows.

6. Rising class segregation

We need to offer our communities much more support to build bonds of trust in the face of change, and to better manage difference in all forms — which brings me to class differences.

Rising inequality is one of the most pressing problems facing our nation, and is compounded by the growing segregation of different class groups.

It’s no wonder we’ve wound up with TV programmes like Benefits Street – produced by well paid people who are not on benefits – which treat people who claim unemployment benefit like a different species.

It’s no wonder that so many more newspaper column inches are devoted to those who stand accused of cheating the benefits system than middle class bankers who dishonestly rig entire financial systems at everyone else’s expense to line their own pockets on a grand scale.

It’s no wonder we have an utterly toxic political debate on social security, which too often ignores the impact of low-paid work and the cost of living, and ducks the challenge of addressing the real barriers which people face in getting back to work — zeroing in instead on the criminal minority who set out to scam the system.

Iain Duncan Smith, the man who has presided over the biggest programme of misery for the disabled, the poor and those in need for a generation, only now tells us the policies he was implementing were arbitrary and unfair. The greatest sadness is not that he left it so long but that, in spite of this, the polls tell us the harsh policy agenda he has pursued commands some considerable public support.

Research by the Social Integration Commission provides an insight into why this might be the case. They show that middle class and working class people in this country are leading very separate lives, and that far too few people who are in work know anyone who is on benefits at all.

7. Building a more integrated Britain

So it’s clear that we, as a country, face many challenges but, looking around this room, at the brilliant social entrepreneurs and innovators who have pioneered initiatives to build bridges between different groups in society

And the young people who have gotten stuck into their local communities and participated in horizon-expanding programmes such as the National Citizen Service.

I truly believe that we have it in us to rise to this test and fulfil the promise of Olympic Britain.

I’m proud to announce today that we are launching a new cross-party group — the All Party Parliamentary Group for Social Integration – to explore how we can build a more integrated Britain.

I know that our first step must be to learn the lessons of the past.

Recent governments of both parties have argued that the best way to encourage integration is to promote and enforce a shared set of British values

That as long as we all understand what it means to be British citizens, then it doesn’t really matter if we spend time together as people or not.

While ministers and officials in those governments were right to affirm our freedom to be different from one another, I don’t think the values which define what it means to be British can be unilaterally imposed from above.

If our idea of Britishness is to have any meaning in 2016, then it must be crowdsourced rather than imposed.

So, rather than telling people what unites them, our Group will to look at how we can help people from all walks of life to meet and mix and work it out for themselves.

That’s why we will focus on ideas to create the shared experiences which enable people to develop shared identities.

These experiences must be woven into the fabric of everyday life in our country.

We are looking forward to engaging with the government’s review into integration and opportunity, which Louise Casey is leading — she will be one of the first witnesses we call on to give evidence at our public hearings.

The group includes politicians from all sides of both Houses of Parliament. I am chairing it and our Vice Chairs in the Commons are my Home Affairs Select Committee colleagues James Berry and Naz Shah.

It is crucial this project involves politicians from across the political spectrum.

I have warned we are on the verge of the Trumpification of British politics, and I believe that it’s incumbent on politicians to work together and show leadership in the face of this challenge.

8. A politics of unity

You see, by building a more integrated Britain, we can grow trust in our communities and restore our sense of the common British life.

We can choose a politics of unity and co-operation over a politics of division and blame.

Don’t get me wrong — politics in diverse societies invariably involves challenging conversations and sometimes painful compromise between different groups and interests.

It’s a muddled, messy activity in which people usually have to settle for less than the perfect realisation of their ideals.

But it’s only through coming together as a democracy that we can move forward into the future as one country.

And, at its best, politics is itself a way of getting to know one another better, of glimpsing the world through one another’s eyes and of growing through the experience.

If we as a country are going to take the challenges of the twenty-first century head on

If we’re going to weather the changes before us and flourish in the face of an uncertain future

If we’re going to live the Olympic ideal, for real this time

And figure out what, together, we can become

This is the sort of big, compassionate, joined-up politics we need.

Thank you very much.