| David Lammy speech at America Votes |
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DAVID LAMMY SPEECH - CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
He did it. Barack Obama has achieved a victory that many said would never happen. In this time of time of pessimism and uncertainty, something suddenly feels bright. Tuesday night was an incredibly powerful moment for me, and for millions across the globe.There has been an astonishing, unprecedented level of engagement and commitment to the US campaign. In February, I visited the Primary campaign in snowy Wisconsin – where I watched queues of students stretch around the block to vote in -30 conditions. Tom Stoate from my office has just returned from leading a team of Labour researchers volunteering on the frontline in North Carolina – at state which Bush won last time by 17 points, but which, by the narrowest of margins, Obama managed to flip. On one day in the city of Raleigh, the day before the election, some 3,000 volunteers turned up to volunteer, and some 45,000 doors were knocked on. And the Young Fabians took a team of 80 volunteers to the US – and many of you are here today, and I hope to hear about your experiences and the lessons you learned going forward. [Many young Conservatives got involved in the Republican campaign too. And several Tory candidates have talked about why they find Sarah Palin so inspiring. On the politics of shooting moose at least, I hope we can say ‘Only in America’]. What happens in the United States affects us all and there is a great deal that we can learn from it. But we need to make sure we don’t let politics become a mere spectator sport. We can’t adopt US politics as a new political soap opera to replace The West Wing. I know that the election campaign seemed to have hired the same scriptwriters, so that the plot of the final season happening for real. But this will remain fantasy politics for us if we engage – from the outside – in American politics as an alternative to taking responsibility for bringing about change for ourselves here. So it is right that today’s conference has to be about us as much about us as it is about how we understand what is happening in America. On the international stage, we look forward to working with an America in which the spirit of international cooperation lives again. That was an America to which Europe has much to be grateful for, as a partner that helped to create the multilateral institutions which enabled a great era of peace, prosperity and progress. So we look forward to deepening once again our relationship with our friends in America. But our task as part of that to work out what we in Britain and Europe must contribute to the new multilateralism, so that we help to shape the progressive ideas and institutions we now need to deal with the great international questions of our age – on the economy, climate change and security. In our politics too, what we must now do is work out how to bring the new campaigning lessons home, how we translate them to the different political culture and structures here. We can be inspired by how the Democrats picked themselves up, fought back, taking the argument to their opponents by reframing the big debates in American politics and taking a new campaigning message of hope to the people. But it isn’t a template we can download: we have to do it here for ourselves. I have been have been debating these questions over the last year – working with the Fabians to open up these issues. But I don’t want to pretend I can give you all of the answers this morning. The events of Tuesday night and Wednesday morning are still ringing in our ears. There will be much more to analyse, discuss and debate in the weeks and months ahead – as we work to put together the manifesto and the campaign for our vision of a fairer society which we will put to the British people at the next election. This morning I want to talk about one of the key starting points. There is going to be a big argument in British politics over the next 18 months. And at its heart, that will be an argument about “change”. * What does progressive change mean in Britain today? * What are the competing visions of change – and which vision will take our society in the right direction? * In short, who owns change in British politics? Who owns change? I believe that Labour must be the party of progressive change in British politics – and that we must win the argument for the vision of change we need. David Cameron wants to be the candidate of change too – and is very keen to associate himself as closely as possible with Barack Obama. One of the striking things about Barack Obama is that he often seemed to be the one person who did not get carried away with the ‘Obamamania’ phenomenon. He often told his campaign rallies – and the American public – “this isn’t about me; its about you”. I am not sure that is quite David Cameron’s approach. The Conservative leader’s message of congratulations told the new President elect Obama that he was “just the first” of a new generation of leaders arguing for change. The Sky News political editor Adam Boulton said that the message was a “crashingly self-referential press release”. What David Cameron seemed to want to say to Barack Obama was this: “this moment of history isn’t about you and your achievement; really, it’s all about me”. The British government was right to stay officially neutral in this campaign. It was difficult for some of us. Yet the Conservatives attacked Gordon Brown simply for praising Barack Obama for how his “electrifying campaign” had “generated the ideas to help people through more difficult times”, Now, David Cameron has changed his mind. Again. His generation of New Tories have told us that they remain the “proud successors of the Thatcher inheritance”. But remember how we were told too that David Cameron he was the heir to Blair. Now, this week, he wants to bask in the Obama victory. But the Tories should understand that Barack Obama is a progressive friend of ours – and that David Cameron is no Barack Obama. That is not a question of background, or race, or age. It’s a question of competing vision and values, about what we are in politics for. It is about an understanding of what progressive change means. After all, it wasn’t just Barack Obama who ran on ‘change’ on this election. Every Republican and Democrat candidate stood for ‘change’ and their idea of what it meant. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton fought and worked for change on poverty and healthcare. Republicans like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee said they were outsiders who would shake up Washington; John McCain and Sarah Palin ran as ‘mavericks’ committed to reform. It wasn’t enough to say you were for change. The test was which vision of change connected with the priorities of the voters. Nor was the election decided on personalities. The general election presented the American people with two compelling Presidential candidates – two life stories which captured in their very different ways American ideals and American values – which spoke of commitment to public service Barack Obama won his argument for “change we can believe in” because he had something to say about the economy, about how government would protect citizens from the worst risks of a downturn and spread opportunity in America. Change in Britain and America Of course, British politics is different to American politics. But we should not forget that many of the differences result from progressive campaigns – and the actions of a Labour government. We have universal healthcare for every citizen – one of the causes for which progressive Americans will now fight doe again – because Nye Bevan and the Labour government introduced the National Health Service, and we made that commitment to healthcare, based on need not ability to pay, part of the shared common sense of British society. We have avoided some of the ‘culture wars’ which have polarised US society over issues like abortion and faith partly because of the leadership of Labour governments, in legislating for gender and race equality and, under New Labour, for civil partnerships. They remain deeply contested issues at times in America – as we have just seen in the Californian campaign to ban gay marriage – but we have begun to create a new consensus in British society on tolerance and equality, though we always recognise that we have further to travel on that journey. But differences in culture, politics and policy should not lead us to overlook just how important exchanges of ideas and policies. The tide of ideas in America and Britain has often been connected. The New Deal of FDR, the welfare settlement of the Attlee government and the way those governments worked together to create the United Nations and the multilateral global order shaped politics at home and abroad for several decades. There was a conservative period of consolidation under Eisenhower and MacMillan, but then new progressive advances with JFK and LBJ’s commitments to civil rights and the Great Society, while the Labour government was a pioneer on equal pay and race equality. There was a shared ideological project across the Atlantic between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, as they sought to roll back the state and challenge the post-war consensus on the welfare state. And the response to that period saw New Labour in Britain and the European left learn a great deal from Bill Clinton and the New Democrats So change in America will also help to create a new opportunity for a new age of progressive ideas and progressive change in Britain and around the world. And the challenges we face – a global economy, a planet in peril – demand both national leadership and international cooperation. In British politics, that vision of change we need must come - will come - from Labour. And it is at odds with most of what David Cameron has said his agenda for change is about. There are five big arguments where I think the Conservative vision is wrong. On each of these issues, the vision for change we need must come, in Britain, from Labour. In each case our argument for change is rooted in the shared progressive values of opportunity and fairness which we in the Labour Party share with our Democratic sister party in America. And it is a vision which David Cameron does not share. He has a very different agenda. And I want to show why the Conservatives are wrong on the global economy and the market, wrong on the broken society, wrong on fairness and inequality and wrong on the role of government. And that means they are wrong about what it means to be a progressive or to want progressive change in politics. Wrong on the global economy and the market The Conservatives have had no answer on the economy because their core belief is that less government is always better. They try to look wise after the event, but everybody knows they were calling for more deregulation at every stage. In this crisis, European governments have had to work together. Yet the Conservatives are so much more Euroscecptic than in the past that they are suing for divorce from the European centre-right party they share with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, delayed only by their failure to find any allies to work with in future. So the Conservative instinct is still that good government is less government, that markets are best left to themselves and that other governments are potential problems, not allies. In a globalised world of greater risks and huge opportunities Conservatism offers neither the security people crave nor the opportunities they deserve. Barack Obama doesn’t agree with that. He has said: “Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair and open and honest, The American economy does not stand still, and neither should the rules that govern it. Old institutions cannot adequately oversee new practices. Old rules may not fit the roads where our economy is leading." Like Gordon Brown, he has supported the need for governments to act domestically – and to create the new international financial architecture that new global markets need. Wrong on the ‘broken society’ David Cameron tells us that “society is broken”. It’s a vast overstatement. Even Boris Johnson called it “piffle” For all of the challenges that the United States faces too, Barack Obama hasn’t argued that American “society is broken”. Of course he hasn’t. Because his was a politics of hope, not a politics of pessimism. He has re-engaged America, not talked the country down for partisan advantage. The Cameron rhetoric doesn’t ring true for two reasons. First, most people know what a truly damaged society looks because they can remember the poverty, the race riots and the soaring unemployment of the 1980s. They recall a government that would not even recognize society, let alone seek to support and enrich it. Second, in contrast, most people recognize that Britain is a fairer, more inclusive place than it was a decade ago. Far fewer children now live in poverty. Many more go to good schools and stay on in education. The adults in their lives are far more likely to be in work. Their neighbourhood is likely to be safer, greener and more inhabitable. None of these things the Tories can or would dispute – and they belie Cameron’s negative rhetoric. People still have concerns about issues like violent crime. Parents have aspirations to spend more time with their families. Communities are concerned about the values that we all live by and those that we instil in our children. But these concerns and these aspirations do not add up to a broken society: they reflect an ambition for a greater Britain that politicians of all parties should share. Oppositions have to create a rationale for a change of government, but Tories fail to recognize the gains of the last ten years and choose to run down Britain for political purposes. Cameron’s broken society diagnosis looks out of step with Britain – and he can’t offer the vision of hope and change that Britain needs. Wrong on inequality and redistribution I welcome it when the Conservatives try to move onto progressive territory. It is unusual to hear that the party of Margaret Thatcher now wants to be the party of Polly Toynbee. It is only twenty years ago, the Conservative Social Security Secretary declared that there was no longer any poverty in Britain. It isn’t surprising that child poverty was tripling while the government did nothing about it – when their official doctrine was to be in denial, to say that real poverty didn’t exist. We need to test the detail of this conversion. So even if turns out that they don’t believe it, we should welcome the fact that they feel that they have to say it. It shows that progressive politics can shift the centre of political gravity. So David Cameron now says that he is a progressive who wants to tackle poverty, yet in the very same breath he tells us that he has a get out clause on doing anything about it, saying that “income redistribution and social programmes run by the state… have now run their course” and are “best achieved by conservative means”. But we don’t believe in giving up on those causes and returning to the policies of the 1980s. That’s why we introduced a minimum wage and tax credits, to make work pay, and introduced the child trust fund so that every child gets. It is our commitment to redistributing not just income, but opportunity, wealth and power in our society which has seen us take 600,000 children out poverty as part of our mission to end child poverty in Britain. Barack Obama doesn’t agree with giving up on redistribution either. In his Convention speech, he called “old and discredited” the theory of “ give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else … what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own”. I agree with that critique of the right. But that’s a different vision to the Conservatives. Now, the Tories say they share our aspiration to end child poverty in a generation. But they won’t even pledge to make it happen. I don’t know if you noticed that George Osborne flew home in the middle of his holiday in Corfu to make a speech on poverty in London. But the real problem isn’t that he then flew back to spend some more time on a yacht. It’s that his first concrete tax plan was a tax cut for millionaires. Wrong on the role of government David Cameron’s biggest argument is that “the state has failed”. He is wrong. Barack Obama certainly doesn’t believe that. He said in his Convention speech: ”Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves - protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology. Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.” No progressive politician ever believed that civil society does not exist or is not important. But common sense also shows that it cannot always be an alternative to government. Government has to be about more than the odd ‘nudge’ in the hope of moving people in the right direction. If we think about encouraging behaviour change, it is about how governments must act to make it possible. David Cameron knows that. He has made the environment totemic, symbolizing ‘social responsibility’ in action. Yet what he proposes is not civil society spontaneously coming together to save the planet, but the state setting a framework of incentives and taxes for businesses and individuals to operate within. But that means accepting that his diagnosis of the state is wrong – and can not deliver the change agenda we need. Wrong about what it takes to be progressive So the message for David Cameron has to be: It’s good if your party now wants to sign up to progressive causes – but you can’t be for progressive ends if you won’t will the progressive means to get there. David Cameron is not against a reduction of poverty, a cut in carbon emissions, an improvement in global development. It’s just that he thinks its somebody else’s job to do something about it. His brand of progressive politics is to hope that nice things will turn up. That isn’t progressive – in fact, it isn’t really politics at all. Our argument is the opposite: that “fairness doesn’t happen by chance” – it depends on what governments do. What the New Tories are offering is “Tory means to progressive ends”. But the offer of Tory men and Tory measures under the banner of progressive change isn’t change we can believe in. It is a contradiction in terms. Experience and change David Cameron has told us very little about what his vision of change is. His idea is simply to claim that, if you have experience, you can’t stand for change. Political history doesn’t support that view. Clement Attlee and his Labour colleagues served in the wartime coalition government, before creating the National Health Service and the welfare state. After the tragic assassination of JFK, it was LBJ – after a lifetime playing a leadership role in the US Senate – who passed the landmark civil rights act of 1964, which paved the way for blacks to vote and forty years on for the election of a first black President. And however much you may have disagreed with what she did, Margaret Thatcher became more radical while in office, using her experience to push her agenda for change further and faster in her final term. And today, Labour has the experience to deliver change – as we saw with the response to the global financial crisis, it was Gordon Brown’s plan became the model for responses around the world. New politics So a progressive party must build on our experience – and present a new agenda for hope. That means changing the way we do politics too. Few, if any, institutions have a prouder record of bringing change to our societies than our political parties. But unless we change we won’t feel like the most obvious or effective forces for social change for the new progressive movements of the future – we won’t translate that to people in the way that Obama has managed to. We need a politics of the head and the heart – which does have credible policy answers, but which offers an emotional appeal to mobilize supporters too. We need to open up politics beyond the political class. We need to lower the barriers to participation and open up our parties. We need to make sure we don’t just talk about changing our parties but that we start to make change happen – experimenting with open primaries for Parliamentary candidates and for taking on Boris Johnson in London. When it comes to alternative visions of change, we can take confidence in our vision and our values. We need to build a movement which can make it happen. And then we can show that we will be the change that Britain needs.
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