This morning, I post the first part of yesterday’s speech by United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Tony Blair to the Labour Parliament. I have added the bolding to the text.
Tony Blair
We’ve never been more interdependent in our needs; and we’ve never been more individualist in our outlook.
Globalisation and technology open up vast new opportunities but also cause massive insecurity. The values of progressive politics – solidarity, justice for all – have never been more relevant; and their application never more in need of modernisation.
Internationally, we need a new global partnership, that moves beyond a narrow view of national interest.
At home, it means taking the great progressive 1945 settlement and reforming it around the needs of the individual as consumer and citizen for the 21st century. What we did for the Labour party in the new clause IV, freeing us from outdated doctrine and practice, we must now do, through reform, for Britain’s public services and welfare state.
We are at a crossroads: Party, Government, country.
Do we take modest though important steps of improvement? Or do we make the great push forward for transformation? I believe we’re at our best when at our boldest. So far, we’ve made a good start but we’ve not been bold enough.
Interdependence is obliterating the distinction between foreign and domestic policy. It was the British economy that felt the aftermath of 11 September. Our cities who take in refugees from the 13 million now streaming across the world from famine, disease or conflict. Our young people who die from heroin imported from Afghanistan. It is our climate that is changing.
Today, a nation’s chances are measured not just by its own efforts but by its place in the world. Influence is power is prosperity. We are an island nation, small in space, 60 million in people but immense in history and potential. We can take refuge in the mists of Empire but it is a delusion that national identity is best preserved in isolation, that we should venture out in the world only at a time of emergency.
There is a bold side to the British character. And there is a cautious side. Both have their time and season. Caution is often born of common sense, a great British trait. But there are times when caution is retreat and retreat is dangerous.
Now, at the start of the 21st Century, is a time for reaching out. The cold war is over. The US is the only superpower. The Americans stand strong and proud, but at times resented. Europe is economically powerful but not yet politically coherent. Russia is breaking free from its past but still carrying the burden. For China and India, power is only a matter of time. For the moment, Japan is changing, South America struggling, Asia emerging; Africa impoverished; the Middle East unstable.
The world can go in two ways. Countries can become rivals in power, or partners. Partnership is the antidote to unilateralism. For all the resentment of America, remember one thing. The basic values of America are our values too, British and European and they are good values. Democracy, freedom, tolerance, justice.
It’s easy to be anti-American. There’s a lot of it about but remember when and where this alliance was forged: here in Europe, in World War II when Britain and America and every decent citizen in Europe joined forces to liberate Europe from the Nazi evil.
My vision of Britain is not as the 51st state of anywhere, but I believe in this alliance and I will fight long and hard to maintain it. I’m not saying we always apply our values correctly. But I’ve lost count of the number of supposedly intelligent people who’ve said to me. You don’t understand the Serbs. They’re very attached to Milosevic. No they weren’t. The Afghans are different. They like religious extremism. No they didn’t.
The Iraqis don’t have the same tradition of political freedom. No they don’t but I bet they’d like to.
Our values aren’t western values. They’re human values, and anywhere, anytime people are given the chance, they embrace them. Around these values, we build our global partnership. Europe and America together. Russia treated as a friend and equal. China and India seeking not rivalry but cooperation and for all nations the basis of our partnership not power alone but a common will based on common values. Applied in an even-handed way.
Some say the issue is Iraq. Some say it is the Middle East Peace Process. It’s both. Some say it’s poverty. Some say it’s terrorism. It’s both. I know the worry over Iraq. People accept Saddam is bad. But they fear it’s being done for the wrong motives. They fear us acting alone. So the United Nations route.
Let us lay down the ultimatum. Let Saddam comply with the will of the UN. So far most of you are with me. But here is the hard part. If he doesn’t comply, then consider. If at this moment having found the collective will to recognise the danger, we lose our collective will to deal with it, then we will destroy not the authority of America or Britain but of the United Nations itself.
Sometimes and in particular dealing with a dictator, the only chance of peace is a readiness for war. But we need coalitions not just to deal with evil by force if necessary, but coalitions for peace, coalitions to tackle poverty, ignorance and disease. A coalition to fight terrorism and a coalition to give Africa hope. A coalition to re-build the nation of Afghanistan as strong as the coalition to defeat the Taliban. A coalition to fight the scourge of AIDS, to protect the planet from climate change every bit as powerful as the coalition for free trade, free markets and free enterprise.
And yes what is happening in the Middle East now is ugly and wrong. The Palestinians living in increasingly abject conditions, humiliated and hopeless; Israeli civilians brutally murdered. I agree UN resolutions should apply here as much as to Iraq. But they don’t just apply to Israel. They apply to all parties. And there is only one answer. By this year’s end, we must have revived final status negotiations and they must have explicitly as their aims: an Israeli state free from terror, recognised by the Arab world and a viable Palestinian state based on the boundaries of 1967. For Britain to help shape this new world, Britain needs to be part of it. Our friendship with America is a strength. So is our membership of Europe. We should make the most of both.
And in Europe, never more so than now. The single currency is a fact, but will Europe find the courage for economic reform? Europe is to become 25 nations, one Europe for the first time since Charlemagne, but will it be as a union of nation states or as a centralised superstate? It has taken the first steps to a common defence policy, but will it be a friend or a rival to NATO? The answers to these questions are crucial to Britain. They matter to the British economy, our country, our way of life. And the way to get the right answers, is by being in there, vigorous, confident, leading in Europe not limping along several paces behind. That’s why the Euro is not just about our economy but our destiny. We should only join the Euro if the economic tests are met. That is clear. But if the tests are passed, we go for it.
Interdependence is the core reality of the modern world. It is revolutionising our idea of national interest. It is forcing us to locate that interest in the wider international community. It is making solidarity – a great social democratic ideal – our route to practical survival.
Partnership is statesmanship for the 21st Century. We need now the same clarity of vision for our country. I have learnt this in 5 years of government. The radical decision is usually the right one. The right decision is usually the hardest one. And the hardest decisions are often the least popular at the time.
The starting point is not policy. It’s hope. I sometimes think the whole of politics can be reduced to a battle between pessimism and hope. Because from hope comes change. …
Read the full text of Blair’s Speech.
Reposted from The London Guardian.
Timothy Wilken’s Living in Paradox