AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY HE GETS ON SO WELL WITH W:

Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton (9/28/04)

Someone showed me an article recently about how: "Tony Blair has marginalised the Tories."

I thought it's a change to read something nice.

Then I realised it was a criticism.

Like, after years in which people thought the Labour Party was unfit to govern, now they think the Tories are.

And I should be really sorry about it. [...]

For the wealthy few, every one of those challenges of the future can be overcome.

The third term mission is to overcome them for the many.

Changing Britain for better.

For good.

Not a society where all succeed equally - that is utopia; but an opportunity society where all have an equal chance to succeed; that could and should be 21st century Britain under a Labour Government.

Where nothing in your background, whether you're black or white, a man or a woman, able-bodied or disabled, stands in the way of what your merit and hard work can achieve.

Where hard working families who play by the rules are not going to see their opportunities blighted by those that don't.

And where if any of our citizens, no matter how poor, is in sickness or need, they get the best care available without any regard to their wealth.

Power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few.

Not our hands. But theirs.

Fairness in the future will not be built on the state, structures, services and government of times gone by.

Their values remain.

But the reality of life has changed.

The relationship between state and citizen has changed.

People have grown up. They want to make their own life choices.

Their expectations, their ambitions, their hopes are all different and higher.

The 20th Century traditional welfare state that did so much for so many has to be re-shaped as the opportunity society capable of liberation and advance, every bit as substantial as the past but fitting the contours of the future.

And this will be a progressive future as long as we remember that the reason for our struggle against injustice has always been to liberate the individual.

The argument is not between those who do and those who do not love freedom.

It is between the Conservatives who believe freedom requires only that government stand back while the fittest and most privileged prosper.

And we who understand, that freedom for the individual, for every individual, whatever their starting point in life, is best achieved through a just society and a strong community.

In an opportunity society, as opposed to the old welfare state, government does not dictate; it empowers.

It makes the individual - patient, parent, law-abiding citizen, job-seeker - the driver of the system, not the state.

It sets free the huge talent of our public servants and social entrepreneurs whose ability is often thwarted by outdated rules and government bureaucracy.

It changes how government works, to open up the means of delivery to every resource, public, private and voluntary, that can deliver opportunity based on need not wealth.

Sometimes I hear people describe "choice" as a Tory word.

It reminds me of when I first used to knock on doors as a canvasser and was told if they owned their own home they were Tories.

Choice a Tory word?

Tell that to 50 per cent of heart patients who have exercised it to get swifter operations and help bring cardiac deaths down 16,000 since we came to power.

Or to the parents who have made the new City Academy Schools so popular in areas of the greatest social disadvantage.

Or the people I met in Teesside a couple of weeks ago who have transformed their neighbourhood, yes with government money but most of all, by making their decisions, their choices about how it was spent and how their community was run.

Choice is not a Tory word.

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.

The right to demand the best and refuse the worst and do so not by virtue of your wealth but your equal status as a citizen, that's precisely what the modern Labour Party should stand for.

So here are ten things a future Labour third term can do for Britain's hard-working families.

1 - Widen the circle of opportunity by low mortgage rates, rising living standards and more jobs in every region of the UK; special help for first time homebuyers and in a week where the Tories are advocating an inheritance tax cut which gives £2 billion to the richest five per cent of estates, Labour's priority will be tax relief for the millions of hard-working families, not tax cuts for the wealthy few.

2 - A society where we put the same commitment to quality vocational skills as we do academic education, with new vocational courses at school, every adult given skills free of charge up to level two and further support for level three, and 300,000 Modern Apprenticeships at the workplace.

3 - Every parent with the choice of a good specialist school, 200 new City Academies all in areas of deprivation, but with no return to selection at 11; new powers for heads to tackle disruptive pupils; all secondary schools part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, and as each wave of schools is rebuilt, modern sports facilities in every one, with a guaranteed number of hours of sport per week.

And let's work to bring the Olympics to London in 2012 and have a sporting legacy not just for the capital but for the whole country.

4 - All patients able to choose their hospital, to book the time and date for treatment.

Maximum waiting times down from 18 months to 18 weeks.

100 new hospital schemes, 2,700 GP premises improved and modernised already with more to come, life expectancy up, cardiac and cancer deaths down.

The NHS safe in the patient's hands.

5 - Life made easier for families.

More choice for mums at home and at work.

Universal, affordable and flexible childcare for the parents of all three-14 year-olds who want it from 8am in the morning to six at night and a Sure Start Children's Centre in every community of Britain.

6 - Security and dignity for everyone in retirement.

Year by year we will work to increase the numbers who can move off benefit and into work, whether from Job Seekers Allowance, Incapacity Benefit or any other benefit, and with the money saved, design a pension system that has the basic state pension at its core; gives special help to the poorest and provides incentives to save for hard-working families whatever their wealth or income.

7 - Our country and its people prospering in the knowledge economy.

Increasing by £1 billion the investment in science, boosting support to small businesses and ending the digital divide by bringing broadband technology to every home in Britain that wants it by 2008.

8 - On the back of the success of the ASB legislation and record numbers of police, we will take a new approach to the whole of law and order.

By the end of the next Parliament, all communities with their own dedicated policing team ; and the local community as well as the police have a say how it is policed.

There will be a radical extension of compulsory drug testing for offenders; a doubling of investment in drug treatment; summary powers to deal with drug dealers and with the violence from binge-drinking; and those believed to be part of organised crime will have their assets confiscated, their bank accounts opened up and if they intimidate juries, face trial without a jury.

9 - We will introduce identity cards and electronic registration of all who cross our borders.

We have cut radically the numbers of failed asylum seekers.

By the end of 2005, and for the first time in Britain, we will remove more each month than apply and so restore faith in a system that we know has been abused.

But we will welcome lawful migrants to this country; we will praise, not apologise, for our multi-cultural society and we will never play politics with the issue of race.

10 - A fair deal for all at work.

An opportunity society is one in which we stop ignoring the lives of the millions of hard working low paid families who do the jobs that we all rely on.

The jobs that get overlooked, the workers who we too often see right through, walk straight past, take for granted.

The office cleaners who do the early morning shift, clearing away the mess before the office is filled.

The security guards staying vigilant through the night.

The dinner ladies, who cook meals for hundreds of kids in the school canteen five days a week.

The hospital porters who often do as much for patient care as the nurse.

For them, we offer not just the respect they deserve, but the guarantee of a decent income, a rising minimum wage, equal pay between men and women, four weeks paid holidays from now on, plus bank holidays.

There they are: ten pointers to what a third term Labour Government would do for Britain's hard-working families.

Don't tell me that's not worth fighting for.

A stronger, fairer, more prosperous nation.

And now we have to go out and win the trust of the people to do it.

An Opportunity Society for the Third Way folks, to parallel the Ownership Society here. And a messianic foreign policy

There was talk before this conference that I wanted to put aside discussion of Iraq.

That was never my intention.

I want to deal with it head on.

The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong.

I acknowledge that and accept it.

I simply point out, such evidence was agreed by the whole international community, not least because Saddam had used such weapons against his own people and neighbouring countries.

And the problem is, I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam.

The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.

But at the heart of this, is a belief that the basic judgment I have made since September 11th, including on Iraq, is wrong, that by our actions we have made matters worse not better.

I know this issue has divided the country.

I entirely understand why many disagree.

I know, too, that as people see me struggling with it, they think he's stopped caring about us; or worse he's just pandering to George Bush and what's more in a cause that's irrelevant to us.

It's been hard for you.

Like the delegate who told me: "I've defended you so well to everyone I've almost convinced myself."

Do I know I'm right?

Judgements aren't the same as facts.

Instinct is not science.

I'm like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong.

I only know what I believe.

There are two views of what is happening in the world today.

One view is that there are isolated individuals, extremists, engaged in essentially isolated acts of terrorism.

That what is happening is not qualitatively different from the terrorism we have always lived with.

If you believe this, we carry on the same path as before 11th September.

We try not to provoke them and hope in time they will wither.

The other view is that this is a wholly new phenomenon, worldwide global terrorism based on a perversion of the true, peaceful and honourable faith of Islam; that's its roots are not superficial but deep, in the madrassehs of Pakistan, in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia, in the former training camps of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; in the cauldron of Chechnya; in parts of the politics of most countries of the Middle East and many in Asia; in the extremist minority that now in every European city preach hatred of the West and our way of life.

If you take this view, you believe September 11th changed the world; that Bali, Beslan, Madrid and scores of other atrocities that never make the news are part of the same threat and the only path to take is to confront this terrorism, remove it root and branch and at all costs stop them acquiring the weapons to kill on a massive scale because these terrorists would not hesitate to use them.

Likewise take the first view, then when you see the terror brought to Iraq you say: there, we told you; look what you have stirred up; now stop provoking them.

But if you take the second view, you don't believe the terrorists are in Iraq to liberate it.

They're not protesting about the rights of women - what, the same people who stopped Afghan girls going to school, made women wear the Burka and beat them in the streets of Kabul, who now assassinate women just for daring to register to vote in Afghanistan's first ever democratic ballot, though four million have done so?

They are not provoked by our actions; but by our existence.

They are in Iraq for the very reason we should be.

They have chosen this battleground because they know success for us in Iraq is not success for America or Britain or even Iraq itself but for the values and way of life that democracy represents.

They know that.

That's why they are there.

That is why we should be there and whatever disagreements we have had, should unite in our determination to stand by the Iraqi people until the job is done.

And, of course, at first the consequence is more fighting.

But Iraq was not a safe country before March 2003.

Few had heard of the Taliban before September 11th 2001.

Afghanistan was not a nation at peace.

So it's not that I care more about foreign affairs than the state of our economy, NHS, schools or crime.

It's simply that I believe democracy there means security here; and that if I don't care and act on this terrorist threat, then the day will come when all our good work on the issues that decide people's lives will be undone because the stability on which our economy, in an era of globalisation, depends, will vanish.

I never expected this to happen on that bright dawn of 1 May 1997.

I never anticipated spending time on working out how terrorists trained in a remote part of the Hindu Kush could end up present on British streets threatening our way of life.

And the irony for me is that I, as a progressive politician, know that despite the opposition of so much of progressive politics to what I've done, the only lasting way to defeat this terrorism is through progressive politics.

Salvation will not come solely from a gunship.

Military action will be futile unless we address the conditions in which this terrorism breeds and the causes it preys upon.

That is why it is worth staying the course to bring democracy Iraq and Afghanistan, because then people the world over will see that this is not and has never been some new war of religion; but the oldest struggle humankind knows, between liberty or oppression, tolerance or hate; between government by terror or by the rule of law.

Their differences are matters of the electorates they face and the cultures from which they arise, but their similarities are remarkable.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 29, 2004 10:57 AM