30 October 2003

Statement

I am announcing today that I am a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party. 

I pay tribute to Iain Duncan Smith: to his courage, his dignity and his decency.

This is a great party: the longest-standing, most successful party in the history of democracy. There has been no other party that has done so much or achieved so much as ours. We are its trustees. At its best we are a party broad and generous; broad in appeal and generous in outlook. A party capable of representing all Britain and all Britons. 

I will lead this party from its centre. I will call on the talents of all in the party, and the party will expect all to answer that call.

We will offer a new kind of politics, for people today view conventional party politics with contempt.

We will not hesitate to give credit to the government when it gets things right. We will not oppose for opposition’s sake. People want better than that.

We will expose government’s failures, not with gleeful pleasure in seeing them fail, but because we urgently want things to be better for our fellow citizens. 

We will never place our electoral self-interest before the good of the country. No narrow partisan opportunism for us. 

And we will always tell the truth. I will say it as I see it. I am a lawyer but I won’t argue a lawyer’s case. If something is true but tough, I won’t shrink from saying it. If something can’t be done, I will level with the public. Rigorous honesty. Measured criticism. Realistic alternatives. Only that way can we revive people’s trust in politics.

We must look forward not back. Not many people know that in 1979 we won more support among younger people than in the electorate overall. Not by pandering to youth. Or by trying to be hip or cool. But by showing that we understood how younger people aspired to live their lives. By depicting a Britain of the future where people would have more freedom, more power to do good things for themselves, their families, their communities and neighbourhoods. A vision of Britain in tune with people’s aspirations.

Today we know that there are pockets of desperate poverty in our cities. Whole communities left behind by decades of failure. No party that aspires to govern a great nation can ignore them. Modern Britain must be a country where those now left behind can rebuild communities rich in opportunity, self-respect and mutual support. Many of our great provincial cities are Conservative deserts today. It is my mission to change that. There can be no no-go areas for a contemporary Conservative Party. 

I was lucky. My parents weren’t rich, but I had the chance to go to a good grammar school. Britain offered me a ladder to climb. And put the first rung within my reach. 

We won’t be afraid to make the case for low taxes. You don’t just have a stronger economy; you have a more cohesive society when people pay less tax. They do more not just for themselves but for each other and for their communities; they don’t just contract out their social obligations to the state. But we will be responsible. Not for us reckless pledges that mortgage Britain’s future. We will need to repair Britain’s mortgaged public finances, and to respond to the crying need for urgent reform of the public services. 

We have begun to unveil the policies. Trust the people. That means trusting parents. Trusting patients. Trusting families. And trusting professionals. Doctors. Nurses. Police officers. Giving choice to all – not just to those who can afford it. Unleashing the creative powers of innovation to reinvigorate our public services in the next decade as we did for business 20 years ago.

Our party will be internationalist in outlook. My parents were immigrants. They saw Britain as a beacon in a dark and threatening world. Conservative Britain will never flinch from confident engagement with the wider world. We know that while our obligations begin within our shores they don’t end there. We must look confidently outward. If we have concerns about the direction of the European Union, it is not because we are little Englanders or hark back to some bygone golden age; it is because we see it as too intrusive, too rigid for the fast-flowing networks of the era of globalisation.

I wasn’t born into the Conservative Party. I chose it. I chose it because I thought, as I still do, that it offers Britain its brightest future.

I’ve been in Parliament for twenty years now. I think I’ve learned quite a lot in that time. I’ve learned that if we want to persuade people we need to preach a bit less and listen a lot more. I’ve learned that just winning an argument doesn’t on its own win hearts and minds. I’ve learned that politicians won’t be respected by the public unless they respect each other, and that people won’t trust us unless we trust them. I’d like the chance now to put what I’ve learned to the service of this great party, so that we in turn can serve this great country.

There may be no more than 18 months before the next general election. We have come some way in the last two years. We have talented candidates that show us capable of representing contemporary Britain in all its splendid diversity. We have begun to renew our policies. But we are still only in the foothills of our ascent. The hard climb still lies ahead. We will need stamina and comradeship. We will need to show respect for each other, as well as for our opponents. We will not always agree, but when we differ we will do so with measured thought and reflection. In the contemporary Conservative Party that we forge there will be no place for ancient feuds or rankling discord. We will build afresh, knowing that we have no God-given right to hold our place. Our forebears year after year, generation after generation, have renewed this party’s leasehold tenure in the life of this ancient nation. Today it falls to us to renew it once more. Today once more we are seizing our destiny. Britain deserves better than it has today. It is our destiny to provide it. We must prove that we are equal to the task.