David Miliband Acceptance Speech for Labor Party Leader.

The draft text of what the Labour politician planned to say had he been elected party leader in 2010.
Today I set out the modern purpose of our party, and how it is to be fulfilled. To ensure this government, misguided and misbegotten, fake and faulty, as dangerous as it is divided, is sent where it belongs, into the dustbin of history, driven from office as soon as possible. That's the obvious bit. But our purpose is higher and harder. It is to use all the ingenuity of modern society to honour the dignity that should be common to all human beings. It is to build a moral economy and a good society. To protect people from danger. From markets that are not regulated. From the crime that blights lives. From the curse of dementia. And to give people more control of their own lives. Opportunities in education; influence at work; power in public services. This is the common life we forge together. We protect each other; we share power and opportunity. For the many not the few. The cause of the Labour Party since its foundation. The reason I am here today. The reason you are too. My parents, born in the 1920s and 30s, faced a fight for survival. Against forces that seemed unstoppable. But fascism was beaten; by actions large and small, at great personal sacrifice, by people who just did the right thing. The story of my parents' childhood was their vulnerability. The story of mine was security. My parents devoted themselves to building a family on unconditional love and support. It was a warm household in which we were encouraged to think for ourselves; to argue; to make up our own minds. Haven't I learnt that in the last few months? The precious gift my parents granted to me was the chance to make up my own mind. And always the simple ethic: if you can make a difference, you should, and if you don't, it's a waste. A family is a covenant of love; a party is a covenant of trust; and we need to repair our broken trust with the people of Britain. That is what I want to speak about today. This party has always been at its best when it gives voice to moral need: that people should not be treated as subjects by the state nor pushed around as

commodities by the market. Think how the Attlee government distilled the spirit of war time Britain. My Dad served in the Navy for three years. He joined at 18 and was at D-Day. He didn't like hammocks so he slept on the table. These were the stories I was brought up with. When he left his last ship just before the 1945 election, his commanding officer's last words were simple: "Goodbye Miliband, don't vote Labour". But he did. And so did millions of others. And that Government didn't achieve full employment or build 200,000 new houses a year or create the National Health Service just out of thin air. They did it because they understood the historic question they had to answer. How do we build a society fit for heroic people who sacrificed everything to fight for freedom? It sends a shiver of pride down my spine to think that I am leading the party which built the best of modern Britain. But it was done because people knew what they were voting for. Then, in 1997, a Labour government woke the country up after the long dark night of the Tory years. We were in the wilderness, and we inherited a wilderness. No minimum wage. No equal gay rights. No nursery entitlement. No tax credits. Not just people dying waiting for a hospital bed but pensioners waiting in queues for hospital trolleys. In Britain. At the end of the 20th century. Our government had a purpose to stop the rot and start to build. The tragedy is it takes a Tory government to remind people why it is worth having a Labour government. Last year Gordon read out a list of what had been achieved by him, by Tony, by all of us. Two million new jobs. The ban on handguns. The Winter Fuel Allowance. 80 000 more nurses. Free museums. Rights of recognition for trade unions and the end of the union ban at GCHQ. And the small matter of peace in Northern Ireland. Just because we lost doesn't mean they are wrong. We clapped those changes in our country last year and we should clap them again, because if we don't defend our record no one will. Here's the lesson for us. When you know what you are for and why you are needed, the electorate calls on you. In 1945 the task was to build the welfare state fit for a nation that had fought for freedom. We answered that call. In 1997 the task was to restore the tattered state of our nation. We answered that call. In 2010, we defined neither the question nor the answer, neither what we are for nor why we were needed. That is what we need to put right. Our times are not normaland normal politics will not do. Economic power is shifting away from Europe; the traditional bonds of community

have frayed; international alliances are under strain; there isn't much money around; and left of centre parties are losing more elections than they are winning. So there is a special calling for our party To protect people against the problems they cannot face alone, and to give more people more power over their own lives. That is the battleground. This is the political fight. We will be the private sector reformers in the name of growth. No more timidity about the need for effective regulation, no more being outdone on effective welfare reform. We will be the public sector innovators in the name of fairness. Nor truck with the prejudice of public bad private good, no hint of complacency when the public sector is bad. We will be the community builders when the cuts are biting. No mercy in taking on the Big Society, no illusions about the importance of crime, immigration and housing as big issues for our country. We will be the internationalists against the siren calls of protectionism. No illusions about our influence without alliances in Europe and with the US, no nervousness about speaking up for our own values and interests. Duck these debates, ignore these arguments, and the result is clear: we lose, and the poorest and most vulnerable in our society lose the most. Engage the high ground, take on the big points, and we are in the game. Win them, and we get back into government. That is what I intend to do.

Afghanistan

The biggest questions are literally a matter of life and death. The hardest conversations I had in the leadership campaign were about Afghanistan. The man in North Wales thinking about his son going out to serve his countryand worried sick if he will come back. He is right to be worried. It is a very dangerous mission. Our troops are acting with incredible bravery, courage and sacrifice. We are not there to occupy Afghanistan; we are there to prevent occupation by a minority who would not just terrorise the country, but provide safe haven for al qaeda. And we are there not a moment longer than is necessary to ensure we never have to go back. We have read our history. We know that foreign military effort is not the answer to any civil war. The only end is a peace settlement. All those willing to respect the Afghan constitution in the tent. All those linked to al qaeda kept out. The neighbouring countries part of the solution not part of the problem.

Easier said than done. But it's the only way to address the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan in a way that secures our own interests. I say this to David Cameron. We will argue about many things. But not about this. When I first said we needed a peace settlement not just a war strategy I was on my own. Now you have to pick up the baton. There is no other way. And when you take risks for peace you will not hear a word of criticism from me. The choice is not between pretending to be a superpower and retreating to the sidelines. We have values the world needs, assets from military to diplomacy to the world service that the world wants, networks from Europe to the UN to the Commonwealth that we should use. The shrivelled Tory view of Britain in the world, beached between imperial delusion and over-hyped sales talk, is not my view of Britain. One example. The climate change talks need a strong Britain. Yet David Cameron has resigned Gordon Brown's chairmanship of a key UN group on financing the fight against climate change. Sorry: just not good enough. The people of Sri Lanka and Burma need Britain to defend their human rights. The people of sub Saharan Africa need Britain to help them survive. The people of the Middle East need Britain to help them prosper in peace. Our values count at home and our values count abroad. We face a massive question in domestic policy too: the future of our economy. It will define our country for many years to come. We are a market economy. But I don't want to live in a market society. I stand for a moral economy built on moral markets. Markets because we do not fear private enterprise; we celebrate its success; in fact in constituencies like mine we want more of it. Moral because we know it is wrong to play games with the welfare state; that is why we cut in half the level of benefit fraud we inherited from the Tories; but it is also wrong to play fast and loose with other people's money on the trading floors of the City. Responsibility must run from top to bottom or else it does not run at all. All parts of the country should contribute to success. All parts of society need to benefit from growth. And my quarrel with the government is they are getting this wrong at every turn. This government is soft on the banks, hard on the poor, and dangerous for growth.

Moral Economy

I believe in real welfare reform. Every 18-24 year old should be guaranteed a job after six months unemployment, and required to take it. We shouldn't be cutting the plan like the Tories are. We should be extending it. I believe that the economy is still in the danger zone. We shouldn't be cancelling housing and school building programmes. These are private sector jobs in the construction industry. 300 000 people so far, thrown onto the scrapheap. I believe in standing up for all parts of Britain. We are the only party saying that when [750m] of European money is sitting in Brussels for the businesses of Cornwall, it is absolutely crazy for the Government to cut the British funding that would release that European funding. We didn't win any seats in Cornwall. But we'll stand up for Cornwall. There will be no no-go areas under my leadership. I believe government should support real engineering not financial engineering. The Tories are reducing support for manufacturing industry to finance a corporation tax cut that will go to banks and supermarkets. That is not rebalancing the economy; it is lining the pockets of the people who got us into the mess in the first place. We should be doubling the 2bn bank levy to extend the investment allowances for manufacturing industry. They are getting it wrong at every turn. We know the reason they give. The deficit. And there is a deficit. A serious one. Which needs to be reduced. Our government stepped in when the private sector collapsed. It should step back when it regains confidence. This is the biggest argument in politics, and the biggest danger for us. George Osborne says we are in denial about the deficit. Because he wants us to be. So let's not be. It is a test. I profoundly believe the Tories are wrong in their economic judgment. As they push up unemployment and push down confidence, the pain will be severe and real. But however much they are hated we will not benefit until we are trusted. Trusted on the economy as we were in the 1990s. Trusted because we show in word and deed that the alternative to mean government is lean government. Step one is to recognise what is obvious: that we did not abolish the business cycle. We should never have claimed it. You can't in a market economy. And public spending plans cannot depend on it. Nor can you write your own fiscal rules and then be the judge and jury for how they are calculated and when they are met.

We should have been proposing the creation of an Office of Budgetary Responsibility and we should be campaigning today for its accountability to Parliament to be strengthened. There is no point in denying those things; they are true. Step two is to explain that it was not immoral to incur the vast bulk of the deficit to prevent recession turning into Depression; it was necessary; to protect your savings and rescue the economy. And when the history books are written people will admit Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling did lead the world. Step three is to defend Alistair's decision to cut the deficit in half in four years. We need to grow the economy, raise taxes in a fair way and reduce spending. His plan was working. That's why the economy grew in the first half of this year. Fewer unemployed, lower than expected borrowing. Step four is to recognise that we will need to go into the next election with new policies and plans. We are not going to make those policies until the economic context is clearer. And we are going to do so in a careful and deliberate way. Every country in the world is thinking through the right approach to fiscal policy, and the right balance of rules and flexibility. No one is better qualified to assess those ideas than Alistair and he has agreed to lead a Commission on the right fiscal rules for the future, reporting to me and the new Shadow Chancellor. Step five is to prosecute the case against the decision of the new Government to tear up Alistair's plans and embark on the most masochistic programme of spending cuts and tax rises since the 1930s. The issue is not Labour's policy; it is the Tory policy of adding to Labour's plans [666] of spending cuts and tax increases for every man, woman and child in the country. Don't try to blame us Mr Osborne. We had a clear plan for reducing the deficit. You chose to go a lot further, a lot faster. Your choice. Your cuts. It is not us in denial Mr Osborne. It is you in denial about jobs, about growth, about the lives and livelihoods that depend on a growing economy. You are in denial because no country can cut its deficit unless it grows its economy. You prattle on about Canada in the 1990s. But Canada has a 3,000 mile border with the US which at the time was going through the Clinton boom. You have taken the biggest economic gamble in a generation.with other people's lives. David Cameron says his economic plan will "change our way of life". What he means is you the nurse your way of life, you the pensioner your way of

life, you the aspiring university student your way of life, you the housewife your way of life, you the construction worker your way of life I guarantee you this: he doesn't mean his way of life. They said in the election that any mug could save one pound in every 100 they spend. It would be easy to find waste. What is the waste they have cut? The "waste" of university places. The "waste" of jobs for the unemployed. The waste of a nest egg for children. I met Clare in June. For 24 years she has looked after her severely disabled daughter. Then finally in February this year, her daughter [NAME] moved into sheltered accommodation. For the first time she had a modicum of independence, and her mother some respite. Until the cuts arrived. 200 a week Independent Living Fund gone. So instead of a house that is the base for activity, she is now "warehoused". Not my word; Clare's word. That's not a service that has been cut; it's a life that's been cut. Not my words. Clare's words. This is not waste we are talking about. This is Clare's daughter's life. And we are going to fight for Clare and for people like her all over this country. Economic judgement is one thing. Moral judgement is another. Let me make one. To ask people like Clare's daughter to pay the price of your economic policyand then claim it is fair and progressiveis just wrong. There is somebody trying to live an independent life abandoned. This is not a Big Society. It's a Big Con. The Big Society says Government is the problem. And the Tory contract is clear: we do less and you do more. Remember the days when the Liberals were saying "Vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out"? Nick Clegg got it right then. He called it Do it Yourself Britain. My covenant is different: Government works for you and you contribute more yourself. A Good Society means Do it Together Britain not Do it Yourself Britain. A Good Society uses the power of the strong to help the weak; a Good Society says that for every right there is a responsibility; a Good Society says no to mean government and yes to lean government. When you understand, as we do, that government can be a force for good, it can easily sound like you think every problem needs government to solve it.

The Good Society

It doesn't. One quarter of people report a mental health problem. Government can contribute to the answer; but it isn't the answer. Same with loneliness among the elderly; obesity among the young; family break up in middle age. These are issues that go deep to the relationships that people have with each other, not the relationship they have with government. We are socialists not statists. We think government can be a force for good, protecting people from risks beyond their control, giving them more power over their own lives. But we don't measure our success by how big government us. We measure our success by how big are the opportunities for people to determine the course of their own lives. This is about philosophy but it is also about politics. When the Tories position us as the party of big government, they open the way for their agenda of [no] government. The government talk about localism. Without local government. We should be the people standing for more devolution of power for local government and come our next manifesto, we will. We should be the party that builds houses, in partnership with housing associations and the private sector, and come our next manifesto, we will. We should be the people putting government budgets into individual hands. Let them decide the shape of services. Come our next manifesto we will. I have said before that never again will Labour go into a General Election without the support of a single business. Let me also pledge this: never again will we allow the Conservatives to claim the heritage of the cooperative movement, the mutual societies and the community groups that founded our movement. The groups teach us that communities need to come together to help tackle crime. But aren't they much more likely to do so in support of police officers and community support officers, not instead of them? I grew up in a small town outside Leeds for four years in the 1970s. It taught me a lot about what it means to build a strong community. The schools as centres of community; the parents helping with the school sports teams; the school sports teams opening doors and widening horizons. Community is what you feel when you look out of your front window. But community doesn't exist where fear of crime keeps people off the streets. Labour was the first government since the war to cut crime. By 42 per cent. 64 per cent in cases of domestic violence. But crime isn't about percentages it's about people. And one person afflicted is one too many.

The biggest hole in our crime strategy at the moment is around drugs. The trade blights lives and wrecks communities. So far so conventional. Let me say something that doesn't get said. I do not believe we are winning the war on drugs. And until we do we cannot win the war on crime. In this year's manifesto, drugs weren't mentioned. Next time they will be. After we conduct the most searching examination of all angles on this issue, involving police, users, abusers, traders. Tragedy is the Government are not building on our progress to tackle the next set of issues. They are breaking up its foundations. Why have they abolished the policing pledge that said XXXX? Why are they winding up ASBOs? When they are part of a package that is essential to tackling ASB. Why are they undermining the DNA database when it XXX? Why did they propose anonymity for male suspects in rape cases? And wind up Domestic Violence Protection Orders? And suspend the national [rape review inquiry]? Why are the government reviewing CCTV? When it offers security and helped catch the XXX. If they really wanted to strike a blow against the surveillance state David Cameron wouldn't be switching off CCTV cameras. He would be sacking Andy Coulson. Why are they doing all this? For two reasons. First, they cannot bear to accept that anything we did was right. And second, because this Government is fatally conflicted between hug a hoodie and hang em and flog em. Surprise surpriseSimon Hughes and Norman Tebbit don't mix. Now I know what Boris Johnson meant when he said this government was a cross breed between a chiuaua and a bull dog. And the result is that we have a Government without a policy on crime and people without the protection they need. These are our causes and we are going to get them back, in the name of common sense, in the name of decent law abiding people and in the name of the Good Society. The same applies to immigration too. We need an immigration policy fair to people who live here and fair to people who want to come here. Immigration is a big issue. This is an issue we need to understand. It is an issue we need to talk about. It is an issue on which we need to rebuild trust. You don't rebuild trust by claiming to be able to reduce immigrations from 100s of 1000s to 10s of 1000s through a cap that applies to one eighth of

all immigrants and which is opposed by the Business Secretary because it is driving jobs as well as taxes out of Britain. The Government talk about being "open for business". More like "don't come here and pay taxes please, we are British". Labour has never run an uncontrolled immigration policy. I should know. I have got the letters from the Labour Home Secretary in the 1945 government saying that my grandparents could not come here. If you live here, immigration should not undercut your wages or impact on the quality of local services. If you want to come here, you should support yourself and your kids. Immigration has made a huge contribution to our economy and to our public services. Not least to the National Health Service. There is a great Labour vision for the future of health care. More operations done outside hospitals. More integration of health and local authority social services. More support for patients' groups. More preventionbecause 90m a year spent in Liverpool on anti depressants is not good health policy and it's not good social policy. All these things are possible because of what has been done for the NHS over the last 13 yearsby doctors and nurses and secretaries and porters and physios and techniciansand by a Labour Government. Conference: We had to save the NHS in 1997 and we are going to have to save the NHS again now. Remember waiting lists? Very last century. XXXX people on them when we came to office. YYY people waiting longer than 18 weeks for operations. ZZZ waiting more than 18 months. Now the figures are XXX and YYY. Thanks to rights for patients that drive down the time to treatment. This is the difference a Labour government makes. Not to the statistics. To people. Chas Banks is Chairman of the Man U Disabled Supporters Association. He's in the hall today. You can boo him for his taste in football but please clap him as a proud member of XX Labour Party. His wife has just been through Labour's NHS. 16 days from diagnosis to treatment. Fit and well. Thanks to the NHS. Also with us today. Also campaigning for the Labour Party. Clap her too. But there is a difference. Chas wasn't born in a wheelchair. In 1996 he wasn't feeling too well. Went to the docs. Couldn't get diagnosed for 18 months because of the waiting lists. When he did it was too late. A wasting disease that could have been treated if caught early has put him in a wheelchair for life.

He's not asking for sympathy. He is asking the country to wake up to what is going on. Twice a week Chas has been getting physio. That is being cut, probably to zero, by his Tory Council. The state of the NHS under the Tories put him in a wheelchair in the 1990s. The public spending plans of the Tories now are taking away the money that helps him get out of the wheelchair. And while Chas's money is being cut, what is their priority for the health service? The biggest management reorganisation in the history of the NHS. 1.7bn this year alone. Not the patient coming first offices, carpets and redundancy pay first. Mental health services in limbo. Physiotherapy left adrift. Health inequalities off the agenda. And 500 groups of GPs, all paying for Chief Executives and managers, to buy services from [400] hospitals and trusts. That is a recipe for accountants coming first, hospitals second, doctors third and patients left behind. Mr Cameron: it is no good making pious speeches about your love for the NHS in Opposition, if you then set about destroying it in Government. Doctors don't want it, nurses don't want it, patients don't want itI don't want itand with your help I am going to lead the most fearless and imaginative campaign to expose the sheer idiocy and vandalism of what they are doing. There were no questions on health at the Prime Ministerial Debates. Only one on education. Not because we failed. But because we succeeded. The best generation of teachers ever. The best equipped schools ever. The best exam results ever. We've seen already the Tories don't know what they're doing. We want parents engaged in their kids' education. As Schools Minister I funded Redland School in Bristol to meet parental demand. That's a good thing. But you don't rob the school down the road of pupils and funds and teachers to do it. You get them working together. We want schools to innovate. That is why we legislated for Trust schools. But you don't make the price of innovation opting out of the local schooling system. We want to build on the Academies programme. It is designed for the toughest schools in the toughest places. The results are good. But you don't build on it by shoving the money towards the most successful schools in the system.

We want more professional leadership in the system. You don't do that by abolishing the new primary curriculum those professionals have created without any consultation at all. The Tories say they want those things too. Yes they do. For 50 schools. I want an education policy that takes all children seriously, that cares for poor as well as rich and which includes every one of the 23 000 schools right across this country... and in our next manifesto we will. That's because we know what are about. Power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few. Inspiring words. You can see them on your membership cards. Turn them from words into deeds and you transform this country. I don't want to be the Labour leader who rewrites Clause IV. I want to be the Labour leader who puts it into practice. And for that we need a different kind of party and a different kind of politics. We don't need a Clause IV moment. We do need a Clause I moment. When we address the organisation of our party. When we turn ourselves into a successful electoral machine by becoming a movement again. Our founders did not start by forming a party to seek votes. They started by building a movement to make change. A Labour movement. Trade unions, faith groups, community organisations. Standing for the dignity of man against a state that didn't listen and a market that didn't care. We've got to learn from that again. We need to make Labour the biggest community organisation in Britain. The biggest ally any community can have in the fight for affordable housing, decent jobs, safer streets. That is why in my leadership campaign I trained 1000 community organisers around the country. Unleashing energy. Reviving politics by making it relevant. People not programmes; action not press releases; streets not just committee rooms; conversations not grand plans. If we can train 1000 community organisers in four months then in the course of this Parliament we can train Labour party members to organise in every community in the country starting in the 100 seats where Tory and Lib Dem MPs are fearing for their future. It's simple really. We will only get people to join Labour if we join them, in the campaigns that matter to them. When we join them they will want to join us. And we need to be ready.

Route to Power

Ready for the local elections with the leader of Labour's councillors sitting in the shadow cabinet and the Leaders of Labour in Wales and Scotland sitting on the NEC. Ready with options for cut price membership. In Pudsey they have promised to raise at least as much money as generated by the current membership fee if I allow them to offer free membership. It's a deal. Let's get a dozen parties around the country trying it. Ready with a fundraising operation that can beat Ashcroft's millions. Ready with policy making and political education and campaigning that is real. Ready with a party chair responsible for organisation and campaigning in the party, elected by the party and let's get that done by Spring Conference. Ready with candidates selected asap in the 100 seats we need to win, with proper support from regional offices and a proper contract for candidates about activity in their community. That is what I mean by a living, breathing movement, in touch with every community in the country, and ready to take on the Tories in every community in the country.

Conclusion

I started this leadership campaign saddened by defeat and really concerned about the future of the party. The results in May were bad. Very very bad. I salute the outstanding efforts of party members and trade unionsall weather friends who stood with us. But it was Dunkirk not D-Day. Eight out of ten of our neighbours, relatives, workmates did not vote for us. We have 12 Labour MPs out of 210 in the South of England. We have a mountain to climb. A mountain of suspicion and mistrust from the public. A mountain of money and legislation that the government want to ram through. A mountain of hard thinking about a world that is changing. And a mountain of history. Only four Labour leaders have ever been elected Prime Minister. Out of 14. Reflect on that. Many good menlots of hard workbut only four have led us to victory. As we learn the lessons of the recent past, and use the beauty of hindsight to talk about mistakes, just remember three massive election victories, twice as long in Government as we have ever achieved before, a party

changed for the better, and a country improved beyond recognitionthere is a lot we have to thank Tony Blair for. This leadership election, the new members, the new councillors, shows something is stirring. Something inspiring. We are not waiting to lose three times before we get our act together. Everyone I have met has impressed me with their conviction. For some, they have been willing to recommit after what they thought were the breaches of the past. For others a quiet religious belief about right and wrong. For others still, a gentle humanity or a burning anger. For some, a quiet sense of patriotism. For Charles Smith, it's just what he does. He is here today and he has inspired me. I met him in Chesterfield. The last Labour leader he met was George Lansbury. He has been a member of the party for 74 years. He is as passionate about the future of Britain today as he was in 1936...that is the spirit of the Labour Party. When we see something wrong we want to put it right. When we see an injustice we want to tackle it. Is that not why we joined the Labour Party? Is that not the beating heart of our movement? And is that heart not beating louder today? Is that not the great hope for Britain? A small country that does big things. Not just in history but today. The world leader in X. The home of Y. The best at Z. These are born of the British character. Passionate but not showy. Sceptical but open minded. Slow to change but quick to adapt. Looking for a new kind of leadership for new times. We are a new political generation. Idealistic but not dogmatic. Forged in the hard graft of government, not the futility of defeat in 1992. We are a new generation that will create a new coalition to bring us back to power. Not a coalition of convenience. A coalition of conviction. A coalition of the forward thinking parts of business and the public sec tor. A coalition of North and South. A coalition of people in every class who want to get on and up the ladder, but who don't want to then kick the ladder away. For everyone who wants to make a better life for themselves I want them to know: the Labour party is on their side. We want understand your concerns, we want to share your hopes and we are in business to help you improve your lives. We know what we are for, not just what we are against. A moral economy. A good society. An open, creative, campaigning, united Labour Party.

You will bring out the best in my leadership if I bring out the best in your leadership. That is what I am determined to do. Together we can be the change that Britain needs