Prime Minister Gordon Brown: 'Towards a New Politics'

Tuesday, 02 February 2010 13:36

The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP today delivered the first address in IPPR’s series of speeches by senior politicians and leading thinkers on a progressive future for Britain, as we approach the next general election.

Speaking at the Royal Society of Arts, the Prime Minister set out his vision for ‘A New Politics’. He said:

‘It's clear people want to change the way politics is done in this country. People want to get involved in big causes and want to be part of a strong community, as they showed so movingly in the recent Haiti disaster appeal and in campaigns like Make Poverty History before it, but we have to accept we have a lot to do to make politics the focus of their idealism and their hopes.

‘From young people who have more faith in single issue campaigns than broad based party programmes, to the people who say they won't vote, to those who are tempted by the fringes and the extremes, it is clear that the way we do politics in the future needs to be different from the past.

‘And while the vast majority of MPs work around the clock to serve their communities, it is clear that the public have been rightly outraged by the expenses crisis, so trust needs to be restored.

‘And so the question today is do we make the championing of the renewal of politics and a new constitutional settlement a central cause for this decade, or do we just talk about change without giving it substance?'

‘Whether we advance towards a new politics, where individuals have more say and more control over their lives or whether - by doing nothing, or by design - we retreat into a discredited old politics, leaving power concentrated in the hands of the old elites.

‘Let me be specific about the choices:

‘It is a choice between the new politics of ending the hereditary principle in the Lords in a bill before parliament now, or letting it continue for far too long into the future.

‘It's a choice between agreeing to move ahead with a democratically accountable House of Lords or postponing further change for more than a decade.

‘It is a choice between the new politics of offering the people the chance to ensure each MP has a majority mandate from the voters and the old politics of 'no change'.

‘It is a choice between the new politics of giving the people a right to recall MPs who break the rules where parliament itself fails to act, or refusing the people a say even if members place their personal greed above their public duty.

‘It is a choice between putting into people's hands more rights to information and to a say over the work of government or a constitutional stalemate.

‘And it is a choice which today also goes to the heart of the delivery of our public services - giving people new rights to control the services they depend upon -or simply muddling through in the old ways.

‘The new politics is, in essence, a choice between parties who want to make the people more powerful and those who talk about change but reject the changes that would genuinely empower people. ‘

Read the full transcript of the speech here.