Britain's Priorities Home and Abroad

8th Oct 2002

The last couple of weeks have seen the leading political parties debate the issues of the day at their party conferences. Normal politics is due to resume next week when Parliament returns from recess. The conference season is an important event in the country's political life, as it is one of the most democratic forums for debate and questioning of the different party hierarchies that exists. Apart from the big speeches given to conference delegates, there are also smaller debates, or 'fringe meetings' where, more often than not, the audience gets to tackle and interrogate politicians, sometimes these get quite heated and sometimes some great ideas come out of the fringes as well.

I had the pleasure of speaking at four different fringe meetings during Labour party conference in Blackpool last week, three on education issues and one on the future challenges facing the Labour Party over the next few years. How do we make sure that our children are getting the best education in the world? How can we ensure that every child believes they have a real chance of getting to the top of the ladder whatever their background? How can put in place the necessary changes in our criminal justice system so that we get the right balance between protecting the victim and rehabilitating the criminal? These are some of the tough issues that Labour, now a serious party in government, are trying to tackle day in, day out. There is still so much to do without any doubt and the Government is not complacent about this, trying to listen seriously and reform effectively at the same time.

Beyond all the debates that were taking place, it was interesting to note that it was not reported that one of the big reforms that has made a real difference to millions of working people, the minimum wage, actually went up to £4.20. There are serious reforms that Labour have introduced since 1997 that sometimes don't get much of a mention in public debate. Two speeches that did get a lot of national press coverage were the speeches by Tony Blair and the former US President Bill Clinton, who was a guest speaker.

Although it is pretty fashionable to criticise politics for being unimportant and out of date with people's lives, both Blair and Clinton strongly argued the case for politics in today's world: that politics does really matter.

One of the key challenges of the times we live in, is how to cope with a increasingly smaller world where we are all becoming more and more dependent on each other, whether we live in South Shields or Sydney. There are a great many challenges that we all face now and in the future. They will all affect the security of our local community and for that matter the rest of the planet. For many people in our own town, whatever their political persuasion, issues of unemployment, education and crime remain at the top of people's minds. However, whilst we've got to work together to tackle these, even more challenging problems such as the environment, global poverty and AIDS have to be dealt with also.

Daunting though some these problems really are, we can approach the challenge by being optimistic about our ability to overcome them and do so by working together. Essentially, this doesn't only mean each and every one of us thinking about our own responsibilities to our own local community. As a nation we also have to realise that we have responsibilities and duties to the rest of the world as well. Alternatively, we can be pessimistic and retreat into isolation, hoping that we can overcome these problems by burying our heads in the sand. I believe in the former, not the latter. As the Prime Minister argued in his conference speech, this country has a proud history based on common-sense and boldness. The Britain of the twenty-first century has much to offer the global community as well as much to learn.