WEBVTT 00:00:00.803 --> 00:00:03.587 So little Billy goes to school, 00:00:03.587 --> 00:00:06.344 and he sits down and the teacher says, 00:00:06.344 --> 00:00:09.349 "What does your father do?" 00:00:09.349 --> 00:00:13.006 And little Billy says, "My father plays the piano 00:00:13.006 --> 00:00:16.112 in an opium den." 00:00:16.112 --> 00:00:18.101 So the teacher rings up the parents, and says, 00:00:18.101 --> 00:00:21.355 "Very shocking story from little Billy today. 00:00:21.355 --> 00:00:25.104 Just heard that he claimed that you play the piano 00:00:25.104 --> 00:00:27.264 in an opium den." 00:00:27.264 --> 00:00:31.123 And the father says, "I'm very sorry. Yes, it's true, I lied. 00:00:31.123 --> 00:00:34.754 But how can I tell an eight-year-old boy 00:00:34.754 --> 00:00:39.163 that his father is a politician?" (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:39.163 --> 00:00:42.411 Now, as a politician myself, standing in front of you, 00:00:42.411 --> 00:00:46.066 or indeed, meeting any stranger anywhere in the world, 00:00:46.066 --> 00:00:48.642 when I eventually reveal the nature of my profession, 00:00:48.642 --> 00:00:51.736 they look at me as though I'm somewhere between 00:00:51.736 --> 00:00:56.490 a snake, a monkey and an iguana, 00:00:56.490 --> 00:01:00.432 and through all of this, I feel, strongly, 00:01:00.432 --> 00:01:03.414 that something is going wrong. 00:01:03.414 --> 00:01:06.610 Four hundred years of maturing democracy, 00:01:06.610 --> 00:01:09.478 colleagues in Parliament who seem to me, as individuals, 00:01:09.478 --> 00:01:13.056 reasonably impressive, an increasingly educated, 00:01:13.056 --> 00:01:17.703 energetic, informed population, and yet 00:01:17.703 --> 00:01:22.607 a deep, deep sense of disappointment. 00:01:22.607 --> 00:01:26.579 My colleagues in Parliament include, in my new intake, 00:01:26.579 --> 00:01:31.333 family doctors, businesspeople, professors, 00:01:31.333 --> 00:01:35.556 distinguished economists, historians, writers, 00:01:35.556 --> 00:01:40.558 army officers ranging from colonels down to regimental sergeant majors. 00:01:40.558 --> 00:01:44.219 All of them, however, including myself, as we walk underneath 00:01:44.219 --> 00:01:48.327 those strange stone gargoyles just down the road, 00:01:48.327 --> 00:01:52.353 feel that we've become less than the sum of our parts, 00:01:52.353 --> 00:01:58.026 feel as though we have become profoundly diminished. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:58.026 --> 00:02:02.154 And this isn't just a problem in Britain. 00:02:02.154 --> 00:02:04.887 It's a problem across the developing world, 00:02:04.887 --> 00:02:07.521 and in middle income countries too. In Jamaica, 00:02:07.521 --> 00:02:10.829 for example -- look at Jamaican members of Parliament, 00:02:10.829 --> 00:02:13.809 you meet them, and they're often people who are 00:02:13.809 --> 00:02:19.253 Rhodes Scholars, who've studied at Harvard or at Princeton, 00:02:19.253 --> 00:02:22.314 and yet, you go down to downtown Kingston, 00:02:22.314 --> 00:02:25.958 and you are looking at one of the most depressing sites 00:02:25.958 --> 00:02:30.043 that you can see in any middle-income country in the world: 00:02:30.043 --> 00:02:32.806 a dismal, depressing landscape 00:02:32.806 --> 00:02:35.996 of burnt and half-abandoned buildings. 00:02:35.996 --> 00:02:39.124 And this has been true for 30 years, and the handover 00:02:39.124 --> 00:02:43.390 in 1979, 1980, between one Jamaican leader who was 00:02:43.390 --> 00:02:46.865 the son of a Rhodes Scholar and a Q.C. to another 00:02:46.865 --> 00:02:50.095 who'd done an economics doctorate at Harvard, 00:02:50.095 --> 00:02:53.098 over 800 people were killed in the streets 00:02:53.098 --> 00:02:56.625 in drug-related violence. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:56.625 --> 00:03:00.107 Ten years ago, however, the promise of democracy 00:03:00.107 --> 00:03:04.090 seemed to be extraordinary. George W. Bush stood up 00:03:04.090 --> 00:03:07.250 in his State of the Union address in 2003 00:03:07.250 --> 00:03:11.279 and said that democracy was the force that would beat 00:03:11.279 --> 00:03:14.305 most of the ills of the world. He said, 00:03:14.305 --> 00:03:18.078 because democratic governments respect their own people 00:03:18.078 --> 00:03:23.812 and respect their neighbors, freedom will bring peace. 00:03:23.812 --> 00:03:27.446 Distinguished academics at the same time argued that 00:03:27.446 --> 00:03:31.124 democracies had this incredible range of side benefits. 00:03:31.124 --> 00:03:34.424 They would bring prosperity, security, 00:03:34.424 --> 00:03:37.245 overcome sectarian violence, 00:03:37.245 --> 00:03:41.710 ensure that states would never again harbor terrorists. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:41.710 --> 00:03:44.064 Since then, what's happened? 00:03:44.064 --> 00:03:47.258 Well, what we've seen is the creation, in places like Iraq 00:03:47.258 --> 00:03:51.246 and Afghanistan, of democratic systems of government 00:03:51.246 --> 00:03:54.136 which haven't had any of those side benefits. 00:03:54.136 --> 00:03:57.129 In Afghanistan, for example, we haven't just had one election 00:03:57.129 --> 00:03:59.796 or two elections. We've gone through three elections, 00:03:59.796 --> 00:04:02.923 presidential and parliamentary. And what do we find? 00:04:02.923 --> 00:04:06.534 Do we find a flourishing civil society, a vigorous rule of law 00:04:06.534 --> 00:04:09.995 and good security? No. What we find in Afghanistan 00:04:09.995 --> 00:04:14.140 is a judiciary that is weak and corrupt, 00:04:14.140 --> 00:04:18.325 a very limited civil society which is largely ineffective, 00:04:18.325 --> 00:04:21.329 a media which is beginning to get onto its feet 00:04:21.329 --> 00:04:24.154 but a government that's deeply unpopular, 00:04:24.154 --> 00:04:27.922 perceived as being deeply corrupt, and security 00:04:27.922 --> 00:04:31.735 that is shocking, security that's terrible. 00:04:31.735 --> 00:04:36.393 In Pakistan, in lots of sub-Saharan Africa, 00:04:36.393 --> 00:04:39.385 again you can see democracy and elections are compatible 00:04:39.385 --> 00:04:43.234 with corrupt governments, with states that are unstable 00:04:43.234 --> 00:04:46.091 and dangerous. 00:04:46.091 --> 00:04:48.375 And when I have conversations with people, I remember 00:04:48.375 --> 00:04:51.256 having a conversation, for example, in Iraq, 00:04:51.256 --> 00:04:53.945 with a community that asked me 00:04:53.945 --> 00:04:57.455 whether the riot we were seeing in front of us, 00:04:57.455 --> 00:05:01.278 this was a huge mob ransacking a provincial council building, 00:05:01.278 --> 00:05:05.970 was a sign of the new democracy. 00:05:05.970 --> 00:05:10.111 The same, I felt, was true in almost every single one 00:05:10.111 --> 00:05:13.059 of the middle and developing countries that I went to, 00:05:13.059 --> 00:05:17.110 and to some extent the same is true of us. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:17.110 --> 00:05:19.686 Well, what is the answer to this? Is the answer to just 00:05:19.686 --> 00:05:22.344 give up on the idea of democracy? 00:05:22.344 --> 00:05:26.086 Well, obviously not. It would be absurd 00:05:26.086 --> 00:05:28.873 if we were to engage again in the kind of operations 00:05:28.873 --> 00:05:31.949 we were engaged in, in Iraq and Afghanistan 00:05:31.949 --> 00:05:35.469 if we were to suddenly find ourselves in a situation 00:05:35.469 --> 00:05:38.144 in which we were imposing 00:05:38.144 --> 00:05:40.583 anything other than a democratic system. 00:05:40.583 --> 00:05:43.135 Anything else would run contrary to our values, 00:05:43.135 --> 00:05:45.386 it would run contrary to the wishes of the people 00:05:45.386 --> 00:05:49.009 on the ground, it would run contrary to our interests. 00:05:49.009 --> 00:05:52.316 I remember in Iraq, for example, that we went through 00:05:52.316 --> 00:05:54.857 a period of feeling that we should delay democracy. 00:05:54.857 --> 00:05:57.549 We went through a period of feeling that the lesson learned 00:05:57.549 --> 00:06:01.127 from Bosnia was that elections held too early 00:06:01.127 --> 00:06:05.361 enshrined sectarian violence, enshrined extremist parties, 00:06:05.361 --> 00:06:08.179 so in Iraq in 2003 the decision was made, 00:06:08.179 --> 00:06:11.296 let's not have elections for two years. Let's invest in 00:06:11.296 --> 00:06:15.468 voter education. Let's invest in democratization. 00:06:15.468 --> 00:06:19.486 The result was that I found stuck outside my office 00:06:19.486 --> 00:06:21.658 a huge crowd of people, this is actually a photograph 00:06:21.658 --> 00:06:25.138 taken in Libya but I saw the same scene in Iraq 00:06:25.138 --> 00:06:29.263 of people standing outside screaming for the elections, 00:06:29.263 --> 00:06:32.029 and when I went out and said, "What is wrong 00:06:32.029 --> 00:06:34.989 with the interim provincial council? 00:06:34.989 --> 00:06:38.657 What is wrong with the people that we have chosen? 00:06:38.657 --> 00:06:41.402 There is a Sunni sheikh, there's a Shiite sheikh, 00:06:41.402 --> 00:06:44.553 there's the seven -- leaders of the seven major tribes, 00:06:44.553 --> 00:06:47.107 there's a Christian, there's a Sabian, 00:06:47.107 --> 00:06:51.351 there are female representatives, there's every political party in this council, 00:06:51.351 --> 00:06:53.991 what's wrong with the people that we chose?" 00:06:53.991 --> 00:06:57.089 The answer came, "The problem isn't the people 00:06:57.089 --> 00:07:02.890 that you chose. The problem is that you chose them." 00:07:02.890 --> 00:07:06.322 I have not met, in Afghanistan, in even the most 00:07:06.322 --> 00:07:09.449 remote community, anybody who does not want 00:07:09.449 --> 00:07:12.233 a say in who governs them. 00:07:12.233 --> 00:07:14.294 Most remote community, I have never met a villager 00:07:14.294 --> 00:07:17.876 who does not want a vote. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:17.876 --> 00:07:21.156 So we need to acknowledge 00:07:21.156 --> 00:07:24.738 that despite the dubious statistics, despite the fact that 00:07:24.738 --> 00:07:30.161 84 percent of people in Britain feel politics is broken, 00:07:30.161 --> 00:07:33.133 despite the fact that when I was in Iraq, we did an opinion poll 00:07:33.133 --> 00:07:37.391 in 2003 and asked people what political systems they preferred, 00:07:37.391 --> 00:07:39.715 and the answer came back that 00:07:39.715 --> 00:07:42.776 seven percent wanted the United States, 00:07:42.776 --> 00:07:45.499 five percent wanted France, 00:07:45.499 --> 00:07:48.154 three percent wanted Britain, 00:07:48.154 --> 00:07:52.509 and nearly 40 percent wanted Dubai, which is, after all, 00:07:52.509 --> 00:07:55.275 not a democratic state at all but a relatively prosperous 00:07:55.275 --> 00:07:59.978 minor monarchy, democracy is a thing of value 00:07:59.978 --> 00:08:03.140 for which we should be fighting. But in order to do so 00:08:03.140 --> 00:08:06.492 we need to get away from instrumental arguments. 00:08:06.492 --> 00:08:10.060 We need to get away from saying democracy matters 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:13.167 because of the other things it brings. 00:08:13.167 --> 00:08:15.292 We need to get away from feeling, in the same way, 00:08:15.292 --> 00:08:18.889 human rights matters because of the other things it brings, 00:08:18.889 --> 00:08:22.581 or women's rights matters for the other things it brings. 00:08:22.581 --> 00:08:24.885 Why should we get away from those arguments? 00:08:24.885 --> 00:08:27.289 Because they're very dangerous. If we set about saying, 00:08:27.289 --> 00:08:31.982 for example, torture is wrong because it doesn't extract 00:08:31.982 --> 00:08:37.180 good information, or we say, you need women's rights 00:08:37.180 --> 00:08:41.860 because it stimulates economic growth by doubling the size of the work force, 00:08:41.860 --> 00:08:43.517 you leave yourself open to the position where 00:08:43.517 --> 00:08:45.610 the government of North Korea can turn around and say, 00:08:45.610 --> 00:08:48.473 "Well actually, we're having a lot of success extracting 00:08:48.473 --> 00:08:50.974 good information with our torture at the moment," 00:08:50.974 --> 00:08:52.934 or the government of Saudi Arabia to say, "Well, 00:08:52.934 --> 00:08:54.663 our economic growth's okay, thank you very much, 00:08:54.663 --> 00:08:56.123 considerably better than yours, 00:08:56.123 --> 00:09:00.929 so maybe we don't need to go ahead with this program on women's rights." NOTE Paragraph 00:09:00.929 --> 00:09:04.610 The point about democracy is not instrumental. 00:09:04.610 --> 00:09:07.399 It's not about the things that it brings. 00:09:07.399 --> 00:09:09.964 The point about democracy is not that it delivers 00:09:09.964 --> 00:09:16.208 legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law. 00:09:16.208 --> 00:09:20.853 It's not that it guarantees peace with itself or with its neighbors. 00:09:20.853 --> 00:09:23.770 The point about democracy is intrinsic. 00:09:23.770 --> 00:09:29.101 Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality 00:09:29.101 --> 00:09:33.509 and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, 00:09:33.509 --> 00:09:37.379 the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual 00:09:37.379 --> 00:09:40.980 should have an equal vote, an equal say, 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:44.975 in the formation of their government. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:44.975 --> 00:09:49.041 But if we're really to make democracy vigorous again, 00:09:49.041 --> 00:09:51.654 if we're ready to revivify it, we need to get involved 00:09:51.654 --> 00:09:56.455 in a new project of the citizens and the politicians. 00:09:56.455 --> 00:10:00.843 Democracy is not simply a question of structures. 00:10:00.843 --> 00:10:04.860 It is a state of mind. It is an activity. 00:10:04.860 --> 00:10:08.651 And part of that activity is honesty. 00:10:08.651 --> 00:10:12.189 After I speak to you today, I'm going on a radio program 00:10:12.189 --> 00:10:14.492 called "Any Questions," and the thing you will have noticed 00:10:14.492 --> 00:10:18.292 about politicians on these kinds of radio programs 00:10:18.292 --> 00:10:21.757 is that they never, ever say that they don't know the answer 00:10:21.757 --> 00:10:23.392 to a question. It doesn't matter what it is. 00:10:23.392 --> 00:10:26.744 If you ask about child tax credits, the future of the penguins 00:10:26.744 --> 00:10:31.366 in the south Antarctic, asked to hold forth on whether or not 00:10:31.366 --> 00:10:33.998 the developments in Chongqing contribute 00:10:33.998 --> 00:10:36.332 to sustainable development in carbon capture, 00:10:36.332 --> 00:10:39.094 and we will have an answer for you. 00:10:39.094 --> 00:10:42.279 We need to stop that, to stop pretending to be 00:10:42.279 --> 00:10:44.164 omniscient beings. 00:10:44.164 --> 00:10:47.724 Politicians also need to learn, occasionally, to say that 00:10:47.724 --> 00:10:51.470 certain things that voters want, certain things that voters 00:10:51.470 --> 00:10:55.333 have been promised, may be things 00:10:55.333 --> 00:10:58.478 that we cannot deliver 00:10:58.478 --> 00:11:02.260 or perhaps that we feel we should not deliver. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:02.260 --> 00:11:05.151 And the second thing we should do is understand 00:11:05.151 --> 00:11:08.143 the genius of our societies. 00:11:08.143 --> 00:11:12.172 Our societies have never been so educated, have never 00:11:12.172 --> 00:11:15.108 been so energized, have never been so healthy, 00:11:15.108 --> 00:11:18.056 have never known so much, cared so much, 00:11:18.056 --> 00:11:23.952 or wanted to do so much, and it is a genius of the local. 00:11:23.952 --> 00:11:26.650 One of the reasons why we're moving away 00:11:26.650 --> 00:11:30.151 from banqueting halls such as the one in which we stand, 00:11:30.151 --> 00:11:34.627 banqueting halls with extraordinary images on the ceiling 00:11:34.627 --> 00:11:36.402 of kings enthroned, 00:11:36.402 --> 00:11:39.554 the entire drama played out here on this space, 00:11:39.554 --> 00:11:42.413 where the King of England had his head lopped off, 00:11:42.413 --> 00:11:46.744 why we've moved from spaces like this, thrones like that, 00:11:46.744 --> 00:11:50.469 towards the town hall, is we're moving more and more 00:11:50.469 --> 00:11:54.417 towards the energies of our people, and we need to tap that. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:54.417 --> 00:11:57.207 That can mean different things in different countries. 00:11:57.207 --> 00:12:00.520 In Britain, it could mean looking to the French, 00:12:00.520 --> 00:12:02.263 learning from the French, 00:12:02.263 --> 00:12:05.892 getting directly elected mayors in place 00:12:05.892 --> 00:12:08.380 in a French commune system. 00:12:08.380 --> 00:12:11.214 In Afghanistan, it could have meant instead of concentrating 00:12:11.214 --> 00:12:13.768 on the big presidential and parliamentary elections, 00:12:13.768 --> 00:12:16.085 we should have done what was in the Afghan constitution 00:12:16.085 --> 00:12:20.765 from the very beginning, which is to get direct local elections going 00:12:20.765 --> 00:12:26.312 at a district level and elect people's provincial governors. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:26.312 --> 00:12:29.035 But for any of these things to work, 00:12:29.035 --> 00:12:31.858 the honesty in language, the local democracy, 00:12:31.858 --> 00:12:34.626 it's not just a question of what politicians do. 00:12:34.626 --> 00:12:36.694 It's a question of what the citizens do. 00:12:36.694 --> 00:12:41.601 For politicians to be honest, the public needs to allow them to be honest, 00:12:41.601 --> 00:12:44.180 and the media, which mediates between the politicians 00:12:44.180 --> 00:12:48.811 and the public, needs to allow those politicians to be honest. 00:12:48.811 --> 00:12:52.433 If local democracy is to flourish, it is about the active 00:12:52.433 --> 00:12:56.669 and informed engagement of every citizen. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:56.669 --> 00:13:01.070 In other words, if democracy is to be rebuilt, 00:13:01.070 --> 00:13:05.394 is to become again vigorous and vibrant, 00:13:05.394 --> 00:13:08.540 it is necessary not just for the public 00:13:08.540 --> 00:13:11.454 to learn to trust their politicians, 00:13:11.454 --> 00:13:16.326 but for the politicians to learn to trust the public. 00:13:16.326 --> 00:13:20.326 Thank you very much indeed. (Applause)