Transcriber: Zhiting Chen Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
Thank you all very much for coming
and I was gonna start with a small story.
So little Billy goes to school.
He sits down and the teacher says:
"What does your father do?"
And little Billy says:
"My father plays the piano in an opium den."
So the teacher rings up the parents and says:
"Very shocking story from little Billy today.
Just heard that he claimed that
you play the piano in an opium den."
And the father says: "I am very sorry.
Yes, it's true, I lied,
but how can I tell an eight-year-old boy
that his father is a politician."
(Laughter)
Now as a politician myself,
standing in front of you indeed,
meeting any stranger anywhere in the world,
when I eventually reveal the nature of my profession,
they look at me as though
I am somewhere between a snake,
a monkey and an iguana.
And through all of this, I feel strongly,
that something is going wrong.
Four hundred years of maturing democracy,
colleagues in Parliament who seem to me, as individuals,
reasonably impressive,
an increasingly educated energetic informed population,
and yet, a deep, deep sense of disappointment.
My colleagues in Parliament include my new intake,
family doctors, business people, professors,
distinguished economists, historians, writers,
army officers ranging from colonels
down to regimental sergeants majors,
all of them however, including myself,
as we walk underneath
the strange stone gargoyles just down the road;
feel that we become less than the sum of our parts;
feel as though we have become profoundly diminished.
and this isn't just a problem in Britain.
It is a problem across the developing world
and middle income countries too.
In Jamaica for example,
look at Jamaican members of Parliament,
you meet them,
and they are often people who are great scholars,
who studied at Harvard or Princeton,
and yet, you go down to downtown Kingston,
and you are looking at one of the most depressing sites
that you can see in any middle income country in the world:
a dismal, depressing landscape
of burnt and half abandoned buildings.
And this has been true for thirty years
and the handover in 1979, 1980,
between one Jamaican leader
who was the son of a Rhodes scholar
and a QC to another,
who'd done an economics doctorate at Harvard,
over 800 people were killed in the streets
in drug-related violence.
Ten years ago however, the promise of democracy,
seemed to be extraordinary.
George W. Bush stood up
in his State of the Union address in 2003
and said that democracy was the force
that would beat most of the odds in the world.
He said because democratic governments
respect their own people
and respect their neighbors,
freedom will bring peace.
Distinguished academics at the same time argued that
democracies had this incredible range of side benefits,
they would bring prosperity, security,
overcome sectarian violence,
insure that states would never again harbor terrorists.
Since then, what's happened?
Well, what we've seen is the creation,
in places like Iraq and Afghanistan,
of democratic systems of government
which haven't had any of those side benefits.
In Afghanistan for example,
we haven't had just one election or two elections,
we've gone through three elections,
presidential and parliamentary
and what do we find?
Do we find a flourishing civil society,
a vigorous rule of law and good security?
No!
What we find in Afghanistan is a judiciary,
that is weak and corrupt,
a very limited civil society
which is largely ineffective,
a media which is beginning to get onto its feet
but a government that's deeply unpopular,
perceived as being deeply corrupt,
and security that is shocking.
Security that's terrible.
In Pakistan, in lots of sub-saharan Africa,
again you can see,
democracy and elections are compatible with corrupt
governments with states that are unstable and dangerous.
When I have conversations with people,
I remember having a conversation
for example, in Iraq,
with a community that asked me,
whether the riot we were seeing in front of us
-- this was a huge mob
ransacking a provincial council building --
was a sign of the new democracy.
The same, I felt, was true
in almost every single one
of the middle and developing countries I went to,
and to some extent, the same is true
-- that's where we should be putting
the spotlight back on British politicians --
is true of us.
What is the answer to this?
Is the answer to just give up on the idea of democracy?
Well, obviously not!
It would be absurd if we were to engage again
in a kind of operations we were engaged in
in Iraq and Afghanistan,
if we would suddenly find ourselves in a situation
in which we were imposing anything
other than a democratic system.
Anything else would run contrary to our values,
it would run contrary to the wishes of people on the ground,
it would run contrary to our interests.
I remember,
in Iraq for example,
that we went through a period of feeling that
we should delay democracy.
We went through a period of feeling
that the lesson learnt from Bosnia was
that elections held too early
enshrine sectarian violence, enshrined extremist parties.
So in Iraq in 2003,
decision was made,
let's not have elections for two years.
Let's invest in voter education,
let's invest in democratization.
The result was, that I found,
stuck outside my office, a huge crowd of people,
-- that's actually a photograph taken in Libya,
but I saw the same scene in Iraq --
of people standing outside
screaming for the elections.
And when I went out and said,
"What is wrong with the interim provincial council?
What is wrong with the people that we have chosen?
There is Sunnite cheikh, there is a Shiah cheikh,
there's the seven leaders of the seven major tribes,
there is a Christian, there is a Serbian,
there are female representatives,
there is every political party in this council,
what's wrong with the people that we chose?"
The answer came,
"The problem isn't the people that you chose,
the problem is that you chose them."
I have not met, in Afghanistan,
in even the most remote community
anybody who does not want a say in who governs them.
Most remote community,
I've never met a villager who does not want a vote.
So, we need to acknowledge
that despite the dubious statistics,
despite the fact that 84% of people in Britain
feel politics is broken,
despite the fact that when I was in Iraq,
we did an opinion poll in 2003
and asked people what political systems they prefered
and the answer came back that
7% wanted United States, 5% wanted France,
3% wanted Britain,
and nearly 40% wanted Dubai
which is after all not a democratic state at all,
but relatively prosperous minor monarchy.
Democracy is a thing, a value,
for which we should be fighting.
But in order to do so,
we need to get away from instrumental arguments,
we need to get away from saying democracy matters
because of the other things it brings.
We need to get away from feeling
in the same way human rights matters
because the other things it brings
Or women's rights matters for the other things it brings.
Why should we get away from these arguments?
Because they are very dangerous.
If we set about saying for example,
torture is wrong
because it doesn't extract good information,
or we say, you need women's rights
because it stimulates economic growth
by doubling the size of the workforce,
you leave yourself open to the position
where the government of North Korea
can turn around and say,
"Well actually we are having a lot of success
extracting good information without torture at the moment."
Or the government in Saudi Arabia to say,
"Our economic growth is ok,
thank you very much, considerably better than yours."
So maybe we don't need
to go ahead with this programme on women's rights
The point about democracy
is not instrumental.
It is not about the things that it brings,
the point about democracy is not that it delivers
legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law,
it's not that it guarantees
peace for itself or for its neighbors,
the point about democracy is intrinsic.
Democracy matters because
it reflects an idea of equality
and an idea of liberty.
It reflects an idea of dignity,
the dignity of individual.
The idea that each individual
should have an equal vote, an equal say,
in the formation of their government.
But if we're really to make democracy vigorous again,
for really to revivify it,
we need to get involved in a new project
of the citizens and the politicians.
Democracy is not simply a question of structures:
it is a state of mind,
it is an activity.
And part of that activity is honesty.
After I speak to you today,
I'm going on a radio programme called
And the thing you would have noticed about politicians
on this kind of radio programmes
is they never ever say that
they don't know the answer to a question,
doesn't matter what it is.
They ask about child, tax, credits,
the future of the penguins in the South Antarctic,
or hold forth whether or not
the development in Chongqing contribute
to sustainable development in carbon capture
and we will have an answer for you.
We need to stop that.
to stop pretending to be omniscient beings.
Politicians also need to learn occasionally to say that
certain things that voters want,
certain things that voters have been promised,
may be things that we cannot deliver
or perhaps that we feel we should not deliver.
And the second thing we should do
is understand the genius of our societies.
Our societies have never been so educated,
have never been so energized,
have never been so healthy,
have never known so much,
cared so much or wanted to do so much,
and it is a genius of the local
One of the reasons why
we're moving away from banqueting halls
such as the one in which we stand,
banqueting halls with extraordinary images on the ceiling,
of kings enthroned,
the entire drama played out here on this space,
where the King of England had his head lopped off,
why we've moved from spaces like this,
thrones like that,
towards the town hall,
is we're moving more and more towards the energies of our people.
And we need to tap that.
That can mean different things in different countries.
In Britain ,it could mean looking to the French
learning from the French,
getting directly elected mayors in place,
in a French commune system.
In Afghanistan, it could have meant,
instead of concentrating on the big presidential and parliamentary elections,
we should have done what was in the Afghan constitution
from the very beginning,
which is to get direct local elections going
at a district level, and elect people's provincial governors.
But for any of these things to work,
the honesty in language, the local democracy,
it's not just the question of what politicians do,
it's a question of what the citizens do.
For politicians to be honest,
the public needs to allow them to be honest.
And the media, which mediates
between the politicians and the public,
needs to allow those politicians to be honest.
If local democracy is to flourish,
it is about the active and informed engagement
of every citizen.
In other words, if democracy is to be rebuilt,
is to become again vigorous and vibrant,
it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians
but for the politicians to learn to trust the public.
Thank you very much indeed.
(Applause)