***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***
A Labour government will make up any shortfall in structural funding into the 2020s and beyond - Emily Thornberry MP
Emily Thornberry MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary, speaking at the Labour Party Conference 2016, said:
Conference, I’m so proud to stand here today in Liverpool: a loyal member of Labour’s Shadow Cabinet in what is now again Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.
And I’m also so proud to have such a magnificent team working with me: Barry Gardiner, Catherine West, Ray Collins and Dianne Hayter. Let me thank them for their extraordinary hard work and commitment, and for the fact that they have stepped up in the past few months when times have been so difficult.
And let me take the opportunity also to thank Glenis Willmott and all our MEPs for their commitment to the European project: work that is too often unrecognised, and who we need more than ever as we leave the European Union.
As many of you know, Jeremy Corbyn and I have been constituency neighbours for over a decade now. As a 20 year old, he hitch-hiked to London in the cab of a lorry. He saw a street off the A1 called ‘Ronalds Road’.
He liked the name, so he got out there, and almost fifty years later, he’s still there: the MP for Islington North and the MP for Ronalds Road.
When I was selected for the neighbouring seat in 2005 we were behind to the Liberals in every poll.
On election day, without anyone asking him to, Jeremy left his own constituency and went round by himself knocking on doors in mine, telling voters: “I know you disagreed with Iraq and so did I, so did Emily, we were on the marches together; you’ve got to get out and vote Labour.” I won by 484 votes.
I’ve got to know Jeremy very well since then and there’s many words I know that sum him up: kindness, generosity, courage. But there’s one above all and that word is integrity.
From the constituents he represents in Ronalds Road to the Labour members he represents throughout this country, he is someone we believe in and someone we trust.
To speak up for us and to stand up for us. That is why we vote for him. And that’s why I’m proud to serve in his Shadow Cabinet.
Compare that with David Cameron. Where is his integrity?
The man who voted against an EU referendum in 2011, then chickened out once he thought he’d lose seats to UKIP.
The man who went to Brussels and came back with nothing, then tried to con the British people that he’d solved all the problems.
The man who chose to make the referendum campaign all about him, then complained that other parties weren’t doing enough.
The man who couldn’t persuade two-thirds of his own voters or a quarter of his own Cabinet to vote Remain, then complained that it was all Labour’s fault.
The man who said how proud he was to serve his country, then immediately quit as Prime Minister, quit as an MP, and left everyone else to clear up his mess.
And Conference, let us make no mistake: the country has been led into a dark wood by a Tory party playing internal power games, and they have no plan of how to get us out.
It was a Tory-chaired Foreign Affairs Committee who examined the deliberate decision made by David Cameron that the Government should not plan for the possibility of a Leave vote. The Committee said this “amounted to gross negligence.”
But the Tories have had more than three months since and still there is no plan; they’ve gone from gross negligence to rank incompetence.
And why? Because Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox are more interested in fighting over job titles and office space than they are in dealing with the issues.
And the worst of it is we now know that they didn’t even mean to win. Alan Duncan, Boris Johnson’s deputy at the Foreign Office, says: “Boris’ wish was to lose by one so he could be the heir apparent without having to clean up all the mess.”
Playing games with the future of our country, with the future of our children, just to bolster his own career. I ask you, Conference, where is the integrity in that?
But Conference, Britain is a strong, resourceful and resilient country. Working together, we will find a way through these problems. And we will need a strong, united Labour Party to play our part in helping the country through.
We cannot turn the clock back and run the Brexit vote again. We have been given our instructions by the British people and we must act on them. But that does not mean letting the Tory party go into a locked room and take all the decisions by themselves on the future of our country and the future of our children, without any debate, discussion or explanation.
We will not allow that to happen. We will stand up to the Tories on behalf of the communities we represent, and we will demand to be heard.
We will stand up for EU migrants currently living in Britain, and demand that their continued right to do so is guaranteed.
We will stand up for those UK businesses who depend on trade with Europe, and demand that they can continue doing so freely.
And Conference, we will stand up for workers’ rights, for deprived regions, for environmental protection, for small farm subsidies, for human rights, for every area where the Tories will look to wield the axe after Brexit.
We will stand in their way and demand that the rights and investment on which our communities depend are protected even after we leave the EU.
The Tories will say they are just cutting red tape and eliminating waste, but we know the truth. When they say red tape, we say equal pay; when they say red tape, we say clean beaches; when they say red tape, we say disabled access. And when they say waste, we say no: it’s Erasmus exchanges, it’s the Albert Dock, it’s peace projects in Northern Ireland.
We have a fight ahead to defend our rights and investment. And the Unions, regional government, NGOs, students, the entire Labour movement – we must all take our place in that fight.
And today we want to take a lead.
For the period 2014 to 2020, the UK was allocated 10.8 billion Euros in structural funding for our most deprived regions and communities. The Tories have given an undertaking hedged in conditions that funding up to 2020 will be protected.
For the period after, they have said nothing. That is not good enough. Without long-term certainty over funding, our most deprived regions and communities cannot plan ahead. They cannot attract other investment. They cannot make progress.
So thanks to John McDonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, we can guarantee that a future Labour government will make up any shortfall in structural funding into the 2020s and beyond. And the same will go for the funding of peace and reconciliation projects in Northern Ireland.
The communities who stand to lose out most from Brexit must be looked after first. And that is what we shall do.
But Conference, there is something else we must stand up for in the wake of Brexit, especially at a time of great global uncertainty, with the expansionism of Russia, with financial troubles in China, with the ever-widening conflict in Syria, and with polarised elections approaching in America, France and Germany.
We must stand up for the kind of Britain we want to see: a Britain that faces out to the world and does not turn in on itself; a Britain that tears down walls rather than building them; a Britain that is a genuine global leader and actively works to build the kind of world that we can feel proud to hand on to our children.
That means putting human rights at the heart of our foreign policy, not, like the Tories, promising to scrap the Human Rights Act. That means redoubling our efforts to tackle climate change, not, like Theresa May, abolishing the department responsible.
That means treating Syrian refugees like the human beings they are, not, like David Cameron, describing them as a ‘swarm’. And that means giving overseas aid to those who need it most, not, like Priti Patel, using it as leverage in trade deals.
This summer, I saw for myself how Britain can show true leadership in the world.
I went with my husband and our younger children to visit our eldest son who is working in Rwanda, providing support to the government in Kigali with funding from our Department of International Development.
My kids have given me many proud moments over the years, but to see my son working hard to build greater prosperity in Rwanda was definitely one of the proudest.
But it also made me think. Just 20 years ago, Rwanda was a byword for despair, for hopelessness, and for tragedy. For the idea that there are some problems in some places that we can never fix. But the lesson of Rwanda since those dark days is that with good will and good faith, anything is possible. And no situation is too bleak to be overcome.
For many years, with the strong support of our own TUC, our brothers and sisters in the union movement in Colombia have worked for peace, democracy and human rights, and they have paid a terrible price for their courage. But they never gave up and now, for the first time in decades, thanks to their efforts, there is real chance of a lasting peace.
So when we look at Rwanda, when we look at Colombia, when we look here at home, at Northern Ireland, never let anyone say that: ‘It’s all too difficult’ and ‘nothing can be done’.
In Israel and Palestine there are enough progressive people on all sides to shift the debate away from extreme and entrenched positions towards a lasting peace.
And in South Sudan, in Libya, in Yemen - even in Syria, however faraway it seems now - peace is not impossible. But it will never be achieved – peace is never achieved – by dropping bombs from 30,000 feet.
In Yemen, there are more than one million children facing starvation. Cluster bombs have been dropped in such volumes in civilian areas that locals say they are “hanging off the trees”.
Young children herding goats are picking up those bombs, thinking they are toys, with all too familiar and tragic results.
Conference, it cannot be right that, when faced with a conflict like that, the UK’s primary diplomatic involvement is selling planes and weapons to the Saudi-led side, with no guarantees that they won’t be used against civilians.
There is no integrity in that.
This summer marked eleven years since the passing of Robin Cook. There was someone who believed that integrity and not opportunism should guide our decisions overseas.
It was tragic that he did not live to see the Chilcot report and the vindication it gave him. In his resignation speech, Robin Cook said in a few hundred words what Chilcot said 13 years later in two million.
But Robin’s true vindication will only come not from reports into the acts of British governments, but when British governments themselves start to act differently.
We know from Yemen that we are a long way from an ethical foreign policy when it comes to the sale of arms. And we know from Libya that no lessons have been learned when it comes to planning for the aftermath of interventions and ensuring that war is always the last resort.
But I believe that a Labour government under Jeremy’s leadership will show those lessons have been learned, will show that an ethical foreign policy is not a pipe dream, and will lead by example on all the challenges we face as a world.
And there is one area where we can and must seize that global leadership role.
It is almost 60 years since a Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary demanded that, when it came to negotiations over nuclear weapons, he not be sent naked into the conference chamber. But people forget what Nye Bevan said beforehand in that famous speech.
He said: “It is not a question of who is in favour of the bomb, but what is the most effective way of getting the damn thing destroyed. It is the most difficult of all problems facing mankind.”
What would Bevan think of the fact that six decades on, we are now further than ever from solving that problem, and that the conference chamber he spoke of lies empty and silent.
We all know how irresponsible it would be to ignore the problem of climate change, allow it to get worse, and leave our children and grand-children to worry about the consequences.
So why don’t we say the same about nuclear weapons which have the power to destroy the world we live in within minutes, not just over decades?
So a future Labour government will not just revive talks on multilateral nuclear disarmament among the world’s great powers, we will make the success of those talks the test of our success on foreign policy.
Global leadership on the biggest challenges the world faces; a Britain facing outward and holding its head high; a Labour Party led with integrity; a force for good in the world, determined to leave it a better, more peaceful, more prosperous place.
That is our mission. That is our duty. That is the inheritance our children deserve.
Thank you.
ENDS