The G20 has been a great showcase for our country and our capital city – and it’s been a great advert for the Olympics in 2012, showing that London is the place where the world can come together.
The critics wrote off the G20 as divided and undeliverable but the world came together to take action. I remember similar voices saying we could never get the Olympics to London and even if we did, our athletes weren’t a match for the best in the world.
The message sent loud and clear from London is – whatever the challenge – ‘yes we can’. I know we’ve all heard that slogan a thousand times but it resonated for President Obama – and for me it is still inspiring – because people instinctively want a better future for themselves, but especially for their children. And those better futures are achieved through a combination of government action to remove obstacles and create chances and individual effort and determination to seize those possibilities.
So ‘yes we can’ is not just a campaign slogan, it’s the reason why there are hundreds of young people training for their Olympic chance right now. And – believe it or not – it’s why leaders across the world, from Barack Obama to Gordon Brown to Kevin Rudd in Australia, first got involved in politics.
Of course, we have to make sure that the agreements we reached last week are enacted on the ground so they make a difference for the most hard-hit communities in Britain, where many families are struggling to keep their jobs and homes. There are people that still bear the scars from the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, when millions lost their jobs and received no help to get back to work.
What is it that unites communities facing these hardships now? People tell me they want our country to get back its confidence and optimism by taking pride in what we can do. For businesses to say yes, we can invest here because there are the people with the skills that can make our company grow. People giving their own time and public servants saying yes, we will redouble our efforts to make this community stronger. Communities saying yes, we will stand together with the police and not let the anti-social or the criminal minority win. Whether it’s in sport, business or global affairs, Britain has always succeeded when we have taken pride – and shown ambition – in our country.
So that is why David Cameron makes me so angry touring the TV studios talking Britain – and that means the British people – down. It’s an easy thing for an opposition leader to do; find the worst in everything, to unpick progress and emphasise the negative. Yes, our country faces a tough time – but a cynical running commentary, without any solutions at all, just makes the situation worse.
They are always first to point the finger but the minute their own policies come under scrutiny, they shrink away from the spotlight. Before President Obama had even finished his summing up at the ExCel centre last week, David Cameron had dismissed the achievement of the G20 – but can you even begin to imagine him giving the world leadership and judgement on tackling the global financial crisis?
And his attacks on Britain are not just confined to the economy. David Cameron said that there were five million people in this country who were in danger of turning into Karen Matthews – nothing more strongly reflects his love of a good headline and his determination to do Britain down. With his Broken Britain slogan, he is talking down the hard work, the ingenuity, responsibility and good values of the vast majority of the British people. He should meet our Olympic heroes – not just those who will win medals for Great Britain but the thousands of volunteers who are already signing up to make London 2012 the best place in the world to be.
It may be in David Cameron’s short term interests to say Britain is broken and can never be fixed. It lets him slam the government and gives him an excuse not to offer people any real solutions. But it isn’t in Britain’s interests to give up and do nothing.
It is clear that the Conservative plan is to try to gain some advantage by relentlessly attacking the government recovery plan in general and the prime minister in particular. They do so not only because they have become incapable of putting the national interest above narrow party political interest, but because it is only by making increasingly shrill criticisms of Great Britain and Gordon Brown that they can hide the fact that they have no coherent or comprehensive response to the global economic challenge. But this strategy misunderstands where the people are: they rightly want ideas and answers, which address their anxieties, not rhetorical attacks which do Britain, and them, down.
Every part of our country is going through difficult times, but we will get through this recession. Now more than ever we should take pride in our country, believe in Britain and have the determination to succeed.
I totally agree with the thrust of this article – in fact, I have been banging on about this for months to anyone who would listen, including at the Progress conference late last year. However, it’s not enough just to object to Cameron’s analysis and slogans, which are indeed wrong, disheartening and insulting. Instead of criticising him, let us instead address ourselves directly to the people with a positive message. Labour leaders should not just exhort people to feel pride but also praise and thank the people for their resilience, their cooperation with each other and with government, their calm in the face of great difficulties and their continuing optimism. Make us feel good about ourselves! Make us feel at one with the Labour government – that we are all on the same side, pulling together. If you want us to praise you, praise us.
I used to be a Labour voter but no more with this nose in the trough government – talking of Finance your Olympic Budget shows just how incompetent you are and why the country is in the state it is.
You say it not a broken Britian well it is time you got out and mixed with voters to see reality. I come from a middle class family and just within my circle can show peolep with £70,000 debt and not the slightest bit concerned about it, female relatives that left school at 16 badly educated , went straight out and got pregnant and now brag about having such a nice flat and all the benefits – they have never worked nor will they do so , pensioners locally who are afraid to switch on the heating, you talk about local policing and for the last 12 years have been conspicuous by their absence . I could give so many examples but you should have got the picture.
The last correspondent says about putting out the message – does he mean the suggestion of smearing opposition party members – who do you send on TV to justify it – that dead beat Pound
As for Tessa I do have a question – have you ever though of fhaving a face lift??
this is all a bit choice from a government which seems to care more about other countries than its own. The talk about “the country”, not “our country” because, frankly they care not one jot. Without doubt this is the most corrupt government in my lifetime and it breaks my heart. The constant trying to stir things up for the Tories is getting so old, it has gone on since 1997. Got news for you Tessa, you have been in power for 12 years and a right old cock up you’ve made of it. You’ve virtually bankrupted us and if Tories or Lib Dems get in next time they will have to try and clear up the mess and Labour will deride them from the sidelines, just like 1979. You are a self serving, inadequate, inefficient bunch. No ministers resign, nobody admits they are wrong, nobody admits our country has become massively overcrowded. Nobody wants to address the negatives such as highest rate of HIV, teenage pregnancy, crime, immigration etc in the EU. You have broken all your promises except banning hunting which you were all obsessed with. You loathe and fail to understand the countryside. Our Scottish Prime Minister doesn’t give a fig for England he orders it to be put under concrete to accommodate all those immigrants. White English people are leaving the UK in droves, ask yourselves why not that you give a damn. He doles out our money all over the world; £70 million to Scotland so no council tax increases last year, £750 million to India and £50 mill to China, the two fastest growing economies. Millions of pounds to Africa, £80 million to Gazza and £2 million to Red Nose despite them raising more than ever this year. Brown is spending our money to feather his future and nobody says a thing about it. Where is all this money coming from? Meanwhile you send our troops to lose their lives in an illegal war while under equipped. None of your ministers attend their funerals when they are brought home. You suck up to America and let it use us. Tessa you would be a joke if you weren’t wasting our money. God forgive the lot of you, because I can’t. I don’t forget that one of the first things Blair did was ban the London Tattoo while it was kept in Scotland and told us to forget history- the two World Wars which gave you the freedom to rip us off and insult us. There is no political party worthy of my vote, so I shall abstain at the next election and that is a shame.
I was a Loabour voter once. But you lot have turned me away from it.
You are all, without exception, travesties of what being a politician and statesman should and could be. When did you stop being our elected representatives and become our leaders?
So speaks the wife of a convicted criminal-and perjury at that. Don’t blame people for talking this country down when you and your party have done more damage to our country than the Nazi war machine.
Bunch of troughing charlatans.
Cash for honours
Expenses
Criminal activity in Italy
Jacqui Smith
McBride
‘Investment’
Immigration ‘controls’
Mandelson
Will it never end
Oh yes, Mandelson