Michael Howard – 2003 Speech Launching Leadership Campaign

The speech made by Michael Howard to launch his leadership campaign at the Saatchi Gallery in London on 31 October 2003.

I am announcing today that I am a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

I pay tribute first of all to Iain Duncan Smith, to his courage, to his dignity, to his decency and to what he has achieved for us in the last two years.

At its best, we are a party broad and generous -broad in appeal and generous in outlook -a party capable of representing all Britain and all Britons. I will lead this party from its centre. I will call on the talents of all in the party and the party will expect all to answer that call.

We will offer a new kind of politics, for people today view conventional party politics with contempt. We won’t hesitate to give credit to the Government when it gets things right. We won’t oppose for opposition’s sake. People want better than that.

We will expose the Government’s failures not with gleeful pleasure at seeing them fail, but because we passionately want things to be better for our fellow citizens.

We will never place our electoral self-interest before the good of the country. No narrow partisan opportunism for us. I will always tell the truth. I will say it as I see it.

Most of you know that I’m a lawyer. But I won’t argue a lawyer’s case. If something is true but tough, I won’t shrink from saying it. If something can’t be done, I will level with the public.

Rigorous honesty, measured criticism, realistic alternatives. Only that way can we revive people’s trust in politics.

We must look forward not back. Many people have forgotten that in 1979 we won more support among younger people than in the electorate overall. But we didn’t do that by pandering to youth or by trying to be hip or cool, but by showing that we understand how younger people aspire to live their lives, by depicting a Britain of the future where people would have more freedom, more power to do good things for themselves, for their families, for their communities, for their neighbourhoods -a vision of Britain in tune with people’s aspirations.

Today, we know that there are pockets of desperate poverty in our cities, whole communities left behind by decades of failure. No party that aspires to govern a great nation can ignore them. Modern Britain must be a country where those now left behind can rebuild communities rich in opportunity, self-respect and mutual support.

Many of our great provincial cities are Conservative deserts today. It’s my mission to change that. There can be no no-go areas for a modern Conservative Party.

I was lucky. My parents weren’t rich, but I had the chance to go to a good grammar school. Britain offered me a ladder to climb and put the first rung within my reach.

We won’t be afraid to make the case for lower taxes. You don’t just have a stronger economy, you have a more cohesive society when people pay less tax. They do more not just for themselves but for each other and for their communities…

But we will be responsible. Not for us reckless pledges that mortgage Britain’s future. We need to repair Britain’s mortgaged public finances and to respond to the crying need for urgent reform of our public services.

We’ve begun to unveil the policies. Trust the people. That means trusting parents, trusting patients and trusting families, and trusting professionals, doctors, nurses, police officers. Giving choice to all, not just to those who can afford to buy it.

And unleashing the creative powers of innovation to reinvigorate our public services in the next decade, just as we did for business 20 years ago.

Our party will be internationalist in outlook. My parents were immigrants. They saw Britain as a beacon in a dark and threatening world.

Conservative Britain will never flinch from confident engagement with the wider world. We know that while our obligations begin within our shores, they don’t end there. We must look confidently outwards.

If we have concerns about the direction of the European Union, it’s not because we are little Englanders or because we hark back to some bygone Golden Age. It’s because we see it as too intrusive, too rigid for the fast-flowing networks of the era of globalisation.

I wasn’t born into the Conservative Party. I chose it. I chose it because I thought, as I still do, that it offers Britain its brightest future.

I’ve been in Parliament for 20 years now. I think I’ve learnt a bit in that time.

I’ve learnt that if we want to persuade people, we need to preach a bit less and listen a bit more. I’ve learnt that just winning an argument doesn’t on its own win hearts and minds. I’ve learnt that politicians won’t be respected by the public unless they respect each other and that people won’t trust us unless we trust them.

There may be no more than 18 months before the next general election.

We’ve come some way in the last two years. We’ve talented candidates that show us capable of representing today’s Britain in all its splendid diversity.

We’ve begun to renew our policies. But we are still only in the foothills of our ascent. The hard climb still lies ahead. We will need stamina and comradeship. We will need to show respect for each other as well as for our opponents.

In the contemporary Conservative Party that we forge there will be no place for ancient feuds or rankling discords. We will build afresh, knowing that we have no God-given right to hold our place.

Britain deserves better than it has today. It is our destiny to provide it. We must prove that we are equal to that challenge.